BFI

This film begins with an impressive high level shot south-east along Lime Street, with the looming bulk of the Adelphi Hotel in the background and Liverpool Lime Street Station on the left. The old Lime Street townscape - hotels, bars and shops much favoured by visiting seamen - was lost in the 1960s. The central scene captures the large number of highly decorated horses paraded on the plateau, while trams turn up London Road in the background.

Liverpool depended on heavy horses for most of its short-distance goods transport until the 1930s. There was no direct railway connection to much of the dock estate, so goods had to be carted out of the docks to warehouses or railway stations. Around 7,500 heavy horses worked in the city in the early twentieth century. The May Day parades, held on the plateau in front of St George's Hall, were intended as a celebration of the animals and their work, and also maintained older rural traditions in the decoration of horses. The men who worked with the horses were important too, not least because Liverpool carters wielded a good deal of industrial muscle during the transport strikes of the early twentieth century.

Graeme Milne

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