The Fowlers Troop Jack in the Green

Your guide to London's culture and transport news and events taking place across the city.

On May Day, the Blackheath Morris Men parade around parts of South-East London in a revival of an old Jack in the Green tradition.

According to the ubiquitous Wikipedia, The tradition dates back to around the 16th and 17th centuries, when people would make garlands of flowers and leaves for the May Day celebration. After becoming a source of competition between Works Guilds, these garlands became increasingly elaborate, to the extent that it covered the entire man. This became known as Jack in the Green.

The Fowlers Troop Jack in the Green was revived by members of Blackheath Morris Men and friends in the early 1980s. It is a revival of a Jack in the Green from about 1906 which was taken out around Deptford, South East London on May Day by the original Fowlers Troop.

By the turn of the 19th century the custom had started to wane as a result of the Victorian disapproval of bawdy and anarchic behaviour – see my earlier comments on Easter Chair Heaving.

Yesterday being May Day, I wandered over to Southwark to watch a little bit of the parade – which being Morris Men was basically a glorified pub-crawl 😉

More details on their website.

A few more photos over on my Flickr account.

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Tagged with: deptford jack, morris men

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One comment

petoskystone says:

3 May 2009 at 12:56 pm

so–if it’s a glorified pub-crawl, how does jack-in-the-green guzzle? a *really* long straw?

1 Pings/Trackbacks for "The Fowlers Troop Jack in the Green"

IanVisits » A Horn Fair Procession From Rotherhithe to Charlton says:

28 June 2009 at 5:06 pm

[…] other recently resurected traditions that those charming Victorians frowned upon are the Jack in the Green and Easter Chair Heaving. Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS […]