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Sheffield Student Rag Parade


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2 hours ago, THYLACINE said:

I remember the boat race and the Twikker. Were they all connected?

Yes, both part of Rag Week. 

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After Christmas and Bonfire Night ,Rag Day and the Twikker were many a small boy's  annual highlights...and, of course, a birthday

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Remember the boat race well.used to visit my grandma's who lived on Penistone rd opposite the  A.B.C. streets..the race started at hillfoot bridge and for the unlucky few ended there with the "boats" capsizing and people getting dumped in water..for weeks after you could see barrells of all sizes stranded in low water

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On 12/11/2017 at 12:50, Sheffield History said:

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Anyone remember the Sheffield Student Rag Parade?

In a word, yes. 1950-1954.

The basis was the various faculties and their associated societies.Shortly after going up a note would appear on the faculty board by the senior undergrads calling a meeting after lectures. How it was done I never found out but there would already be a list of local works willing to lend a flat or lowsided lorry for the preceding week for us to decorate as the meeting had decided. All had to be done  out of hours;  scrounge or borrow but don't pay. "It's all in a good cause, can we have it for nothing " usually worked. The Engineering Society never seemed to be very imaginative or artistic.  In 1951, Festival of Britain Year, our leader had the idea of  "Farce-tival of Britain",  his words not mine and borrowed half a ton or so of scaffolding poles, assembling  what was supposed to resemble the Royal Festival Hall. It didn't, it just looked ridiculous with members hanging on any way they could. As I remember there was some sort of competition for the best float judged at the start which then led the parade. That always seemed to be done by the Architects. The subjects were wide and varied but those societies with female students always had more interesting ideas and an advantage when it came to persuading the populace  to part with their money.  Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy were all male; we had no chance. As an aside the instruction ,   probably from  the Psychologists, was "Go for the  kids"

Myself and four others spotted an ad. for Motorcycle Marshals and duly volunteered. The duty was to patrol the parade, look for problems, sort them or tell the Chief, who had overall control of the procession order.  It duly formed up and set off  at a stately walking pace down Hounsfield Road, West  Street, Church Street , High Street,  Waingate and into the Wicker. All the way there there was a flood of strangely dressed beings waving tins and buckets. Long scarves to be worn where possible .  We cheerfully rode carefully as slow as we could till something happened to bring things to a stop. I recall a quick move down  Waingate, blocked with floats. To get ahead I had to go down the tramlines on the wrong side of the" Keep Left" signs on the island. It wasn't done in those days and I was worried for days about it. Nobody came knocking.

   At this point the whole thing broke up and individual floats took off for the reasonably near  surroundings to park  up, disembark and collect. For the record, hurling bags of flour from the floats was frowned on. Toilet rolls in extended form were more or less acceptable.  There were few incidents but one year stands out. One float had borrowed a set of Wednesday and United shirts for the participants . Their float had the usual fairly deep sides with a goal post each side. Their weapon was a football on the end of good strong line,  long enough to reach hallway across Church Street. The method was to lob the ball at a likely lad even on the move and invite him to kick it back at the float. Any problem and it could be pulled in and sent off again. Bad idea. I came to see why motion had ceased. Someone had kicked low, the ball went under the lorry and caught on the prop shaft which promptly reeled it in. There followed some rapid bypassing and  some furious  work to disentangle the mess and get it moving again. We thought that was that. Wrong again. Later heading back up Church Street, in front of the Cutlers Hall out goes the ball, one almighty kick and it went up and over the overhead live wire. just enough to wrap itself round  and swing happily. And nobody was going to pull the rope either. That did not endear us to the Transport Department. Effectively it cut off all trams to Crookes and Walkley till the tower wagon arrived to recover  it. ( They  perhaps diverted via  Leopold Street and Fargate but we didn't ask)  I believe an immediate ban was put on further audience participation. In those days there were trams to contend with but at least we could see where they were going and keep left past them. Trams behind us just had to wait as did the few buses on the route. No buses till we reached High Sreet in those days.

  Comes the afternoon and there is the boat race on the Don down to the weir. All sorts of weird and wonderful cobbled up boats with optimistic crews. As expected  they all ended up soaking wet in a good cause. Those boats  that didn't  disintegrate immediately had a final hurdle. The finish was at the bottom of the weir so heave your boat over  and slide down after it. After that there was the last serious attempt  to extract money and a pause for tea.

There was little activity till later In the evening. I have to admit that one of my most pleasant memories was  of wandering round the main building at Western Bank where we engineers never went. Hearing music, looked in and then  spent a pleasant hour listening to the Spanish Society passing the time singing  and playing the guitar. Then about 9 pm a general gathering  in Western Bank, distribution of torches like huge wax candles, light up and off along the same route taking up all the road width,  except that it stopped short of the Wicker. At this point that was the end of Rag Day. A gentle walk up to the Union, kick the bike into life and back home.

  At some point there was the Rag Ball in the Students Union.. Not my thing so I can't say much more than that. The other ģevent in those days  was the Rag Show at the Empire Theatre, for one week only. I suppose the nearest description is that it was a Review. Short items of student humour  poking fun at everything and anything, a few musical items and what we all expected, a chorus line. It was generally accepted that the Radiography School had the best girls in all respects. Their performances were a high light for us. We didn't  know them, they came from somewhere Witham Road way and we never saw them again. They did very well. 

  "Twicker" had been on sale well  before the day; as usual there were those who chuckled and those who were vocal and horrified. This was seen as a good thing; at least they had bought one and read it. I hope at least that hasn't changed. 

  To my mind those were the best days. The Engineering  Society had been a lively one when I started, visiting a variety of works in the area and taking  on the Rag float, but interest fell off and it effectively folded. What didn't  help was the drop out rate. In my case there were twelve Mechanicals who started but in the final year there were only twoģevent left. As a result there were no more floats from St George's Square, at least for the moment.

Looking at the photos in this thread, apart from the surroundings they look much as we did. I get the impression of it being more ambitious than we were able to be. There were still hangovers from the war, petrol was only taken off ration at Easter 1951 in my first year.  There were still shortages as many  manufactured items went for export. The country  needed the money.   We tried, most folk seemed to enjoy it, we  enjoyed ourselves and raised money for charity which was the idea.   .And no doubt there would be another one next year.

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What a fantastic overview - thank you!

What a shame they're not still going. Sheffield could only benefit from one these days

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That is such a brilliantly evocative piece. I used to love rag day. I thought it was a historical tradition that was exclusive to Sheffield. When I subsequently discovered that other university cities had rag days I had difficulty comprehending. I did, however, determine that Sheffield's was  much, much better than any of the others! 

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As others have said, the Rag parade was one of the highlights of my year in the late '50s and early '60s. I went took part in rag weeks in both Norwich and Nottingham at the end of the '60s and early '70s but their parades weren't a patch on Sheffield's. Looking at the pictures in the thread above,

I'd say the parade hit it's peak in the mid '60s, in terms of the lavish decoration and sheer scale of the floats. If I close my eye's I can remember some of the best bits in great detail. We usually watched it on West Street.

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