A new Stonehenge Dahlia Show 27 - 29 Sep 2024
Join us as we bring the glorious colours and stunning shapes of over 5000 dahlia blooms to Stonehenge.
From Fri 27 - Sun 29 Sep, Stonehenge will be hosting a dahlia show paying homage to the historic dahlia shows of the 1840s.
Pose for photographs in a dahlia headdress underneath a giant dahlia covered trilithon. Marvel at the artistry of local flower clubs who have designed and created stunning flower sculptures. Learn more about the history of dahlias at Stonehenge and the craze that overtook Victorian England. You can even vote for your favourite dahlia, to be crowned the New Hero of Stonehenge.
The event will also feature two fresh floral mannequins designed by Fleurs de Villes which have been based on figures from Stonehenge’s recent past.
You can also meet our Victorian visitors, from the Time Will Tell Theatre company between 10.30 - 17.30 each day. Or, have a go at using Victorian photography techniques to make your own cyanotype dahlia prints.
Come dressed to impress, just as the Victorian visitors would have done, and enjoy the sounds of the Shrewton Silver Band who will be performing at the visitor centre on Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
Open all day, free to Stonehenge ticket holders.
If you're inspired to grow your own dahlias read Arthur Parkinson's guide to growing these beautiful blooms popular with gardeners and pollinators alike.
Dahlias make an entrance
It would be impossible to exaggerate the popularity of dahlias in 1842, yet the obsession was a relatively recent phenomenon. Native to Mexico and mountainous regions of South America, dahlias were named after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl and first arrived in Britain in 1798.
The earliest dahlias to flower in England were single blooms and, albeit unfavourable to the British palette, the roots if boiled were considered a potential food source. Hybridization eventually fashioned double blooms and with experimentation producing dozens of different varieties, an endless selection of colours and shapes saw dahlias prove highly attractive as cut flowers and competition exhibits.
The arrival of dahlia shows
The intense passion for rearing and admiring dahlias spread ever more widely between 1815 and 1825.Having extended the flower growing season in Britain by producing highly colourful blooms throughout the autumn as well as summer, dahlias became an additional draw at end of growing season events.
Dahlia competitions first arose at the scheduled meetings of the florist and horticultural societies of Scotland and the north of England between 1818 and 1823. Soon becoming the star attraction in the prevailing schedules of flower, vegetable and produce shows, this popularity inevitably led to dedicated dahlia shows. The Colchester and Essex Botanical and Horticultural Society were the first to announce a dedicated dahlia show anywhere in Britain in 1824. Many other societies followed suit and shows were publicised in the newly developing gardening press.
Al fresco entertainment
With al fresco entertainment proving as much of a topical attraction as dahlias in the first half of the 19th century, the expanded settings of open-air events posed quite a contrast with many of the taverns and town halls which were the more traditional venues for flower shows.
Against those confined spaces, the opportunities for promenading and spotting fashionable attendance were far greater if weather reliant, but events such as the Horticultural Society’s grand fete at Chiswick in June 1827 demonstrated what could be achieved with marquees and tents.
The opportunities for promenading proved equally popular at dahlia shows at Surrey Zoological Gardens in 1834, and two dahlia shows held at Bath’s Sydney Gardens the following year.
The Salisbury Plain Dahlia Society
The Salisbury Plain Dahlia Society was formed in 1838, with the sole aim of staging an al fresco entertainment on the Everleigh estate of Sir John Dugdale Astley (1778-1842). Astley had been a founding member of the first countywide horticultural society in Wiltshire. His near neighbour, Charles Brudenell-Bruce, 2nd Earl and 1st Marquess of Ailesbury (1773-1856), was patron of the first dedicated dahlia show in Wiltshire, held at Marlborough town hall in August 1834.
Held under canvas in the grounds of the Crown Inn, the Astley-owned public house at Everleigh, a band of music complemented an event which drew around 1,000 visitors on Friday 31 August 1838. It would appear the attraction was as much the celebrity status of the local gentry and the opportunity to be seen promenading, as witnessing the dahlias. Instantly successful, the Salisbury Plain Dahlia Show ran for four years.
Why a dahlia show at Stonehenge?
John Keynes (1805-1878), a nurseryman from Salisbury, was probably key to the decision to hold a dahlia show at Stonehenge. Keynes became the Salisbury Plain Dahlia Society’s Honorary Secretary in 1840 and, with Everleigh no longer an option upon the death of Sir John Dugdale Astley in January 1842, the Salisbury nurseryman’s eagerness and organizational abilities were surely to the fore in the decision to continue with the annual dahlia shows.
