Empire Day Around Stroud

AS a follow up to Empire Day a century ago in Stroud itself, today’s pictures prove that celebrations didn’t only take place in large towns.

Standing second from the right in the picture top right, Miss Maria Kirkland, head of Painswick Girls’ School, dressed up her pupils with garlands and circlets of flowers and issued them with banners depicting the coats-of-arms or emblems of various countries and regions in the Empire.

At The Priory in Horsley the audience is seated on a bank in front of the building, while a band has assembled on the lawn below and schoolchildren prepare to dance, sing or recite (picture bottom left).

At Chalford Hill a similar scene is enacted in the picture bottom right.

Here the audience is seated in the playground, with chairs for important visitors placed forward from the rest, while the pupils on the left prepare to perform to them.

Empire Day and May Day, which occurred in the same month, were for many rural communities two of the main festivals in the year.