Conisbrough Whit “Sing “

June 1950

South Yorkshire Times June 3, 1950

Conisbrough Whit “Sing “

Well over a 1,000 people, risked changing weather at Conisbrough on Monday to take part in the 21st annual whitsuntide Festival of Conisbrough United Sunday Schools.

The main attraction of the “sing” was the crowning of the new Sunday School Queen, Miss Hazel Parry.

A parade of all the five Sunday Schools, from the Parish Church, St. Andrew’s Mission, Wesley Methodist, New Hill Methodist, and Baptist Churches, marched down to the castle grounds after massing in the Miners Welfare Recreational Ground. Led by the choir of the Parish Church, and Miss Doreen Swift the retiring queen and her attendants, several hundred children formed the procession.

In the Castle grounds, a platform had been erected, from which a service was relayed by loud speaker to the congregation—one of the largest ever to take part in the Festival, and certainly to attend “church” in recent years.

The service was conducted by the Rev. J, E. P. Edwards, Wesley Methodist minister, and the singing was led by Miss Muriel Brooke, with Mrs. Iris Barber as pianist. The Rev. W. Clarke, new Baptist minister for Doncaster, who will also have charge of Conisbrough Baptist Church, was officially welcomed to Conisbrough by Mr. Edwards, before he gave his address. Mr. Clarke asked “What is wrong with the world today? It is that contact has been broken with God, and the world plunged into darkness? He appealed to all the people listening to him to maintain that contact again, and help and introduce their children to Christ. He thought it extremely appropriate and significant that on Whit Monday, on the occasion of the Sunday Schools’ Festival, their queen should be crowned. He closed with asking for support for the Sunday Schools effort by exercising parental control and example at home and at church. “It all depends,” he said, “on us individually.”

The new Queen, Hazel Parry, a 14, years-old Conisbrough Modern School girl, of Ivanhoe Road, was chosen by the Baptist Church. She was crowned by the retiring queen, who said that she had happy memories of the period when she had the honour to be the queen, and hoped the same for her successor. She had considered it an honour to be crowned Sunday Schools Queen, but considered it an equal one to be able to crown her successor.

The service and coronation in the Castle grounds ended with the blessing, given by the Rev. M. J. Cuttell, Parish Church curate, who used a prayer that, he said, had been used in the Parish Church at Whitsuntide for nearly a thousand years.

The service over, the children dispersed to their own church schoolrooms and church halls, where they had tea. In the evening the annual sports meeting was held in the Welfare ground