The festival commences at St John's Church, Warley where the cart is blessed.
The festival was revived in 1977 at the time of the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations and has steadily grown since then.
The modern cart was built in 1984 and on the insurance documents is listed as a "muck cart"! It is thatched with 500 bundles of plaited rushes and rises to 16 feet in the air.
Thousands will turn out to line the streets, with numbers swelled by the many visitors from around the country, to watch sixty men clad in white shirts, black trousers, panama hats and traditional clogs haul a 16 foot high, one ton, thatched and decorated Rushcart on its ten mile route across the spectacular Pennines, accompanied by a team of collectors in Edwardian dress and some of the finest Morris Dancers and musicians in the country.
Rushbearing dates back several centuries to the time when church floors consisted of little more than stone flags or beaten earth and rushes were used to cover the floor, with new layers being added as they became stale. Once a year the church cleared out the rotten rushes and new ones were taken to the churches in carts so this turned into a celebration and holiday involving revelry, music and Morris dancing and much drinking of strong ales.
The modern-day cart takes around 10 days to prepare and is decorated with tightly fastened bundles of fresh cut rushes, a handcrafted apron, tankards and brasses. During the procession a team of ladies takes turns for the precarious ride atop the swaying cart.
The procession stops at churches along the route for the presentation of symbolic garlands of rushes, with dancing and entertainment at each stop. With cart-pulling being a particularly strenuous activity numerous refreshment stops are also made at local hostelries where further entertainment is provided by the teams of Morris dancers from around the country performing in a variety of regional styles whilst the famous Bradshaw Mummers present one of their traditional plays.
Over the two days the rushcart, accompanied by Morris dancers and musicians covers nine miles visiting several villages (and hostelries!) along the way until it arrives at St Bartholomew's Church in Ripponden on the Sunday afternoon.
I have found a slide show set to music covering this Rushbearing Festival in West Yorkshire.
http://www.livevideo.com/video/F
BFE21439898452ABBE476BB91A16054/the-rushbearing-festival.aspx
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on Jan 31, 2008
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