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Sunday 10 October 2010

Fish Harvest Festival

It's harvest festival time cross the country and today one of them was the annual festival of the fish harvest, celebrated at St-Mary-at-Hill church in the city.

The porters are wearing heavy metal hats. They are are flat on top and have a large rim to catch water. Why?? Well ... in days gone by when Billingsgate market was in the city the porters wearing these metal hats would place enormous baskets of fish in ice on their heads and race them up the hill to Leadenhall market. They had absolute right of way up the cobblestone path between the markets.

So heavy was the load that this 5ft 6in chap at the top was once 6ft 3in. He told me so himself.

12 comments:

Luis Gomez said...

Love it! Great pictures.

Tussy said...

Beautiful color!

My Bangkok Through My Eyes

Leif Hagen said...

Nice photo of Gordon and Frank with their special hats!

Birdman said...

Lady Gaga's dad? hahaha

jabblog said...

That must have been such hard heavy work.

Sharon said...

You always tell us the best bits of history. If I had seen these hats, I would have wondered why they wore them.

WhatKathyDid said...

Fascinating

RedPat said...

Very functional but strange looking. Nice shot.

Unknown said...

Didn't the Pet Shop Boys wear similar hats for a video they did some time ago!

Jilly said...

Love this snippet of life as it was and as it is now. Great!

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Babzy.B said...

Very interesting post , never seen that before !

Oakland Daily Photo said...

Amusing and informative. Can't beat that.

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