Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2008 | Page 62

life

COUNTRYSIDE, WILDLIFE & FARMING

The history
of the Gilten
Market

T

he Isle of Wight
is the only
place in the
British Isles that has
a Gilten Market. It’s
always held in the first
week of December
and celebrated by
gilding the horns of
the winning steer,
called the Gilten
Beast, with gold.
The origin of the tradition
has been lost in the mists of
time, possibly it was once

62

an ancient pagan custom
but there’s no proof.
By holding the market at
the beginning of December,
it encouraged IW farmers to
produce top quality beef for
the Isle of Wight butchers to
buy for Christmas. This saved
the IW butchers travelling to
the mainland to purchase their
Christmas beef. They kept it
in insulated containers cooled
by ice from the ice factory,
and if they had bought any
of the winning steers they
would display the rosettes and
prize cards in their windows.

The first Fat Stock
Exhibition was organised by
the Isle of Wight Agricultural
Society on Wednesday, 11
December, 1861. David Biles,
the Island’s High Sheriff in
1998-1999, has a framed poster
of the original event in 1861
showing a list of the prizes
for each class and informing
competitors that ‘a fee of 5s.
must be paid with each entry’
and that tickets for the dinner
afterwards at the Bugle Hotel,
Newport, would cost 2s.6d.
As the Society had held a
ploughing match at Stone

Farm, Blackwater, on 19
October, prizes for both the
match and the Fat Stock
Exhibition were awarded to
the winners at the dinner
by the Mayor of the old
Newport Borough Council.
The County Press records
that three Gilten Market
dinners were held at the same
time during the 1890’s when
thirteen toasts were proposed.
The event continued to be
run by a Newport Borough
Council committee with the
Mayor acting as chairman and
it was revived in 1924 after the

Island Life - www.isleofwight.net