Quest for heaviest gooseberry celebrates 200 years

Holmes Chapel may be better known for its more famous export – the singer Harry Styles – but it also has a niche tradition of seeking out the heaviest gooseberry.

This year marks the Cheshire village’s bicentennial gooseberry fair, at which contestants compete for the prized “premier berry” award, bestowed upon the grower of the most weighty fruit.

At its peak, the prize was the equivalent of a month’s wages but organisers now describe it as just “a quirky and frivolous activity”.

Holmes Chapel Gooseberry Society vice secretary Andy Anderson said: “If you look back at what’s happened over the last 200 years – all the different world events – people have got together on the last weekend in July and weighed off some gooseberries and had a few beers.”