Darlington revived its traditional royal celebration of a public ox roast for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. ‘Residents near the Market Place look forward with considerable misgiving to this ceremony, owing to the smell of burnt flesh and coke smoke,’ said the Darlington and Stockton Times.
A 60-stone ox was hoisted by a large crane from Cleveland Bridge onto a spit made by Darlington Forge. It had salt from Messrs Mawson, Swan & Morgan of Newcastle rubbed into it and was roasted for twenty-four hours by six braziers lent by the North Eastern Railway, while the Gravy Making Society did its work. A bathful of fat was available for those who wanted dripping.
It was such a success that another ox was roasted on 22 August 1902, for the coronation of Edward VII, and fed 2,000 people. But the misgivings grew, as demonstrated by this letter to the Darlington and Stockton Times from an anonymous poet:
This ox of sterling value will not hunger pangs avail,
When charred and marred and shrivelled from head to tail.
A third ox was roasted in 1911 for George V’s coronation. ‘It would be impossible to roast an ox better,’ concluded the secretary of the Ox Roasting Committee, and many homes still contain one of the 2,724 commemorative plates (cost: 5s 9d a dozen) upon which he handed out the sandwiches.
(‘Memories’, The Northern Echo, 2012)