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Giving Thanks for Food

Blessings and thanksgivings for food. Not sure what John Barleycorn is doing here!

Blessing the Salmon Nets at midnight on St Valentine’s Day 1984, on the R Tweed at Norham, Northumberland (The Blessing ceased c1990 after angling interests bought out the commercial salmon fishermen)

Blessing the Sea on the beach at Hastings, East Sussex, 1984

The annual ceremony of Blessing the Sea: Catholic, Anglican and Methodist priests conduct a service on the beach at Hastings, East Sussex, England

Preparing the mulled cider (to the inevitable ‘secret recipe’) before Wassailing the Apple Trees at Carhampton, near Minehead, Somerset, England, 1988

Blessing the Sea at Ostend, Belgium, on Easter Monday 1854, still happens annually to honour victims of the sea and to encourage the fishing fleet who go to sea immediately (Illustrated London News)

Harvest Festival, St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, 1984

Harvest Festival in St Andrew’s Church, Walberswick, Suffolk, 1974

Pearly King, Queen and Dog at the Pearlies’ Harvest Festival, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, 1972

Pearly Queen at the Pearlies’ Harvest Festival at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, England, 1984

Pearly Queen at the Pearlies’ Harvest Festival at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, 1972

Pearly Queens at the Pearlies’ Harvest Festival at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London

Pearlies at the Pearlies’ Harvest Festival at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, 1980s

Pearly King, Queen and Princess at the Pearlies’ Harvest Festival, St Martin-in-the- Fields Church, Trafalgar Square, London, on the first Sunday in October

A fine display for the Fish Harvest Festival, held in New Billingsgate Market (in Docklands) while St Mary-at-Hill church was under repair in 1985, London, England

Fish Harvest Festival in St Mary-at-Hill, Lovat Lane, near the old Billingsgate Fish Market, London, 1987

Fish Harvest Festival in St Mary-at-Hill, Lovat Lane, near the old Billingsgate Fish Market, London, 1984

‘John Barleycorn, a Briton’ by G Spratt