Traditional British Customs

Haxey Hood 
Held at Haxey, Humberside (formerly Lincolnshire), on Twelfth Night (6 January, unless this falls on a Sunday, when it takes place the previous day), the participants in the ancient event are a Fool with a painted face and multicoloured rag costume, a Lord and a Chief Boggin in red coats and top hats decorated with flowers and 10 further Boggins in red jumpers, accompanying numerous players who compete for 12 sackcloth hoods, but primarily for a leather hood, the goals being two public houses.

Haxey Hood

London Undergorund

London Underground (or London Tube) is certainly one of the British capital's landmarks. The first underground electric railway, the City and South London, which ran from near the Bank of England under the Thames to the South Bank, opened in 1890.It was the first line to be called 'the Tube'. Tube carriages originally had buttoned upholstery and no windows and were nicknamed 'padded cells'.

When the first escalator was installed on the London Underground, to reassure people that it was safe, a man with a wooden leg called 'Bumper' Harris was hired to travel up and down it continuously for a week.

The Roaches and Peak District, Staffordshire

Like a gigantic mouthful of teeth chewing away at the Peak District, the tangled rock escarpment of The Roaches forms one of the most dramatic higher landscapes in Britain.

The Roaches, along with Hen Cloud and Ramshaw Rocks, form a gritstone escarpment that marks the southwestern edge of the Peak District. Best viewed from the approach along the Leek road, they stand as a line of silent sentinels guarding the entrance to the Peak District, worn and scuplted into fantastic shapes by the elements.

Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday

21st April 1926 was the day when Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, the Queen Elizabeth II, was born. Actually, at the time of her birth, nobody would think she will become the Queen of the country. There was a great deal of public interest when news came through that the Duke and Duchess of York had become a proud parents of  a baby daughter. 

Her uncle, Edward, became the King after the death of George V, but he abdicated very soon. On 10th December 1936, Princess Elizabeth of York was with her sister, Margaret, in their London home, 145 Piccadilly, when she became aware of people shouting for her father outside. Her father was away and her mother was ill in bed. Finally, she went to ask a footman the reason for the commotion. He replied that her beloved uncle, Edward VIII, had abdicated and her father was king.

Morris Dancing

The morris dances of the Cotswold, Borders and North-West are all ritual not social dances and, as such, were traditionally performed only by men. Their origins are obscure and their association with fertility debatable, but some features do suggest a relationship with the courtly dances of medieval Europe. Sword dances, and even mumming plays, are also often considered as being part of 'the morris'.

Villages once had their own morris 'sides' and style of dancing, whose secrets were passed down from father to son. The loss of so many men in World War I broke this continuity but, fortunately, most dances were rescued by dedicated collectors before they faded into oblivion. Since then, there has been a great revival of interest in the morris and, today, there are male, female and mixed morris sides throughout the country, performing dances from all these areas and not just on high days and holidays.

The beautiful coast of Hartland Quay, Devon, England

Hartland Quay was once a thriving harbour, mainly because of the area's remote location and the difficulty of transporting goods by road. In the mid 18th century, once the railway had reached Bideford and improvements were made to the road network, the harbour fell into decline, and it became uneconomic to repair from the repeated storm damage.

Hartland Quay, photo by James Appleton

A New Year's Day customs and first-footing

New Year is a minefield of superstitions. There is plenty of good luck to be garnered, but one foot wrong - first or otherwise - and ill-fortune, the evil eye, death, plagues of carnivorous geese and worse await. From Manchester comes a warning about being over-zealous in enforcing these traditions. A man once walked into a pub in the city and asked for whisky on credit. Giving money in the form of cash or credit on New Year's Day is considered very bad luck, but as the date was Monday January 2nd, the man felt that he was entitled to his whisky. The barman refused, pointing out that as New Year's Day had fallen on the Sunday, the Monday was the carried-over holiday and so counted as January 1st, taboos and all. One thing led to another, and during the ensuing brawl the barman was stabbed to death. The discreditable drinker was sent to the gallows.