'My family has been here centuries' - The Penistone Show manager who is running the event set up by his grandfather in 1850s

“Today our attending public are more of an urban crowd and you have to make a show appeal as a good day out with all the things they would expect, but the whole point of the show is that we bang the drum about agriculture and horticulture and at Penistone Show we regard ourselves as a portal for people to experience these.”

Nicholas was involved with the show at an early age and became show manager rather earlier than expected at just 20. He’s also dyed-in-the-wool Penistone, so much so that he could have Whitefaced Woodland (the Penistone Sheep) even in his blood.

“I’m born and bred Penistone,” says Nicholas. “My family has been here centuries. My great grandfather James Henry Wood was one of the founding members when the show was established in 1853. He was the local postmaster.

“My grandpa Eric Hoyland was show president for a number of years after the show restarted in 1961 and my father Peter who is now in his 80s is still involved as operations manager, having also started young.

"I came on to the show committee at 14 and now one of my nieces, Eleanor Hoyland, is on the committee and food hall secretary.

“I’ve been at every show since I was born and joined the committee in 1984. I was press officer in my late teens under the previous show manager Frank Clegg whose daughters are involved now.

"I became deputy show manager and tragically, not long after I took on that role he passed away. I’ve been show manager ever since.

“Frank always had this vision of engaging more with young people for the show to be successful and for it to keep moving forward. That’s what I’ve stuck to and it’s why the show has evolved and keeps evolving.”

Nicholas says the importance of keeping relevant is down to involvement of all ages and all walks of life.

“The world has changed. There are a lot more outside events. We are fortunate to have a young dynamic committee to be able to compete in that market and still get the farming and countryside message across.

“Fifty per cent of our committee are under the age of 40. I’m a member of the Association of Show and Agricultural Organisations and that kind of figure is not at all common with most and has meant that we have embraced new, modern practices.

“We are expanding the show and keeping it relevant through educational projects, tangible things like greater tree planting and this year offering far greater space to expand our livestock classes.”

They have moved to the lower field where exhibitors will have greater access. It is also adjacent to the car park, which is kindly given over to the Penistone Agricultural Society for use as such by local farmer John Milnes, and this means that the first part of the show, visitors by car will see will be the livestock.

“We’ve been moving things around on showground for several years.

"It’s like a jigsaw getting every piece in the right place and this year with the movement of the livestock we are now able to give exhibitors better parking, better access and a bigger area to increase our livestock capacity.

“We can now grow the sections because previously the site was restrictive in the way that it was laid out.”

One of the breeds Nicholas is hoping to see more of at Penistone Show in the coming years is the Penistone Sheep, the Whitefaced Woodland.

“We have previously been in talks with hosting the breed’s national championships at Penistone Show because we feel it would be so appropriate, but at the time we couldn’t have facilitated the numbers they were going to bring. Now we can, and so we are hoping that will happen in the future.

“Last year we had around 200 sheep, 100 cattle and 60 pigs. We’d love to increase all of those numbers now that we have the capacity.

"Special mention must go to Lee Dunkley for having brought the pigs section back and running it so well in the last few years. This year we have Gavin Pawson as our new pig section secretary. Gavin is looking to build on what Lee has done.

“We will also see the return of the fur and feather classes; and in the equestrian side we have some HOYS qualifying and London Horse of Year qualifying for the heavy horse section seems to grow year on year.”

Nicholas has never been a farmer but is most definitely a protagonist for his home town.

He runs Penistone Engineering Ltd that was started by his father and prior to that had been an engineering business that his grandfather had started on coming out of the Royal Flying Corps after WWI.

“I progressed into my father’s business from leaving school and have lived and worked in Penistone all my life.

"We have a shop that trades and retails engineering fasteners – nuts and bolts – and another side that sees us working on several engineering projects mainly for the rail industry at this moment in time. We employ a dozen local people from the town.

"We are fortunate that Penistone became an engineering town. With an agricultural context David Brown had a base here.

“Penistone is still very much community based. While we have attracted a lot of new people into the area and there are many new housing developments the positive point is that the town is growing, it is not stagnating nor standing still.

“The great news is that it has nonetheless held on to a lot of its traditional core values of what the town is all about and everyone embraces that, which is why it is buoyant at this moment in time.”

Nicholas says that such is the show’s size and popularity that planning for next year’s show started about a month ago.

“We have a team of 300 volunteers, we get great support from the likes of Cannon Hall Farm who are very good at promoting us and many of our younger volunteers come from Penistone YFC. Emily Fretwell is the current young farmers representative on the committee.

“We also now have our own show merchandise with tea towels and prints using the works of local artist Lucy Pimpernel Wood who was commissioned to paint scenes of the show in its 150th year.”