Sunday 20 December 2009

ONLY A ROSE # 2

Rose QueenResearch is continuing about Rhyl’s Rose Day, an annual event which seemed to fall out of fashion in the early 1950s. Meanwhile, here is a Rose Day photo from early 1940s. Rose Queen Nancy with her tiara would be wearing a pink dress. The picture is from Gaynor Williams (was Jones) who is sitting in the front row on the left.

At that difficult time of world war, extreme austerity and shortages, continuing with events such as Rose Day and of course May Day, was a way of clinging to normality and community routine in a defiant sort of way, as if to say ‘We are not going to be put off by danger and hardship;
we are going about our business as usual’.

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WED 15th APR 2015 UPDATE: A note from the files of the late Glyn Rees indicates that our first Rose Day was in August 1922 and our first Rose Queen was Miss Beatrice Gibbs of 9, Osborne Grove, Rhyl.

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