From Everest to Stonehenge – the history of the Revival Drivers' Club

"Every year we must create a new theme for the Rolex Drivers’ Club alongside the Assembly Area and, over the years, the team has had a lot of fun transforming the garden area into a little world of its own. It is an enormous undertaking, involving a big team of people, but it has become one of the most fun pieces of theatre at the Revival.

"The first one that I managed was the Dinosaur Dig in 2015, with three skeletons, two dinosaurs and a woolly mammoth. We had these life-size skeletons made in China and we were worried that they might not be shipped in time for us to get the build completed, but they eventually arrived just in time.

"Then it was Wembley Stadium in 2016, celebrating England's famous victory in the 1966 World Cup. Getting the turf for the pitch absolutely perfect was a big challenge because we'd started with what was essentially a building site for the new Aero Club building. This meant the team had to create Wembley from scratch in a fairly short time.

"Last year we brought a rowing club to the garden which involved building a section of the River Thames and a boathouse. The biggest challenges for this were keeping the willow trees alive six months ahead of the event and getting the colour of the Thames water just right. When you put clear water into a black liner it doesn't look like the Thames in any way, so that was a test for the creative team.

"When I first joined Goodwood I helped out with the Lawrence of Arabia desert scene with live camels, the creation of Stonehenge and the Himalayan scene with the first ascent of Mount Everest. We had to create fake snow to cover the mountain, bringing in extra 'snow' at the very last minute to achieve the perfect scene. Stonehenge was fun because Barack Obama had visited the monument a few weeks previously and we hastily created a pop-up of the President standing by the stones...

"Each year we have monthly theatrical meetings, starting just a couple of weeks after the Revival, when we look at links to anniversaries with the Duke of Richmond, the event content team, my operations team and GAG, the Goodwood Actors’ Guild. We look at five or six ideas and then, over a couple of months, we refine it into a short list from which the Duke will choose the theme for the year. For 2018, the Revival's 20th anniversary, we are creating something that needs live animals… The animals are 'professional actors' so they have working hours, and can only be out there for defined shifts.

"The Rolex Drivers’ Club is an important part of the event and demands a lot of time, effort and attention to detail. We know that people identify the years they came to the Revival by what was created outside the Club. Spectators, and the drivers, are blown away by what the team achieves. Nobody can guess what we are going to create, so there's also the element of surprise, and we will start planning for 2019 immediately after this year's event."

Photography of Wembley and the Thames by Stephen Stringer and Stephanie O'Callaghan.