The Isle of Wight’s unique Christmas primestock show, the Gilten Market, is set to make its return this December, continuing a long-standing rural tradition that celebrates the very best of local livestock.
This year’s event will take place on Monday 1st December at the Royal Isle of Wight County Showground, with stock judging starting at 10:00 and the sale getting underway from 12:00.
The Gilten Market is the only event of its kind held in the British Isles and remains the only livestock market on the Isle of Wight. It takes place each year under the patronage of the High Sheriff, who performs the traditional ceremony of gilding the horns of the winning animal – the Gilten Beast – with gold paint.
The event highlights the high standard of beef cattle and prime lambs produced locally, helping to promote the importance of buying Island-reared meat during the festive season. It also plays a key role in supporting the connection between farmers, butchers and the wider rural community.
Matt Legge, Event Chairman, has said:
“Over 40 years since the closure of the Island’s last permanent livestock market, it is great that we are still able to hold the Gilten Market, to celebrate the fantastic standard of livestock that is produced on the Island.
“We are very excited to be hosted at the new County Showground building where the event now has a new, long-term home. There is a huge amount of work that goes into this type of event, and it would not be possible without the support of our farming community.”
Not livestock, animals. Painting an animal with paint to show how great a piece of meat it will be.
And calling it local is a bit laughable when it will be transported to the mainland on a journey thats going to be terrifying and be killed in a regular slaughterhouse, not a local one. Has the farmer seen the slaughterhouse and seen how their animals are killed out of curiosity? As there’s a lot of abuse going on in slaughterhouses and as it is in fact not local, I wonder how big a part of the animals journey the farmer is part of before it returns back on the IOW in pieces.
Does anyone remember going to the cattle market in Newport where Morrisons is now? It’s one of my earliest memories. I was a very young lad.
It’s not a traditional animal market and I’ve been to enough of them. It’s a glorified excuse to degrade & humiliate the poor Animal. Everyone’s a winner, apart from the Animal that ‘wins’ Death! Perhaps, rather than prize money, the ‘winning owners’ would like to win that too.