Minehead Hobby Horse

In the coastal town of Minehead, located in the southwest English county of Somerset, there is a folk custom on May Day entailing the parading of a brightly decorated hobby horse around the locality.

[3] The head of the man carrying the horse protrudes from the middle of the frame; he wears a painted mask with a crested conical hood affixed with coloured ribbons.

[3] Minehead is located eighty miles away from the Cornish coastal town of Padstow, which has a similar May Day custom involving the procession of a hobby horse.

[14] 24 miles west of Minehead, in the North Devon coastal town of Combe Martin, a hobby horse custom was recorded as existing in the early nineteenth century but had apparently died out by 1837.

[15] In this custom, a procession traversed the town on Ascension Day; it included not only the Hobby Horse but also individuals dressed as grenadiers, a character identified as the fool and another as "the Early of Rone", as well as a real donkey.