Pagan Pride, a procession of pagans (or neo-pagans) around London’s Bloomsbury has a certain colour and charm. It’s a celebration of spring, the public part of an annual ‘Beltane Bash‘ event, with elements that come from our Celtic past.
Dancing around the fountain in Russell Square
Efforts have been made to restore the garden in Russell Square to its original plan. It was laid out by Humphry Repton in 1805-6, although his original planting of lime trees were fortunately replaced by J C Loudon with London planes in the 1860s – so they are now fine, mature specimens. Camden council added a central feature of three ‘modern’ fountains in 1960, which were certainly not to everyone’s (or possibly anyone except the Borough architect’s) taste. Fortunately funding from the Urban Parks Programme in 1996 enabled these to be removed (and the original garden layout to be restored) and the park reopened in 2002 with a modern computer controlled fountain designed by Land Use Consultants (LUC).
This fountain could hardly have been designed more appropriately for the Pagan Pride parade – which I think began shortly afterwards, with phallic water jets emerging, rising and falling from a number holes in the York stone paving creating a truly organic (or orgasmic?) effect. When I first photographed the event, the jets were following the normal erratic (if not random) pattern, but this year the gardeners appear to have been persuaded to turn them on more or less full for the duration of the event.
You can see the effect on My London Diary. And yes, I did get wet, both from the fountains and the rain.