Object of the Month: May 2025
Photograph of the May Day Festivities in 1945
Happy May Day! Our Object of the Month is this photograph of the May Queen and her court for 1945, celebrating the end of the Second World War that year.
This photo shows the Ambleside May Queen of that year, Patricia Davidson, surrounded by 21 other women in their May Day finery, holding letters spelling out Justice, Freedom and Victory. The group is flanked on either side by Doris Nevinson of the Women’s Royal Army Corps (WRAC) and Mary How of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), both in uniform. The May Day celebrations likely occurred just before VE Day on Tuesday 8th May 1945, which marked the end of the war.
May Day is a traditional European folk festival that marks the beginning of summer. The earliest versions of these celebrations go back almost one thousand years. Ancient Romans celebrated the Floralia from 28th April to 3rd May in honour of Flora, the goddess of flowers, fertility and spring. Gaelic cultures traditionally mark the opening of summer pastures for grazing livestock with the festival of Beltane.
From the early medieval period, towns and villages celebrated the first of May as a day of feasting and dancing, which eventually evolved into the May Day celebrations we know today. One of the most famous practices is the Maypole dance, when dancers weaving the long ribbons of a maypole into intricate patterns.
The May Queen became a popular tradition where a young woman was chosen from the local community to lead the May Day procession, as a symbol of purity and the promise of spring. She was usually dressed in white and crowned with flowers, accompanied by her ‘court’ of other girls. This tradition was most popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In the UK, the May Day Bank Holiday was instituted by then Labour Employment Secretary Michael Foot in 1978. Bank holidays are national public holidays in the United Kingdom. The term refers to how banking institutions typically close for business on such holidays, as they once did on certain saint’s days. It is one of seven bank holiday across the year, and it is typically four days off from work.
This year it will be 80 years since VE Day and the end of the Second World War. Learn more about how Ambleside marked special occasions and historical moments here at The Armitt.