Mazie day

Mazie day is a week long festival in penzance where all the commuimty joins in to celebrate.

Midsummer's Day is the church feast of St John The Baptist, an important day in Penzance's calendar as St John is the town's Patron Saint - the ancient name 'Pen Sans' meaning 'Holy Head' refers to him, and images of the head of St John can be spotted on buildings throughout Penzance.

It has always been an occasion for wild celebration. Historians record that:
The centre of the main streets is a continuous line of blazing tar barrels ... about ten o' clock from the Quay comes a procession of dock labourers and sailors swinging burning torches ... the numerous inhabitants form a long string and run furiously through every street vociferating "An eye! An eye! An eye!" The last two of the string elevating their clasped hands form an eye, through which the thread of the populace runs without any regard to the number engaged...


Like many community celebrations Golowan was suppressed in late Victorian times and was all but forgotten for a hundred years. Then in 1991 in the dark days of the last recession a group of local artists and performers, together with Penzance's Alverton Primary School, revived the festival on the saturday nearest to St John's Feast which they called Mazey Day. The streets were decorated and closed to traffic, the school paraded with costumes and giant images made of withies and paper, setting off on the stroke of midday - and it poured! But later the weather relented and a seed was sown which expanded year after year to a full-scale arts and community festival which celebrates its 20th year in 2010