My hometown does this on Mayday. Unfortunately some people in the parade take the ragged chimney sweep costume thing as an excuse to go full on blackface in a way that really isn’t necessary (there’s lots of people who just do a fake mucky effect, or do stripes or green or whatever. Hastings has exactly the same festival on the same day and does green).
It’s a giant pissup with a fun fair, but probably also more Morris dancing than most people can take. They wake the Jack in the Green up here at dawn on the first day, and then pretend to kill him with sticks on the last day. I grew up thinking this was entirely normal. Also when I was a little kid, whoever was in the tree costume loved telling dad jokes to kids. It’s disconcerting to be told a bad joke by a tree.
Kits Coty is a very eerie place. There’s a pub near there that used to be the 70s/early 80s fancy pub that time forgot, but it’s been done up. There’s also a Catholic monastery next door where they make pottery and mead and things. It’s either stuffed full of school kids or eerily empty.
