East of England Agricultural Society


The East of England Agricultural Society is an agricultural society in the east of England. Until 2012, it was the organiser of the East of England Show held each year at the 250 acre East of England Showground at Alwalton, five miles west of the city of Peterborough in Cambridgeshire.

History

The Society was formed in 1970 by the merger of the Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely, Huntingdonshire and Peterborough agricultural societies. It was joined by the Bedfordshire Agricultural Society in 1971 and the Northamptonshire Agricultural Society in 1972. The Long Sutton Agricultural Society in neighbouring Lincolnshire remains independent and is affiliated for show purposes only.
The first president of the Peterborough Agricultural Society, the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam was elected in 1797. The annual subscription was one guinea and that amount remained until 1950.

East of England Showground

The Showground is also the home of the Peterborough Panthers Motorcycle speedway team who race in the Elite League, the highest level of Speedway in the United Kingdom. The track is long and has a 2,200 capacity grandstand along with grass banking on the back straight. The track record of 58.4 seconds for a 4 lap clutch start race was set on 20 September 2010 by visiting Coventry Bees rider Krzysztof Kasprzak of Poland.
The Peterborough track was also the host of the 2002 Speedway World Cup Final which took place on 10 August. Australia, with Jason Crump, Leigh Adams, Todd Wiltshire, and Peterborough Panthers riders Ryan Sullivan and Jason Lyons, won their second consecutive Speedway World Cup defeating Denmark, Sweden, Poland and the Czech Republic.
The Showground also hosted the 2001 Under-21 World Championship Final won by Poland's Dawid Kujawa

Speedway World Finals

World Cup