Harnessed for Easter

After two great days of religious celebration comes Easter Monday - in Britain traditionally the day for sports and outdoor games.

Egg rolling, water games and meat pie wrestling are just some of the odd activities the energetic have indulged in over the centuries.

Something a bit more decorous however has been going on in London's Battersea Park for over 100 years.

Come Easter Monday and the Park resounds to the sound of wheels and whinnies.

It's the annual Harness Horse Parade which brings together more than 300 of the world's finest commercial and privately owned harness horses and carts.

The parade was the idea of Sir Walter Gilbey and Baroness Burdett-Coutts back in 1886.

Animal lovers with a commercial interest in harness horses, they devised the parade to promote the welfare of horses among fellow owners.

Now, the parade still promotes awareness but is also a competition to celebrate and keep alive the tradition of the commercial harness horse.

In a world of traffic congestion and pollution, vehicles of this kind are rarely seen. They are nonetheless more common than we think.

Bread vans, London trolleys, butcher's carts, Yorkshire flat carts, milk floats, fire engines - all evoke living memories of the horse's role in commerce as well as testifying to its continued use.

They are joined by gigs, broughams and other horsedrawn passenger vehicles as well as movie star horses from Braveheart, the Three Musketeers and Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

It is a visual feast as owner riders dress up in the colourful costumes to mark either their business or private livery.

"You will never see anything like it anywhere else in the world," says parade administrator Dulcie Mitchell. "It's a wonderful spectacle and owners come from all over the world to take part."

The holiday weekend ends after the Monday. But years ago nobody worked on the second Monday and Tuesday after Easter either.

Called Hocktide, it involved two more days of sports and celebrations - some of them very rough.

For instance on the Monday, gangs of women would take ropes and capture any man they came across insisting on a small amount of money from the victim before he was released.

The next day it was the men's turn. They would sometimes stretch a rope across the road and stop anyone passing, tying them up until the money was handed over.

The proceeds were supposed to go towards maintaining the church but were occasionally given to the poor people.

Admission to London's Battersea Park is free. Judging starts at 10.30 BST and the Grand Parade starts at 12.45.

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Harnessed for Easter
The Jewish Passover