MARGARET Farrar, nee Robinson, has contacted us with more information and happy memories of the Lepton C of E School’s May Queen festivities from 1954.
Although the photograph that appeared in Memory Lane on our Mailbag page is in black and white, the scene must have been a very colourful one as all the girls were wearing different colours to represent flowers.
Margaret, who was seven years old, is on the left of the picture in a white and pale purple dress. She and another girl were dressed as lavender. Other flowers included tulips, buttercups and daisies.
Surprisingly, all the dresses were made of crepe paper but thankfully, on this occasion, it was a beautifully sunny day.
Margaret remembers May blossom on the trees and dancing around the maypole in the field behind the Wakefield Road school which has since been converted into apartments.
Other girls in the photograph included Julienne Coles, Helen Sykes, Rosemary Kilner, Ann Lawton, Beatrice Womack, Valerie Banks and twins Susan and Denise Penrose, who now live in Mirfield and Australia.
Margaret, who lives at Chatsworth Close, Almondbury, remembers another annual tradition at Lepton – the Whit Sunday walk when chapel-going children and adults walked around the village in their Sunday best.
She said: “There was a big house off Green Balk Lane where we used to stop and sit on the lawn. Then it was back to the church for jelly and sandwiches. It was a big occasion, there was everybody from the chapel and a brass band.”
