Shire Horse Show cancelled

Visitors usually travel from across Europe to go to the annual event, which is the world's largest gathering of Shire horses.

But it was announced on Monday evening this weekend's show will not go ahead.

A spokesman for the show said: "We are sorry to announce that, given the Government’s announcement on coronavirus late on Monday afternoon, the show is cancelled.

"The Government has advised that everyone should avoid social contact and non-essential travel, and avoid gatherings both large and small. The aim of these measures, and the other measures they announced at the same time, is to reduce contact between people to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus. They said the measures will have effect if everyone adheres to them.

"The decision to cancel the show is taken with disappointment, but, in the light of the Government announcement, we have no choice. Avoiding spread of virus is the paramount concern and we do not want to expose any of the many people who are involved in the show to risk of spread, in what is now a rapidly developing situation of fast growth in the transmission of the virus between people.

"Our first priority in the coming days is to cancel the arrangements that had been put in place for the show. This will be an exceptionally busy time for the office. After that, we will need to consider the consequences of cancellation in what is an unprecedented situation. Please bear with us as we will not be able straight away to answer the questions that members and visitors are bound to have. We will post more information when we can.

"Thank you to everyone for their support for the society. We will all be sad not to see the many magnificent horses that would have been at the show, but we look forward to future shows."