Old Photographs: Events

Posted on Dec 19, 2011 in Bradford, Old Photographs, Social History |

Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

 

In the photographic record on Bradford in the 20th century are numerous processions and parades. In the days before television and internet, instead of being able to see great events in London, the people would hold their own versions to mark such occasions as royal funerals and coronations. Then there were the locally-grown carnivals and other parades as well.

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Click on the thumbnail pictures for a larger view

Carnivals

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A photograph from before the First World War, showing the Bradford Carnival procession crossing the Town Bridge. The photographer would have been in an upper window of Dainton’s bakery, now the Georgian Lodge.

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The Bradford Carnival passing over the Town Bridge in the summer of 1911. The horse-drawn float is promoting the modern idea of cooking on a gas stove, on behalf of Bradford’s own gas company.

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Another photograph of the carnival procession, taken from the same location, with the pestle-and-mortar sign of the Willson chemist shop and the recently built Lamb Factory on the left. This event was in the 1920s and the nursing theme shows that the point was to raise funds for the Royal United Hospital in Bath.

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Coming down St Margaret’s Street towards the Town Bridge in the 1930s is Bradford’s volunteer town fire brigade. Behind them is a large banner of the sort that the chapels and their Sunday schools carried in processions.

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The June 1949 carnival procession, photographed from Westbury House, then the seat of the Urban District Council. The Carnival Queen, Diana Fricker,  is just going out of shot in her horse-drawn carriage on the right, followed by British Legion flags and the Bradford fire engine, which, like the Wiltshire County Fire Service itself, was only two years old.

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Royal events

Not many locals could have gone up to London to join in with official events there, so Bradford staged its own, with decorations, parades and sit-down dinners.

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The junction of Market Street, Newtown and Mason’s Lane dressed up in celebration of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, either the Golden Jubilee in 1887 or Diamond in 1897.

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Bradford marked the death of King Edward VII in May 1910 with a solemn procession of dignitaries, the forces and groups along Church Street for a special memorial service at the parish church, accompanied by the town’s brass band playing mournful music.

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The following year came the happier occasion of the coronation of King George V on the 23rd June 1911. Everything is decked out with flags as the procession comes over the Town Bridge.

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. Twenty-four years later and the Town Bridge and the riverside are decorated with coloured lanterns as part of the celebrations of the Silver Jubilee of George V in 1935. The streets were decked in bunting and Union Flags and there were parades and teas.

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This night photograph of Silver Street with flags can’t be of a coronation. It was clearly taken in the 1930s, because the C0-op shop is there, so the “ER” on Ward’s newsagent on the left can only refer to Edward VIII, who abdicated before being crowned. His father King George V died on 20th January 1936 and this picture must be in celebration of Edward’s accession.

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A happy crowd in St Margaret’s Street in the 1930s. Rossiter’s electrical shop on the right has a display on its wall featuring the monogram GR, which could be for the Silver Jubilee of King George V, or, after the abdication of Edward VIII, for the Coronation of King George VI in 1937.

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In June 1953, H.W. Phillips’ bakery (now the Georgian Lodge) in Bridge Street was decorated for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

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