The British Homing World Show of the Year 2015 – the largest gathering of pigeon fanciers in Great Britain – took place over the weekend 17th/18th January at The Winter Gardens, Blackpool.

15,000 visitors came to see the more than 2000 racing pigeons and 1000 fancy pigeons on display, and more than 100 trade stands exhibiting everything ‘pigeon’.

Unfortunately the Tower Ballroom was very cold for the Gala Evening on Saturday night and we wrote a letter of complaint to the company to ask for recompense – see the General Manager’s letter here. The company has agreed to refund costs, and we in turn are refunding all those that paid for Gala tickets.

Still, the Show raised many thousands of pounds and the five main beneficiaries of the proceeds are the British Pigeon Fanciers Lung Medical Research Team, Age UK, SHINE, British Heart Foundation and St John Ambulance, while donations will also be made to the following charities: Birmingham County Air Ambulance, Brain Injury Service (Worcs), Bursary for Veterinary Students (SW Region), Countryside Learning (W Yorks), Family Haven (Gloucester), Henshaws Blind Society, Long Itchington Primary School, MNFC Secret Messages, Newhaven Lifeboat, Nightingale Hospice (Wrexham), Powys Carers Trust, Rehab, Ronald McDonald Charity, and Serve (Rushden). The full allocation of proceeds from the 2014 can be seen here.

You can download the class and trophy winners’ lists here and here. The winner of the Parkhall Loft raffle was Mr Andrew Bishop of East Lothian, Scotland (seen left, taking delivery of his loft), while the Benzing ETS raffle was won by Mr Ken Armstrong of Omagh, Northern Ireland. Our congratulations to them. The full list of raffle winners is here.

There are local media articles on Supreme Champion R & J Thresher and Best in Show winner Colin Carter.

Perhaps also take a look at the BHW Show of the Year facebook page where there are links to several external articles, and the gallery of excellent images by Nigel Roddis and portraits by Richard Jinman below. There are also galleries of images online by AP Images’ David Azia and on The Guardian’s website.