History in the making at Stretton Walking Day

HISTORY was in the making at Stretton Walking Day, as for the first time the new Rose Queen was joined by a Rose King!

As local school girl Grace Edwards was crowned the new Rose Queen, local school boy Kai Jamson became the first ever Rose King in the parish of St Matthew’s Church, Stretton.

Rev Alan Jewell explained: “When children ask questions, I believe that it is right to give them the best answer you can. So, when a child recently asked why, if we had a Rose Queen, we didn’t also have a Rose King, I decided I would give the matter some thought. It’s a good question!

“When I was newly-arrived in this parish, never having had much to do with Rose Queens in the past, I did a bit of research. Some people imagine that it’s an ancient pagan tradition, with its origins lost somewhere in the mists of time… Steve Roud, however, in his book “The English Year[1]”, tells the story
of a vicar in Bury who, in 1989, announced that he was banning his church’s Rose Queen ceremony, because, he said, it was rooted in pagan rites and not appropriate to a Christian community.

Roud pointed out that that the hapless vicar: “had fallen rather publicly into the trap of believing that all traditional customs must be extremely old and are therefore linked to pagan activities.
“The Rose Queen was in fact a late Victorian invention encouraged, and perhaps even created, by clergy and respectable churchgoers as a piece of safe and controlled pageantry.”

Rev Jewell added: “There is, however, a possible precedent to the Victorian notion of a Rose or May Queen. It is to be found in the medieval tradition of ‘Church Ales’. The Church Ale, often held around Whitsun (the feast of Pentecost), and therefore sometimes called the ‘Whitsun Ale’, was a fundraising event for the upkeep of the parish church, which involved food, drink, dancing and games. Not that different from our current Walking Day, in fact. King James I listed Whitsun Ales as suitable entertainment for Sundays, but, with a change in the religious climate, they were banned by parliament in 1644.

“Now, this is where it gets interesting! The ‘ale’ festivities were ruled over, not by a May Queen, but by a ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’. So, if our Rose Queen has a precedent in the Lady who presided over the parish ‘ale’, she should be accompanied by a Lord!

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: it’s not just political correctness to have a Rose King, alongside the Rose Queen. It has historical precedent!

Following the crowning ceremony service at St Matthew’s Church villagers went on their annual Walk of Witness, followed by fund-raising and carnival activities at the neighbouring St Matthew’s Primary School.