Prettiest May Queen

Short film showing a parade featuring the new May Queen of London, anointed in an annual ceremony at Hayes Common.

The annual May Queen festival was a very popular event in the 1920s. This newsreel footage begins with various local May Queens – one carries a banner for Mitcham – and pages marching past, before we are introduced the May Queen of London. She is shown leaving the church after a ceremony with bells being rung, and then anointed with garlands of flowers as she giggles shyly.