Sooty Bob Day: An Old Newbury May Day Tradition

Our monthly coffee mornings have given us the opportunity to talk about a whole manner of subjects with our residents. With such a range of ages and experiences, we don’t just talk about our almshouses. Trustees have begun to learn a little about our residents’ life stories, from growing up in Newbury to working all over the country.

One such story came up last month when one of our oldest residents, Lorna, began talking about Sooty Bob Day. She told us that on the first of May each year, children in Newbury and the surrounding area would dress up in colourful clothes, cover their faces in soot, like chimney sweeps, and go around door-to-door demanding pennies! Lorna talked about how much fun it was, and as the smallest, she always used to dress up as the fairy.

A sooty chimney, not from our almshouses!

As the first of May is traditionally the chimney sweeps’ day off, it looks like the children were capitalising on that day of rest. Until the Chimney Sweepers and Chimneys Regulation Act came into force in 1840, chimney sweeps, usually young children forced to climb up chimneys in terrible conditions due to their small size, only had one day off a year. They celebrated by joining in with traditional May Day activities, which may be why a maypole is often mentioned when talking about Sooty Bob Day in Newbury.

There is a reference to Sooty Bob Day in Richard Adam’s autobiography. Adams, the novelist behind Watership Downand many other novels, captured the Newbury of his childhood between the First and Second World Wars in Days Gone By. He wrote this about Sooty Bob Day:

“Every first of May, the village children used to black their faces, dress up in such gaudy finery as they could get hold of - the general effect was sort of gipsyfied - and come round with a maypole. This they set up in the front drive and danced round it, singing 

‘First of May, 

Sooty-bob day; 

Give me a penny I’ll go away, 

All round the ’ouse.’”^[1]

There are also references to Sooty Bob Day in Newbury Weekly News articles. The day was talked about in the later 1800s, with reports of children ‘the usual juvenile “sooty bobs”’, dressed with colourful ribbons, asking the public for a penny. As the article stated, ‘the besieged being only too pleased to rid themselves of the little pests’!^[2]

Newbury Weekly News, 25 April 1889

The day seems to have been a remnant of a larger celebration earlier in the century, as in 1900 the paper reported that, as well as quoting the song as being ‘all round me ‘at’ instead the ‘ouse, ‘somebody had taken immense pains to decorate them with tinsel and coloured paper, and the children were so much in earnest, that they deserved some recognition, although it is but a sorry survival of a picturesque old custom.^[3] An earlier report said that the festival was falling into disuse, and the children were more keen to get money than celebrate the day!^[4]

It seems like the waning festival at the end of the 19^th Century had a bit of revival in the mid 20^th Century, as Lorna would have been growing up in the 1930s and 40s. Do you remember Sooty Bob Day? Can you help us find out more about the tradition? Contact us if you have any recollections or stories.

^[1] Richard Adams, Days Gone By (1991), p.3.

^[2] Newbury Weekly News, 2 May 1889.

^[3] Newbury Weekly News, 3 May 1900.

^[4] Newbury Weekly News, 7 May 1896.