Explosions from almost 200 cannon, and £10,000 of fireworks provided a spectacular finale to the biggest Blenheim Palace Battle Proms.

More than 8,500 people – many waving Union Jacks and tucking into extravagant picnics – packed the south lawns of the UNESCO World Heritage Site for Saturday’s six-hour concert.

The event celebrated the 200th anniversary of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo and 75 years since the start of the Battle of Britain, and featured cavalry displays, 1940s-style vocal group The Rockabellas, and an aerobatic display by a Spitfire.

Musical highlights came with performances of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and Beethoven’s Battle Symphony, performed by the New English Concert Orchestra conducted by Douglas Coombes – and punctuated with scores of cannon firing 40kg of gunpowder. It culminated in a patriotic sing-along to Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance March No 5 and Hubert Parry’s Jerusalem.

Concert director Adam Slough described as the greatest spectacle of the summer – and, with the smell of gunpowder on the air, and the strains of Waterloo’s Victory still echoing, it was hard not to agree.

Those caught up in the traffic jams – queues extended out the palace gate and all the way south to Yarnton – may have been less impressed, as indeed would have been those ticket holders forced to endure a tedious wait on the A44 and finding themselves, as we did, at the back of the enclosure, straining to see the displays and missing out on the full force of those boisterous classics, due to the limited amplification.

Such relatively minor irritations, however, did little to take the shine off what was a hugely enjoyable night of music and pyrotechnics, crowned by the graceful lines of that Spitfire, which looped and swooped to the emotive swell of Elgar’s Nimrod. There can have been barely a dry eye on the field.

Fantastic, stirring, stuff!