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LOVELY JUBILEE
COMMUNITY SPIRIT Jubilee celebrations can take many forms, from classic tea party to the more unusual Ely eel parade (left) plum royal jubilee pudding created by confectioner Allardi Bordeaux. Each monarch has brought with them an ornate, bespoke jubilee cake. “The Abingdon jubilee cakes were currant buns thrown to the crowd – a tradition started for Victoria’s 1887 Jubilee,” says Sue. “Free buns also featured prominently at an open-air party for children in Hyde Park that year. The allowance for children of a half-pint of beer that celebrated the previous Jubilee of George III had by then been replaced with ginger beer and lemonade.” Another foodie event is still around
These often-imperial British feasts have even spread abroad: “There were 23 Jubilee banquets hosted across South Africa for King George V’s Silver Jubilee in 1935,” says Emma. “Donations of food from those same nations to Britain were encouraged, like the 167 carcasses of mutton Dundee received from Australia in 1897 as a benefaction for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.” Jubilees have become a time when the shops are stocked up with everything from exclusive Harrods chocolate coins to whisky. Special dishes have also been concocted; among them, says Emma, cherries jubilee for Queen Victoria, three versions of jubilee chicken and a tinned
time to distribute food to the poor or reach out to wider communities, enabling society’s less affluent citizens to become actively involved in a national event.” “The street parties we associate with Royal Jubilees seem to date from 1919, when peace teas were held to commemorate the end of World War I,” says Sam. Throughout the 20th century, the celebrations snowballed. “One village in Hampshire recognised Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee with a 300ft table seating 400 local residents, who enjoyed cold meat, salad, fruit salad, ice cream, cheese and biscuits, wine, orange and lemon squash,” describes Emma.
today. Sue points to Haslingfield’s merriments during the Victorian
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