A Day at the Cask Races

Every Cooper spends a lifetime around casks; only the lucky ones get to race them. This year’s Coopers’ Cask Race was my first in the driver’s seat as Event Director — thirty-two teams, sixty cadets, a full civic turnout, and one freshly baptised barrel.

Strictly speaking, the day belonged to my other hat: I was in Guildhall Yard as a Cooper and organiser rather than as an Ale-Conner, though the two offices have never stood far apart — one of us minds the casks, the other minds what goes into them. The format needs no improving: a cask, a course, and teams of liverymen determined to move one along it faster than anybody else. Thirty-two teams entered this year — the race’s fifth running — and when the dust settled it was the Distillers who took the crown from the Merchant Taylors, our defending champions. If a company that spends its working life around barrels enjoys a certain familiarity with the equipment, nobody begrudged them it — and the Merchant Taylors, I suspect, will want it back.

Mid-race, a team of Yeoman Warders in black-and-red kit bearing the crowned royal cypher steers a dark cask through the turn, one racer crouched low over the barrel and a teammate in a shirt reading BEEFEATER 404 sprinting behind, spectators lining the barriers of Guildhall Yard. — Reinforcements from the Tower: the Yeoman Warders take the turn under the royal cypher. Photograph: Laura Miller

The racing was opened by the Chief Commoner, Philip Woodhouse, and the Lady Mayor, Dame Susan Langley, who between them also inaugurated something new: a ceremony of blessing for the racing cask. The idea was borrowed, quite shamelessly, from the Duchess of Edinburgh, who lately christened a cask in Portugal by dashing a glass of port against it. Ours was conducted with the whisky commissioned by the Coopers’ Society for its bicentennial from the English Distillery: the Chief Commoner and the Lady Mayor took a sample and baptised the cask with it, and the racing could begin in a properly consecrated state.

The Lady Mayor, Dame Susan Langley, in scarlet robes trimmed with fur, gold chains of office, white gloves and a black plumed tricorn hat, bends to roll a pale new oak cask with a red-painted head across the stone paving of Guildhall Yard, spectators watching from behind a barrier. — The Lady Mayor, Dame Susan Langley, sets the newly blessed cask rolling in Guildhall Yard. Photograph: Laura Miller

The Lady Mayor, in a Coopers’ cap of red, yellow and black with her badge on a lanyard, laughs with a member of the mayoral team wearing the white custom-embroidered Coopers’ Cask Race polo shirt, racers milling in the sunshine behind them. — Later in the day the robes gave way to a Coopers’ cap: the Lady Mayor with the mayoral team and the race’s custom embroidery. Photograph: Laura Miller

Alongside the main event, the race joined forces with the Cadet Enterprise Day, organised by the Fletchers’ Company, which brought sixty cadets into the yard for some cask racing of their own. Watching them take to it, the coopering trade may have found a recruitment tool it never knew it needed.

Liam Randall, in a black Event Organiser polo shirt and gloves, crouches ready to roll a dark charred cask at the start line, spectators at the barriers behind him and a ceremonial chair embroidered with the City of London arms to one side. — Leading from the front: the Event Director takes his own turn at the staves in the staff event. Photograph: Laura Miller

Non-Aldermanic Sheriff Keith Bottomley — making his second appearance in this journal, and as generous with his time as ever — closed the racing and presented the prizes. And the number I am proudest of: the day raised nearly £5,000 for charity, a substantial leap on previous years, thanks in great part to our headline events sponsor, TCM IP Services. Support of that order is what turns a good day out into one that does some lasting good.

Four racers from headline sponsor TCM IP Services in blue team shirts and caps pose with their cask outside the Guildhall Art Gallery entrance, one crouched at the barrel in red-palmed gloves and three standing behind. — Skin in the game: the TCM IP Services team — sponsors first, racers a close second. Photograph: Laura Miller

The day also made the news. Katie Bevan of the SW Londoner spent the morning at the barriers — and a few minutes of it pointing a camera at me — and her report, “Annual cask race returns to City of London for fifth year”, together with her film below, captures the day rather better than anyone could from inside it.

Seen from behind, seated on a red folding chair stencilled City of London, Liam Randall is interviewed by SW Londoner reporter Katie Bevan, who holds up a phone rig to record him in a corner of Guildhall Yard. — The morning’s gentlest interrogation: a word with Katie Bevan of the SW Londoner. Photograph: Laura Miller

Katie Bevan’s film of the day. Video: Katie Bevan on YouTube

And a final word of thanks, twice earned: every photograph in this entry is the work of Laura Miller — photographer, Under Warden of the Coopers’ Company, and President of the very Coopers’ Society whose bicentennial whisky blessed the cask. Few events are recorded this well, and fewer still by their own Under Warden.

The racing casks, I should confirm, were empty — anything else would be a waste. For the full ones, consult the pub map.

Liam Randall

Ale-Conner, City of London · Citizen and Cooper

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