Keeping the Barwick-in-Elmet Maypole Tradition Alive: The Tallest Maypole in the UK

National World - LocalTV

With fundraising underway for the Barwick-in-Elmet Maypole Festival 2025, we discover how the village has kept the old-fashioned tradition alive.

Transcript

00:00 I'm Mark Vipond, I'm the Secretary of the Maypole Trust.

00:03 This is the Maypole, Barrick and Elmet,

00:05 the tallest Maypole in Great Britain.

00:07 There's been a Maypole tradition in Barrick for centuries.

00:11 It's hard to say exactly when it started.

00:13 I mean, in itself, it's a pagan symbol.

00:17 So the whole idea of a Maypole festival,

00:20 or a May Festival, was actually based in praising fields

00:24 and worshipping trees and hoping that crops would grow.

00:28 Later on, into perhaps more Christian times,

00:31 it was a very good idea, back in the days

00:33 when infant mortality was particularly high,

00:36 to make sure that babies were born in spring.

00:40 And if you had a big get-together in the village

00:42 for local girls and boys in May, and they got together,

00:47 you would usually find that you had a little baby boom

00:49 in spring, and you didn't have babies in winter

00:51 when they might not survive.

00:52 For quite a few years, a couple of centuries,

00:55 there's records showing that it's been lowered

00:57 and raised every three years.

00:59 There were interruptions for the World War.

01:01 There was an interruption for COVID, which we experienced.

01:04 Up until 1999, it was lowered and raised

01:09 using nothing but ropes and ladders,

01:12 which was a fantastic spectacle

01:14 and involved all of the village.

01:16 It took a good two, three hours

01:17 to get it up on a Maypole day.

01:19 Sadly, at the turn of the millennium,

01:22 the insurers got wind of the fact

01:24 that we were putting a one-ton, 90-foot Maypole up

01:28 with ropes, ladders, and quite a few beers.

01:31 The committee at the time wanted to put a permanent pole up

01:35 and stop the raising.

01:37 A group of villagers, myself included, got involved,

01:42 and we managed to put a plan together,

01:44 which involved a crane at the end of the day.

01:47 We always felt that if it stayed in the ground

01:49 and wasn't lowered or raised, it'd be forgotten.

01:51 One of the downsides to doing it with a crane

01:53 is that you've got to hire a crane.

01:54 And the lowering and the raising,

01:58 there's not an awful lot of change

01:59 from five, 6,000 pounds nowadays for that,

02:02 which is a huge amount to raise as a small charity.

02:05 I mean, there's seven of us on the committee.

02:06 We need a cherry picker to go up

02:08 and put the hoist on for the crane.

02:10 We have to insure it.

02:13 Insurance just this year, just to have it stuck in the ground

02:15 and doing nothing, is 2,000 pounds.

02:18 And that's every year.

02:19 We've got event insurance on top of that.

02:21 For 2025, we've budgeted about 15,000 pounds.

02:24 We're doing all we can to raise it via the village.

02:27 It is about the community.

02:30 It is for the villagers.

02:32 We'll do whatever we can.

02:34 We'll put all the stops out.

02:35 We'll put all the hard work in.

02:36 We put in every Maypole Festival,

02:38 but we are going to have to expect people

02:40 to pay a bit for it.

02:41 It's a central focus to the village.

02:43 I mean, you can go almost anywhere.

02:44 I've been in London sometimes and bumped into people

02:48 and mentioned Barrick, and they say,

02:50 "You're the place for the Maypole, aren't you?"

02:53 That's what it's all about.

02:54 You know, we've got the tallest Maypole in the country.

02:56 We still do everything we can to stick to as much

02:59 of the tradition that has been going on for centuries.

03:01 And it's important to keep up to these things.

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