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Pirton Pumpkin Club |
Pirton Pumpkin Club - History
(Taken from original text by Joe Titmuss)
The first Pumpkin Show was held in Pirton in 1965 and 'Blackie' Dawson was crowned King Pumpkin with a 46 lb "monster" - a far cry from our present club record of 364 lbs.
Blackie Dawson was our first King.
Very proud of it was he,
Always boasting how he did it
In The Fox and on TV.
That very first show really put Pirton on the map because a BBC film crew were here all day and it was extensively featured on the Eammon Andrews 'Tonight' show. Our Pumpkin Club song, to the tune 'Clementine', perpetuates that first show:
In a village known as Pirton,
There's a Club that doing fine,
Country bumpkins, growing pumpkins
Gardens full of creeping vine
and the chorus:
Growing pumpkins, growing pumpkins,
Growing pumpkins is the thing.
One of us will grow a big one,
Big enough to make us King
A question asked many times is, "Why form a Pumpkin Club in the first place?" Well it happened after the 1964 Flower Show in 'The Live and Let Live' (then a pub, now the home of Fran and Tim Manning in the High Street). The pub experts were discussing the judging of the various exhibits that day when, according to them; many of the wrong entries had been awarded prizes, the judges were complete idiots who did not know a Home Guard from a King Edward potato, a winter sown onion from a spring sown one, etc. In fact, to the casual listener it would appear that the judges were completely incompetent and did not know the first thing about gardening.
What could be grown that would not need a judge to decide what was best? The answer was soon forthcoming - a pumpkin. The person who grew the heaviest would be the winner and become King Pumpkin for the year. No idiot judges required, just a set of scales to weigh the pumpkins. Thus, the Pumpkin Club was formed with the object of 'growing pumpkins with good humour'.
From our first show we made the very first donation to the newly-launched appeal for a Hitchin Cheshire Home. Since then all the money raised by the Pumpkin Club in its 30 years (over £20,000) has gone to help worthy charitable causes. We are extremely proud of that. In the second year of the Club's existence the social life in Pirton was at a very low ebb and we decided to do something about it. We organised an annual dinner dance, summer barn dance, New Year's Eve party, Boxing Day pram race, carol singing in conjunction with the WI and various coach outings - all of which proved to be extremely popular. A little later came Christmas scrap collections and the ever popular senior citizens' party.
For many years we entered a float in the Hitchin and Letchworth Hospitals' Carnival and later the Stevenage one as well, winning the cup for the most humorous float on several occasions. What tremendous fun those carnivals were on a day when literally anything goes - and with us it certainly did! Just one example was the occasion when we built an old fashioned 'privy' with three sides and a galvanised roof but no door on the back of our trailer. It had a bucket with a wooden seat and a club member (who had better remain nameless) rode all the way round Hitchin and Letchworth wearing a smock, sitting on a seat with trousers and pants round his ankles. The huge roars of laughter from the crowds lining the route were accompanied by showers of coins amounting to over £250 raining down on our trailer. Yes it did win us the humorous cup and made a lot of money for the hospitals. We became quite notorious around Hitchin and Letchworth and became used to hearing the expression, "What have those daft b-----s from Pirton done this year?"
The Pumpkin Club still thrives today and you can help us do just that! Give us your ideas, support and help! e-mail jontywild@pirton.org.uk
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