Ancestor Gateway Forum - STAMFORD MEMORIES GATEWAY (Lincolnshire England) used as PRIDE and PREJUDICE FILM SET New Topic  |  Search Thread Topic: Taking a Cabbage to School Topic Originator: Mike Laughton Post Date September 27, 2015 @ 6:25 PM  Taking a Cabbage to School Mike Laughton September 27, 2015 @ 6:25 PM Reply  |  Email  |  Print  |  Top I switched on my TV at teatime on Sunday and what should be on but a special Harvest Festival Songs of Praise. And how the memories came flooding back! I remember that when I was at St John's infants School in Stamford during the late 1940s they used to make a very big deal of Harvest Festival. Most of the Primary and Infants Schools in those days were connected to the church in some way and on special occasions we would attend services at St John's Church. Pupils of St Martins School would go to St Martin's Church, All Saints Pupils would go to All Saints' Church, St George's pupils to St George's Church etc. I remember that on the day of Harvest Festival all the kids would be required to carry some garden produce to school, this would later be carried to the church where it was placed around the altar during the service and left there. (I think all the produce was later given to the hospital or old folks homes. I can't imagine it all got used before it rotted away) Most of the kids took sensible things like a bunch of carrots or bag of apples but I always seemed to get lumbered with a bloody great cabbage or cauliflower or marrow. This was a real pain for a small five or six-year-old - having to lug a massive vegetable like a giant marrow or cabbage  not only to school but to the church as well. Although most families were skint in those days, I seem to recall that every kid took something to school for the Harvest Festival. But those were the days when most dads had an allotment and grew their own vegetables. (A habit left over from World War II). But I still can't hear "We Plough the fields and Scatter"  without cringing.