THE DEVON HORSE SHOW

The Devon Horse Show is twelve days in late May on the Main Line outside Philadelphia, and the oldest and largest outdoor horse show of many breeds in the country. Hunters, jumpers, ponies, carriage horses and side-saddle riders are all shown on the ground where it began in 1896.

A country fair runs beside it, and the fair has raised money for the local hospital since 1919.

The Devon Inn

On a May evening in 1896, gentlemen of the neighbourhood met by invitation at the Devon Inn and formed an association to encourage the local farmers to breed harness horses.

The first show was held that July, on the polo ground near the inn: one day, some thirty classes. From 1898 to 1900 it was held on the inn’s own lawn, and then it lapsed.

It was revived in 1910 on the old polo ground, and has been there ever since. The boxes were there from the first, and a Devon box became a thing to be seen in.

In 1919 the show added a country fair and made the Bryn Mawr Hospital its beneficiary. The fair raised twenty-six thousand dollars in its first year, and by the show’s own count more than fifteen million since.

Since the revival it has stopped only for the war, from 1943 to 1945, and for the pandemic in 2020.

Devon Blue

The main ring is the Dixon Oval. It was the Wanamaker Oval until 1990, when it was renamed for F. Eugene Dixon, who had backed its rebuilding in 1971. Over its gate are the words Where Champions Meet.

The show has a colour of its own. The boxes carry their holders’ names on wooden plaques in Devon blue, and a champion’s cooler is white with blue trim.

The days hold classes of every kind: hunters judged on how they go, jumpers against the clock, ponies shown by children, carriages driven out through the streets of Devon, and ladies riding side-saddle. The Grand Prix is on the second Thursday night, under the lights.

The fair sells fudge, tea sandwiches and lemon sticks, a stick of candy pushed into half a lemon, and there is a Ferris wheel.

What to Know

It runs from a Wednesday to the second Sunday after. The first days are the junior weekend, for young riders and ponies, and the senior week follows.

General admission is sold at the gate. Seats in the grandstand are reserved by the performance, or for all of them.

Ladies’ Day brings the side-saddle classes and a hat contest.

A lounge suit, in something light, and a hat on Ladies’ Day.

Stay on the Main Line, or in Philadelphia, some twenty miles east.

The mistake is to come only for the Grand Prix. The days belong to the hunters, the ponies and the carriages, and the Grand Prix is one night of twelve.

The Court

The Devon Horse Show is not the Court’s own. A box on the Dixon Oval, and seats for the Grand Prix, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay on the Main Line or in Philadelphia, and the table afterward. The Hampton Classic follows in August, for a member who wants both.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.