STAVE WALKS - What do "Staves" look like?

This is a photograph of a stave walk or banner procession from somewhere in Somerset. I don't know any more about it than that it's on the wall at the Perry's Cider Museum, but it does illustrate a few points.

This is very definitely an occasion. It was considered worth photographing, although the photograph looks fairly posed.

Everyone's in their "Sunday Best" and they've turned out to do something important. In present day morris terms, this looks to me like a photograph taken at the massed stand, where everyone wants to look smart, and well before the serious drinking begins.

Compare the sizes of what I'd call the "staves" at the front and the "banner" at the back. The pole for the banner is about the length of the large staves which Stags have used. The staves in the front are more like the "normal" length of staves in use today, and roughly the same length as the ones I used at the workshop.

Above, the banner being walked. Below, staves, and perhaps another banner, all formed up and ready to go. If you know more about these pictures, please email me.

Here they're formed up either ready to start or having just finished the procession. Unlike some other pictures (which I'm working on) there's no pub or church in the background, making it difficult to work out where theye are, although the plant in a formal pot at the front makes it a dead cert this isn't just any old piece of woodland. Perhaps it's in the drive of the "big house". Although the photograph is on the same wall, I don't think that this is the same group.

In the centre, directly in front of the dark trees, is either a banner or a stave with ribbons and a posy on the top, as was described at Shrawley, Worcs. If it's a banner, then it's a fair bit smaller than the one in the top picture. If it's a stave with a posy, then we have documentary evidence of the type of stave described at Shrawley and copied by Stags for their procession staves.

Note that pride of place is given to the enormous bass drum, just like modern North-West sides do. To the right of the drum is at least one more stave, possibly three. But, if this group danced, then I find it hard to suggest that they used more than four staves.