Preserving English eccentricity: 20 years of the World Marmalade Awards

[cbabe]

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/apr/26/preserving-english-eccentricity-20-years-of-the-world-marmalade-awards

Preserving English eccentricity: 20 years of the World Marmalade Awards

Hannah Al-Othman
Sat 26 Apr 2025 11.02 EDT

What could unite octogenarian Cumbrian farmers, diplomats from Japan, Spain and Australia, and Paddington Bear?

The answer, of course, is marmalade. Or, more specifically, the World Marmalade Awards.

With a flock of spray-painted orange sheep, a giant red squirrel and Paddington wandering among the marmalade aficionados (many of whom are also dressed in orange), and a choir of schoolchildren performing a specially commissioned marmalade song, the event held at Dalemain Mansion near Penrith is something of a showcase of English eccentricity.

The event’s founder, Jane Hasell-McCosh, set up the awards in 2005, “mainly because we’d had foot and mouth and the whole county had really suffered from it”, she said, and also because “I love marmalade and I was trying to think of a way of getting people to come to Cumbria”.

It began as a local competition, with Hasell-McCosh, who lives in Dalemain, convincing people to hand over jars of their marmalade. The next year, she says, “we thought, well, maybe we should try a festival. Somebody who was involved in tourism said: ‘Well, that’s a very silly idea, it will never work.’”

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