The Miss Shropshire beauty competition has been revived this year . . . but whatever happened to winners of the competition from yesteryear? Toby Neal has been investigating.

Not so long ago beauty competitions seemed to have had their day, the Miss Shropshire competition among them. But there appears to be a modern revival.

You may have noticed in the Shropshire Star over the past few days that there is currently a selection process under way to choose a new Miss Shropshire, who will represent the county in Miss England.

The winner will be the first young lady to hold the Miss Shropshire title for over 10 years, but in fact the regular, annual competition which was run for many years by this newspaper faded away long before then.

For the origins of the competition, we have to go back to 1932, when Mr J. W. Noble, chairman of the Shrewsbury carnival dance committee, came up with the idea of a series of dances leading up to the selection of Miss Shropshire.

The first Miss Shropshire, Mrs J. C. Beckett – “Miss Pontesbury” – was chosen at Shrewsbury Music Hall in September 1932.

That was the template for the competition in the years leading up to the war, with a series of selection dances for local candidates, culminating in the big event and crowning of the winner at the Music Hall.

The war caused quite a break, and it was not until 1952 that the competition was held again, with Miss Rosemary Sharp, of Rodington, becoming the first Miss Shropshire since 1938.

There followed what might be considered the golden age of the competition, lasting over 30 unbroken – or almost unbroken (we can’t find a winner for 1954, so conceivably there was no competition that year, but let us know if you know differently!) – years.

In the 1960s and 1970s pictures of all the contestants graced the pages of the Shropshire Star in the lead-up to the grand final, always at a Shrewsbury venue, and the winners were crowned by celebrities of the day, such as comedian Norman Vaughan (remember him?) and disc jockey Ed “Stewpot” Stewart.

Enthusiasm waned in the 1980s and Shropshire Newspapers stopped running the competition. That did not preclude enterprising folk from doing it off their own bat, and there was a brief revival in the 1990s, with Bianca Mustone from Bridgnorth taking the title in 1995, and Lynsey Perks becoming the 1996 Miss Shropshire.

As the competition does not appear to have been held again until now, she appears technically to be the reigning Miss Shropshire.

* Meet the girls currently in the running for this year’s Miss Shropshire competition