Ickwell May Day
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52°5′46.8186″N 0°19′23.1132″W / 52.096338500°N 0.323087000°W
| Ickwell May Day | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Children dancing at the May Pole in 2002 | |
| Frequency | Annual |
| Location(s) | Ickwell, Bedfordshire, England |
| Activity | |
| Website | www |
Ickwell May Day is an annual celebration held in the village of Ickwell, Bedfordshire. The event is a celebration of May Day, a festival marking the beginning of summer, and has been celebrated from at least 1651. The festival includes elements of traditional English culture, such as morris and maypole dancing. Ickwell is unusual in having a permanent maypole, located on the village green, as well as including adult dancers in its maypole dancing.
May Day is an ancient European festival celebrating the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May. In England, the festival usually includes the crowning of a May Queen, and Morris dancing. Dancing around a maypole, a long trunk implanted in the ground, is common, with dancers plaiting ribbons attached to the pole to form patterns.[citation needed]
Ickwell is a village in the parish of Northill, in Bedfordshire,[1] which had a population of 636 in the 2011 United Kingdom census.[2] The name "Ickwell", meaning "Gicca's spring", was first recorded around 1170,[3] and the village was the site of the Ickwell manor, which in 1639 comprised 487 acres in Northill parish.[1]
History
Churchwarden records concerning May Day in Ickwell date to 1561, where festivities including food, drink, minstrels, and Morris dancing were recorded.[4] A record from 19 May 1563 lists costs "for all our Maye", which included spices and fruits for meat, brewing hops, wheat, three calves, a minstrel, gunpowder, and Morris coats and bells.[5]
Ickwell is one of few villages in the United Kingdom to have a permanent maypole; in 1872, a larch pole sourced from Warden Warren, a forest in the nearby village of Old Warden, was erected on the village green.[5] The pole was donated by Squire Thomas Hervey, owner of the nearby manor house Ickwell Bury, to celebrate the birth of his son.[6] The pole was cemented in 6 feet of concrete, and had a height and circumference of 67 and 4 feet respectively. Before the instalment of the maypole, a pole had been put in place on the night before the May Day celebrations, and taken down on the night of May Day.[5] The pole was replaced in 1911, again with a larch from Warden Warren,[7] due to poor condition of the pole; May Day was not celebrated in 1910 due to this. The new pole was described as "broader but not quite so tall" in an account in the Bedfordshire Times, with a "brave coat of red and white paint, surmounted by a great Union Jack".[5] In an 1877 will, Hervey directed three shillings and ten pence (equivalent to £24 in 2023) to be paid annually for the upkeep of the festival.[6]
