STORM Brian lashed competitors and spectators but no one was put off as hundreds watched ploughing matches south of Wantage.

Newbury and District Agricultural Society's annual ploughing match celebrated how land has been tilled for thousands of years in England and the skill involved.

Prizes were handed out to the ploughing match winners on Saturday, including some who had travelled hundreds of miles to take part.

Retired farmer Henry Prince, who lives in Cumnor, was an Oxfordshire winner.

The 81-year-old moved to the village about 30 years ago, after retiring from work on his farm on the Staffordshire-Derbyshire border.

He won the award for best ploughing on a vintage tractor, which he has maintained from his working days and dates back to 1942.

He said: “I have an old Fordson which I’ve kept.

"I just use it for ploughing matches. I try to get to one once a week and there are a few matches in the autumn.

"When the wheat has gone then we start ploughing, some are in September, October, December.

"You keep the ploughing straight, make good furrows.”

Mr Prince has to keep his tractor and plough on a nearby farm and pick it up when he needs to use it, carrying them to ploughing matches on a lorry.

The tractor vaporising oil (TVO) needed to make the tractor run is not even produced today, so to get it moving Mr Prince uses central heating oil with a touch of petrol.

A horse pulling a plough would normally be able to till about an acre of land in a day.

But mechanisation has horses and people working the land a favour – in that using the biggest and best tractors today can cover about four times the same area in just an hour.

Dozens of competitors took part, and were rated by noting who best had buried the ‘trash’, or rubbish, that had been left on the field by ploughing.

Newbury and District Agricultural Society chairwoman, Judith Marcham, said: “This is perfect ploughing weather. It’s going very well.

"We have got a good turnout, with more than 40 competitors and there are quite a few courses.”

She said she was impressed by the turnout, many of whom huddled in a tent away from the lashing winds.

She added: "Quite often they have seen it on the side of the road and wonder, ‘oh what’s that?’"

The land cultivated at Woolley Park South Fawley Farm belonged to agricultural society member Kirsten Loyd.