May Day at Sulgrave Manor

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May 1st. of 2000 fell on a bank holiday and was the occasion of a grand celebration at Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire. Children staff and parents, together with Verna Wass acting as a consultant both shared something of their modern celebrations and recreated aspects of the festivities as they would have been observed in the seventeenth century

Garland making

The children arrived early in the morning with bundles of flowers which were woven into a garland. Around mid day a procession was formed up and the garland escorted in a perambulation round the grounds of the manor

The grand procession

Two maypoles had been set up; a modern one based on an old netball pole and beribboned with carpet tape, the other a reconstruction of a decorated pole from the seventeenth century which was of course ribbon free!

The May pole patterned after seventeenth century examples

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A Maypole from the twentieth century

As well as dancing with ribbons the children also performed a collection of stick dances tentatively modelled on an early form of ceremonial dance called 'bedlam morris'. Finally everyone was invited to participate in a circle dance round the seventeenth century pattern pole to the tune of 'Newcastle'. What a day!

Stick dancing

Click here to see how the children unravelled an historical mystery at Sulgrave Manor

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A Little History

The earliest body of historic evidence from the 16th century suggests a widespread celebration of spring through the medium of May Games. These could take place at any point during the late spring and featured events such as the raising of maypoles, decoration of houses with boughs of greenery and general merry making under the direction of a May king and queen who were sometimes identified with Robin Hood and Maid Marion. During the century an association grew up with morris dancing and hobby horses derived from courtly masques and civic pageants.
Accounts survive of these festivities written by puritan critics opposed to the events which they saw as occasions for rowdy behaviour:

“All the young men and maids run gadding overnight to the woods.. In the morning they return bringing with them branches of trees to deck their assemblies withall... but the chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their Maypole which they bring home with great veneration, as thus. They have twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every oxen having a sweet nosegay of flowers placed on the tip of his horns, and these oxen draw home this maypole (this stinking idol rather) which is covered all over with flowers and herbs, bound round with strings from top to bottom, and sometimes painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women and children following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up, with handkerchiefs and flags hovering at the top, they straw the ground round about it, bind green boughs about it, set up summer halls, bowers and arbours hard by it. And then fall they to dance round about it.....”
Philip Stubbes 1583

Such events enjoyed a brief resurgence following the restoration of Charles II but by the end of the 17th century interest seemed to have waned and what celebrations there were seemed to linger on largely unrecorded in rural communities. However, the late 18th and early 19th centuries saw something of a revival with the custom now firmly tied to May 1st. In towns bands of milk maids and sweeps would tour often accompanied by a character carrying a leaf covered framework called a ‘Jack-in-the-Green’ . In the country Whitsun Ales, originally promoted by churches as money making ventures had largely supplanted the old style May day events but still in many locations bands of children would make garlands to carry round from house to house singing and appropriate song to beg for pennies.

During the twentieth century Maypole dancing became an established feature in primary schools and was only abandoned in Greatworth in 1948 after the pole and ribbons were loaned to Helmdon School and were ruined by being left out in the rain! In 1988 children and staff from Greatworth Primary School revived May Day celebrations in the village. They were fortunate in being able to find local information about morris dancing in the 18th century, May garlands from the 19th century and Maypole dancing from the mid-20th century. Putting all these ingredients together has resulted in the school’s on-going festivities which are normally to be seen round the village on the morning of May 1st.

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