Our old friend Vincent Finn, latterly of Bradford and now of Massachussetts, paid us a flying visit with some fascinating old photographs.

Vincent has made it his mission to record for posterity life among the community around St Mary’s Church, East Parade, and his latest batch of pictures looks at the phenomenon of the May walks. We’ll let Vincent tell it from here: In July 2006 the last Sunday mass was conducted at St Mary’s Church in East Parade. The church officially closed in October 2006.

As a parish, St Mary’s had played a vital role in the life of the Wapping-Otley Road-Undercliffe Street-Barkerend Road area.

St Mary’s was long recognised as the mother church of Bradford, having been founded in 1825, and the East Parade church opened on May 3,1876.

As the Catholic population of Bradford grew, several new parishes were formed. Many of these followed the same model as St Mary’s. They became the religious and social centre of their neighbourhoods. A description of the role of St Mary’s parish can easily be applied to other city parishes.

As recently as the early 1960s, St Mary’s supported two schools: the girls’ school in Jermyn Street and the boys’ school in East Parade. The boys’ school closed with the opening of St George’s, and the girls’ school closed in July 2006.

Parish organisations involved large numbers of parishioners. These included football teams, rugby teams, brass bands, pipe bands, debating societies, snooker and billiard teams, boy scout troops, a youth club, a men’s club, and a mothers’ union, while for younger women there was the Agnesians and the Children of Mary.

St Mary’s had a parish hall, it was called The Scala. It served as a cinema in its early years and later was used as a parish centre which hosted lots of parish functions including dances and productions by the parish dramatic society.

During the course of the year, several of the parish organisations worked to help celebrate various religious holidays. Probably the most prominent and visible of these were the ceremonies and processions that were held in May and June.

Worldwide in the Catholic Church, the month of May is dedicated to honour Mary, the mother of Christ, for whom our parish was named. At the beginning of the month of May, usually on the first Sunday, a procession was held in the church.

At the centre of the procession was the May Queen and her attendants. They were selected from the girls’ and boys’ schools. They were selected by the elementary teachers with some input from the parish priest(s), and to some degree parents were also involved in the selections.

A new May Queen and attendants were chosen each year. The whole group usually numbered about 15 to 20, six or eight were boys.

The girls all wore white satin dresses and the boys white satin suits. The May Queen had a dress with a long train attached to it which was carried by two boys, train bearers, and a third boy was selected to carry a cushion on which was placed a crown of flowers. That was placed on the statue of the Virgin Mary at the culmination of the May procession.

The church was always filled to capacity for the procession.

I would love to hear from anybody with pictures that they would like to share. I would copy and return them. I can be reached at 17 Richwood Street, West Roxbury, Massachusetts 02132 USA; e-mail finn.vincent@gmail.com. If you want to phone 001 (US code) 617-469-0965, I will return the call, which will make it a free call.

If you have pictures to share, could you put your name and address on the back, dates and the names of any of the people that you can remember who are in the pictures.