Britain's most famous ‘pie village’ has recreated a royal feast ... for the TV cameras.

The folks of Denby Dale – famed for its 220-year-old tradition of making giant pies – made a replica of a 4-ton pie baked in 1887 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.

And the project, led by Denby Dale Yorkshire Pies, will appear on The Great Northern Cookbook, on Channel Five, on January 3 at 8pm.

The show is presented by former Coronation Street actor turned chef and cheese-maker, Sean Wilson.

The jubilee pie required considerable resources to recreate including 1.8 tons of meat and gravy, 300kg of potatoes, 185kg of shortcrust pastry and a 1.5 ton pie dish.

The 1887 original, which included 435kg of beef, 63kg of turkey, 34 pigeons, 36 fowl, three hares, 49 rabbits, 10 grouse and 21 ducks, was inedible because it took so long to prepare.

But the replica, which featured pastry squares portraying Britain in 2012 – including the Olympics and HRH Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee – was cooked in 10 hours.

And, according to Andrew Hayes, managing director of Denby Dale Pies, it tasted delicious.

Mr Hayes said: “It was a bit of a tall order to replicate the 1887 pie, but folks really came out to help us to make the pie a special village occasion. We held a meeting at the Pie Hall to ask locals to help us bake the pastry toppings for the pie.

“We kept a careful eye on cooking temperatures, as the original pie made in 1887 took so long for the villagers to make it went rancid and had to be buried in the woods in Denby Dale.

“Mercifully, with the wonders of a modern kitchen, the 2012 pie took 10 hours to cook and it tasted delicious. The whole village came out to feast on the pie and the whole process of making the pie brought the community together.”

Poison, tragedy and world records: The curious history of the Denby Dale pies - a nostalgia special: Click here for a trip back in time!
The 1887 pie was on August 27, 1887, to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.

The steel and iron dish was made by Huddersfield company W C Holmes and Co and cost £100. Bakers from Halifax were commissioned to bake it and they brought in a London chef who caught a train back to the capital on the eve of the event. Perhaps he had an inkling of the disaster to come.

The pie was drawn from the White Hart to Norman Park, but the event was a fiasco.

There was no announcement of the timings or the running order and the large crowd swarmed forward with people grabbing what they could from the giant pie.

But the pie stunk due to problems in the cooking process,

According to The Huddersfield Examiner the cooking pan was too small so had to be continually refilled and when it was emptied into the pie pan the meat already in there had gone cold.

It stood in the sun all day, turned putrid and so it was filled up with anything they could get their hands on including 40 stones of potatoes and many had not been scraped.

The Examiner reporter concluded: “I am astonished how the promoters dare offer the pie for human food.”

It was a disaster and the remnants of the pie were buried in a field near Toby Wood.

Village pride had taken a severe knock and so a week later, on September 3, 1887, another pie was cooked, this time by the village ladies for 2,000 guests which was far more successful. This was known as The Resurrection Pie.