The strange fate of the City of London maypole

SIR – Citizens cannot always be relied upon to defend maypoles, as the villagers of Bream in Gloucestershire have done (report, May 22).

The church of St Andrew Undershaft in the City of London is so called after the great maypole that used to be set up beside it every year. It was stored between times on iron hooks under the eaves of a row of houses in Shaft Alley. In 1547, according to the Tudor antiquary John Stow, after a preacher outside St Paul’s called the maypole an “idol”, a crowd of people, “with great labour” lifted the shaft from the hooks and “sawed it in peeces”.

Thus, says Stow, “was this idol mangled, and after burned”. Elizabeth Johnson

London SW5

Merry month of May: revellers gather in a woodcut of 17th-century maypole dancing