History

Railway is in Mike’s blood

Memories of Blandford, the Somerset and Dorset Railway and the Railway Hotel will be shared by Mike Beale at the Last Friday talk hosted by Blandford Town Museum at the Parish Centre in the Tabernacle.

Mike is a chartered civil engineer who worked for 20 years with British Rail and a further 13 as an international railway consultant. He has an interest in all aspects of industrial and transport heritage, particularly railways.

Until 2016, Mike was a trustee of the Somerset and Dorset (S&D) Railway Trust, an organisation of which he has been a member since 1974, and was chairman from 1985-91.

Although he now lives in Wiltshire, his family’s links to Blandford and the S&D span four generations.

His grandfather Thomas Victor Beale spent all his working life on the line, following in the footsteps of his own father who joined the S&D in 1880. Thomas Victor moved from Highbridge to Blandford in 1907, and in 1916 married Edith Pratt, whose parents Frederick and Elizabeth were the licensees of the Railway Hotel.

Mike’s father was born in Blandford but moved to Bath to join the S&D as a locomotive cleaner and fireman before realising his childhood ambition of becoming an engine driver. Mike, who was born in Bath, remembers with affection his visits to his grandparents in Blandford.

His talk will explore his family’s links with both the town of Blandford and the railway which served its transport needs for over 100 years and had a profound impact on its social history.

The talk is on Friday, April 29, starting at 6.30pm and admission is £5 for museum members, £8 for nonmembers. Drinks and home-made food will be available from 6.30pm, and the talk will start at 7.30pm.

Blandford Station staff in February 1923. Mike Beale’s great-grandfather and grandfather are on the left in the front row

Celebrating May Day

by Katrina ffiske

For many of us, May Day conjures up images of children dancing round a maypole holding ribbons, and the crowning of a May Queen. It is a day steeped in tradition that we can take for granted – but where do these traditions come from?

The earliest known May celebrations appeared with the Floralia, festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, held during the Roman Republic era. Many pagan rituals were linked with May Day, such as the Gaelic festival, Beltane. Bonfires were lit to banish the long dark nights on the eve of 1 May. In the morning, the celebrations began with people giving thanks for the new growth in the countryside, the burgeoning wild flowers and blossoming trees. They also blessed the earth, freshly sown with seeds, in order to encourage healthy crops and fertility for livestock in the coming summer months.

The main part of the celebration was to dance around a tree placed on the village green. The tree (traditionally a maple, hawthorn or birch) was transformed into the maypole as we know it today. Ribbons hung from the top of the pole and criss-crossed as single men and women twisted and turned until each met their ideal partner. Women would wear garlands made from hawthorn and lily of the valley. Love was definitely in the air and the story goes there was much frolicking in the hay, so much so that in the 17th century the Puritans banned the ceremony!

A May Day parade is traditionally led by a young girl, the May Queen, wearing a white dress to symbolise purity with a garland of flowers on her head. Her duty is to begin the day’s celebrations and it is believed that the figure of the May Queen is linked to ancient tree worship. May Day was also a time of giving and acts of kindness: neighbours would wake up to find May baskets full of sweets and flowers that had been left anonymously on doorsteps or hanging on their door handles. Many of us associate the words May Day with the distress call used by pilots when radioing back to base: “Mayday! Mayday!” However, this has no relation to the pagan holiday. The word originated in 1923 when a radio officer had to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood. Since much of the traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the expression “mayday” from the French m’aidez (“help me”), a shortened form of venez m’aidez (“come and help me”).

May Day is also a time for superstitions: when you wake up on 1 May, wash your face with the morning dew and you will be guaranteed beautiful skin; or if you want to catch sight of a fairy, May Day is the last day that they can travel to Earth.