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Traditions that bind a town together
WENDY Rayner lives on what is known locally as "Duck Island". It floats in the River Aire directly opposite the centre of Castleford, and her family have lived on the island for more than 200 years.
Her great-great grandma was born just a few doors away; both her daughters now live within a few houses on either side.
"Round here, a lot of us have never moved; it's that kind of community," she says.
But Wendy is famous far beyond her community. She became one of the stars of Kevin McCloud's Big Town Plan on television when she championed the glorious bridge which now unfurls across the River Aire, linking the town centre to Duck Island.
On a blowy late-spring day the bridge resembles a ribbon, cast across the Aire and landing at Wendy's front door. This seems fitting since one of the many other community projects in which Wendy has been involved over the years is the town's maypole dancing team.
Why maypole dancing in Castleford? "Tradition," she says. "Dancing is part of Castleford's tradition. All the schools in Castleford used to do maypole dancing. But then there was always dancing in Castleford – factory dancing, ballroom dancing, tearoom dancing. All the churches used to have a dance hall, and when I was young, the church here was a way of life."
Maypole dancing has its roots in a pagan past. It is believed maypoles were originally phallic symbols of fertility. They were certainly often the focus of thoroughly un-Christian behaviour, such as stealing. The timber was frequently cut without the owner's permission, and it was common for villages to steal one another's maypoles.
The Puritans disapproved of maypoles and the dancing, drunkenness and general misrule that went along with them. Maypole dancing was banned in, among other places, Doncaster in the 1630s and outlawed altogether in 1644 as a "heathenish vanity". It was joyously revived at the Restoration and metamorphosed in the nineteenth-century when dancing with ribbons was introduced.
This 19th-century reinvention of maypole dancing is forever linked with picturesque fantasies of "Merrie England". It's hard, therefore, to imagine it as a tradition in Castleford – a post-industrial town once famous for its chemical works, glass works and its pit. But then it's easy to overlook the fact that Castleford, like many villages and small towns on the coalfields of south-west Yorkshire, was, and still is, bordered by the countryside.
"We'd only a quarter-of-a-mile to go before we were out in open fields," says Wendy. "Mind you, we used to come in looking like we'd been down the pit. I always say, we have green grass now, not mucky grass like then."
But despite improvements in the environment, Wendy notices that children no longer play in the streets and still less in the fields close to her home. She blames the usual fears about traffic and strangers; that, and the culture of television and computer games.
Wendy developed rheumatoid arthritis 10 years ago and the health of the town's children is uppermost in her mind.
"Maypole dancing is great exercise. By the time you've been round that maypole a few times you know what exercise is."
She can't teach the children the steps herself, so her daughters, Sheila and Penny, help her. The team now numbers 30 children and young people aged from two to 20 years old. They dance in public on average ten times a year throughout May, June and July at Castleford's many galas and as far afield as Shepley and Salford's Lowry Centre. Maypole dancing keeps the town's children fit and gets them out.
As Wendy herself knows, "You need something to focus on besides your own problems." And Castleford and its children still face plenty of those: according to the Child Poverty Index, more than 45 per cent of children up to 16 in the town are living in families who claim means-tested benefits.
In circumstances such as these, it's easy to see why Wendy and other community activists feel that their work with local children is so urgent. "We can't wait for the council to get around to doing things. It can take years for a project like the bridge to happen and in the meantime you've lost the kids who got interested in it at the start. Children need things to happen now, not in three years' time."
Unlike regeneration projects, maypole dancing is cheap, fun and immediately possible. But, in common with the ribbon-bridge that now reaches to Wendy's door, it is also an assertion of connectedness. Castleford's other great tradition is its sense of community.
"You know, everybody needs somebody somewhere along the line," says Wendy, and the people of Castleford know that better than most.
Castleford's maypole team will be dancing today at the Holy Cross Church, Castleford (May 16), at Shepley Bridge Marina, Mirfield, on June 28, at the celebration of the first anniversary of the Castleford footbridge (July 3) and at Castleford's 1940s' day (July 4).
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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