Among those actively involved with the Salisbury Plain Dahlia Society, the Astley and Everleigh connected aside, there was only one that could conveniently host an open-air show for 1,000 or more visitors. Sir Edmund Antrobus, 2nd Baronet (1792-1870), was a Fellow of the Horticultural Society of London, Stonehenge stood on his Amesbury estate and was a traditional meeting place remote from his formal grounds and the game habitats he valued. A cricket pitch lay close to the site and relocating the dahlia exhibition to Stonehenge would combine the attractions of the two.
The Stonehenge dahlia shows
Held under the patronage of Lady Antrobus (1800-1885), it was later remarked that the Stonehenge dahlia show was ‘one of the earliest of the great exhibitions’. In addition to fine weather, a band of music and side-shows - a cricket match completed the attraction with a Salisbury XI beating an Amesbury XI by 47 runs. With the catering arrangements in the hands of Shrewton born Edward Smallbone, of the George Inn, Amesbury, a hundred and sixty people sat down to a formal dinner. Meanwhile ‘parties of gentlemen and elegantly dressed ladies’ enjoyed a ‘universal picnic.’
The prize for a floral device was predictably won by John Keynes for ‘The Antrobus Arms’. Floral devices were sculptures made entirely from dahlias supported by wire formers. Words could be spelled out to a background of contrasting colours, allowing creative Victorians to illustrate their talents, loyalties and patriotism. John Keynes habitually competed in this category, frequently winning prizes and drawing praise for his inventiveness.
Another drawing special praise was Mr Whale, the Head Gardener, at Elcot Park, near Kintbury, Berkshire, for the Hero of Stonehenge, a dark mulberry dahlia which won first prize in the Seedlings of 1841 class.
Experiencing the Stonehenge dahlia shows
The size of the crowds attending the Stonehenge dahlia shows between 1842 and 1845, were estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000 on each occasion.
Rapidly advancing Stonehenge’s foothold in the public imagination, these annual dahlia shows saw thousands visit that had never given the site a second thought. It no doubt helped that the weather always proved fine, and Mr Ransome’s band from Devizes was apparently popular, but it is also clear that accessing the stones was something of interest to the wider public.
In 1843 John Keynes was obliged to issue a notice:
‘It is respectfully requested that no vehicles, booths, or standings may be placed within fifty yards of the Stones, that all parties may have access to them.’
Fashions at the show
A local newspaper report on the 1842 dahlia show records that it was attended by: “most of the fashionables of the neighbourhood” including “elegantly dressed ladies”.
During that era, women’s fashion emphasized a meek and submissive appearance, reflecting the ideal of a gentle, delicate, and refined woman. Lower shoulder lines and tighter sleeves limited upper body movement, while bodices and corsets created a narrow waist. Skirts, gathered tightly at the waist and worn over stiffened petticoats, formed a dome-shaped silhouette.
Necklines gradually rose and were adorned with neat collars, while hairstyles were also tidy and modest, featuring a centre parting, side tresses over the ears, and a bun at the back. When attending a flower show, women might have also brought a shawl for warmth and a parasol for sun protection, and bonnets would have been worn as well.
The legacy of the Stonehenge dahlia shows
Of the first Stonehenge dahlia show in 1842, it was reported that barely a conveyance remained in Salisbury by midday. This was of course prior to the first train transporting the regular influx of excursionists to arrive in Salisbury in 1847, it was then through the annual dahlias shows that the proprietors of horse-drawn carriages for hire had gained valuable insight. A tour that stopped at Old Sarum as well as Stonehenge proved popular, with the outward route along the Woodford Valley offering different scenery to a return leg which sometimes included Wilton.
That Keynes had changed the widespread reputation of Stonehenge into that of a theatre and a resort, was admirably demonstrated on Monday 31 July 1843. Between showers pupils of schools at Shrewton and West Lavington were among around 120 newly trained singers from Wiltshire towns and villages to perform their maiden ‘sight singing’ concert to an audience of around 1,000 spectators at Stonehenge. Children from poor backgrounds receiving applause alongside better off contemporaries, and families playing games amid sheltering from the rain that day, illustrates the extent to which Stonehenge had been adopted and democratized.
With the popularity of Stonehenge on the rise the obsession with dahlias was waning and evolving tastes saw floral devices described as ‘monstrosities’ by mid-century. Having been fashionably ignored during the 1860s, interest in dahlias revived with the rediscovery of single varieties in the 1870s and was ensured by the formation of the National Dahlia Society in 1881.
Brian Edwards researched and compiled the history of the Stonehenge dahlia shows. Brian Edwards is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Regional History Centre, UWE Bristol.