This site is here to make sure that you enjoy the Show and have a great day out. As the day approaches the site will fill with timetables, maps, pictures and suggestions. Until then we have lots of information about where it comes from, the obstacles it has overcome and the places it crops up in history and art.
The 2009 Lord Mayor’s Show will be
on Saturday 14 November at 11am.
The Lord Mayor’s procession winds through nearly 800 years of London’s history, marching unscathed through everything from the black death to the blitz. In the 17th century it was inconvenienced by the building site that would later become St Paul’s Cathedral. In the twentieth it was the first event ever to be broadcast live on television. In the 21st, it’s a day out for half a million people, with millions more watching on the BBC.
Grandstand seats now available!
The loyalty of the Lord Mayor is probably less questionable now than it was in 1215, but the newly elected Mayor must still make his way to the Royal Courts of Justice to pledge allegiance to the Crown, just as Dick Whittington did in 1397 (and again in 1406 and 1419). As you watch the Lord Mayor’s coach go by, remember that someone stood in exactly that spot 450 years ago and marvelled at the sight of a camel on its way to meet Elizabeth I.
The modern procession is over three miles long – 1.3 miles longer than the route it follows – and starts at 11am after an RAF flypast. It travels from Mansion House to the Royal Courts of Justice, where the Lord Mayor takes an oath of allegiance to the sovereign before the Lord Chief Justice and the judges of the Queen’s Bench Division. The procession sets off on the return journey from Victoria Embankment to Mansion House at 1pm and returns to Mansion House at about 2.30, then the day finishes with one of London’s grandest firework displays at 5 o’clock from a barge moored in the Thames between Blackfriars and Waterloo bridges.