Royal Show 09: Visitor numbers up on last year

More than 114,000 people attended the final Royal Show at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, which closed its gates for the last time on Friday 10 July.

The attendance figure was 17,500 higher than recorded for the event in 2008, according to show organiser the Royal Agricultural Society of England.

“We were delighted to attract so many visitors to this very special Royal Show,” said RASE marketing and communications director Denis Chamberlain.

“We know that good business was done at the show and that the very high standards of livestock were maintained to the very end in a magnificent show and parade of cattle, sheep and pigs.”

But the figure is still a long way short of crowd numbers during the show’s heyday in the 1970s and 1980s when about 250,000 visited the showground.

The show was also outstripped by the current attendance for the Royal Highland Show at 176,000 visitors and the Royal Welsh Show which regularly attracts more than 230,000 visitors.