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Rochester Sweeps Festival
This occurs in the first weekend in May, it is a May Day Celebration and is a throwback to pagan traditions, but it coincides with the tradition of Chimney Sweeps welcoming the summer so that they could clean the dirty chimneys Dancers and Musicians converge on the street to provide a wonderfully colourful spectacle. (Such things are laid on in London, but are geared towards the tourist). Rochester is a completely different thing as the spirit of the May Day festival is certainly alive and dancing with no other motive other than to celebrate and enjoy this ancient tradition.
Review 2007, time has moved on; I have been reviewing this entire web site; this page has been getting an awful lot of hits. I did not realise that it would attract so many. The quality of the photos leaves much to be desired; they were taking with a film camera and scanned in at a horrendously low resolution because download times at the time of publishing web page (early 2000's) was really very slow. I have yet to rescan the photos - but I have I have increased the size and enhanced them in the meantime. I have been doing some google searching I have discovered that some web masters have kindly put a link to this page, so I hope they will not mind if I reciprocate as they provide some very useful information on this wonderful English folk tradition.
Fowlers Troop and the Deptford Jack in the Green
Here are the links
For more information on this wonderful and unique festival, go to the links page (this needs reviewing)
Procession
- Jack o' the
Green
