One of the village signs - click for the Home page
About Stilton
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Stilton Village Website

About Stilton: Stilton Cheese Rolling
Cheese Rolling has become an annual event in Stilton and every May Day hundreds of villagers and visitors make their way to the main street to watch the teams battling for the honour of being called the 'Stilton Cheese Rolling Champions'.
Cheese rolling!

CHEESE ROLLING 2008 took place on
May Day Monday May 5th.
This year celebrating the 10th Anniversary
of Stilton's twinning with St Christol les Ales.
Read about St Christol and the Twinning Association.

Programme of Events (pdf, 530k)->>

Pictures coming soon...
(got any - send to contact@stilton.org)
[not too many...and not too big!]

Click for the Cheese Rolling Programme (530k)
Cheese Rolling Team Entry Forms
Junior Entry Form (jpg, 93kb), Parental Consent Form (jpg, 60kb)
Senior Entry Form (jpg, 98kb)
Or download them from April's SCAN (pdf, 1.6Mb)
Stalls: Stall Booking Form (Word, 23kb)
Cheese Rolling Evening Concert
featuring
Leon and friends

On the village Playing Field, 5-9pm, £5 on the gate.

Robbie Coltrane's "B-road Britain" August 23rd 2007: Stilton Cheese Rolling features in Robbie Coltrane's "B-Road Britain", broadcast on ITV1 at 9pm.
From the Radio Times "Choices": "What does a village community do to keep itself alive after an A-road has completely bypassed it? Organise an annual cheese-rolling contest down its high street, of course. The village of Stilton in Cambridgeshire, where this bizarre activity takes place, is Robbie Coltrane's first stop on the second leg of his journey peeking over the hedgerows of Britain's B-roads to see what lurks there."

Stilton cheese rolling

CHEESE ROLLING 2007 took place on
May Day Monday May 7th.
This year celebrating 100 Years of Scouting.
Pictures HERE; Results in June's SCAN (pdf, 1Mb)

Download a full programme of events and attractions (pdf, 673kb)

Cheese Rolling Team Entry Forms
Junior Entry Form (pdf, 265kb), Parental Consent Form (pdf, 96kb)
Senior Entry Form (pdf, 155kb)
Stalls: Information for Stall Holders (Word, 22kb)
Stall Booking Form (Word, 23kb)
Back by popular demand:
Cheese Rolling Concert
featuring
Leon and friends
5-9pm in The Talbot Inn Garden
Entrance at the gate £5
(accompanied children up to KS2 FREE!)

CHEESE ROLLING 2006 took place on
May Day Monday May 1st

This year, celebrating the history that has rolled along our high street, the theme was
"Let's do the Timewalk".
Stilton's position on the Great North Road made it an important stop for the postal system. At first, riders carried letters from stage to stage where horses could be changed and refreshments consumed. However, just 300 years ago on Friday 12 April 1706, the London to York coach service began. The journey took four days, leaving the Black Swan in Holborn at 5am on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Stamford was the half-way point.
So in 2006 we marked this anniversary with a magnificent Mail Coach, traditional dancers, maypole dancing and mummers (who performed "George and the Dragon" to mark the 80th birthday of HM the Queen, and St. George's Day), and we also featured Fred's Flying Circus (www.fredsflyingcircus.co.uk).



Click to open a full-size programme of events (266kb)
Download a Programme of Events and Attractions
(jpg, 266kb)

2006 photographs

CHEESE ROLLING 2005 took place on
May Day Monday May 2nd
.
The theme was "Sixty Years On", commemorating the end of World War II.
Programme of Events

Photographs
Results and Thanks

In the evening, the Stilton Cheese Rolling Music Festival was held
in the Talbot car park, featuring the acclaimed Stilton-based band LEON, supported by It's the pigs and ECHO20.

CHEESE ROLLING 2004 took place on
May Day Bank Holiday 3rd May.
Full 'rolling programme'
Pictures

CHEESE ROLLING 2003 took place on
May Day Bank Holiday 5th May.
Pictures

How did it start?
It would be nice to be able to say that the event is "as old as the village" or that it's origins have been lost in "the mists of time" but really no one knows how far back the tradition of rolling the cheeses goes. Midway through the Twentieth Century, when the village had turned into rather a quiet place having been by-passed by the A1 and the inns and businesses had seen a big drop in their trade, a landlord of one of the pubs decided to revive an ancient tradition. Or so he told everyone! He could be seen rolling a Stilton Cheese along the road outside his pub. People came to stand and watch and eventually joined in. And so the sport began - again.
The Rules
It was originally run on Easter Monday and there was not a lot of uniformity to it to begin with. It seems a piece of wood in the shape of a Stilton Cheese was produced, a starting line drawn up somewhere between the The Stilton Cheese Inn and The Talbot and the finish line was outside The Bell Inn. Brave teams of Stilton men would then vie to roll the cheese to it's finish and, after the ensuing scramble, and many tussles and spills, the team that ended up steering the cheese to the finishing line would win! Nowadays, the starting point is always outside The Bell Inn and The Angel and the finish is a line drawn at the cross roads between the bottom of Fen Street and Church Street. The contestants are teams of 4, either all men or all women and each team member has to roll the cheese at least once during it's flight. It's a knockout competition with quarter's, semi's and a grand final.

Fancy Dress
Some of the teams wear fancy dress for which there is a good prize and it all adds to the colourful scene. We would like to say that the sport has become more genteel over the years but we still get the tumbles and spills as in former days. The friendly rivalry grows during the competition as each team passes through to the next round so we end up with some very competitive finals!
The prizes are always the same, a Whole Stilton Cheese and beer for the men and a Whole Stilton Cheese and wine for the ladies. But, of course, the main prizes are to be the winners of the coveted Bell Cup for men or the WI Cup for the ladies and to go down in history as 'Stilton Cheese Rolling Champions'. For more information about next years Cheese Rolling or to obtain an entry form contact the organisers:

Stilton Community Association
01733 241206