The celebration of the arrival of spring on 1 May with Maypole dancing goes back to the Celts, who paid homage to trees and leaf-covered branches as part of fertility rites. All over Britain on 1 May in early times bonfires were lit, people from every walk of life went gathering flowers, or ‘Maying’, and there was dancing, often very wild, around a flower-decked village Maypole. In London there was a Maypole in the Old City near St Andrew’s church on Leadenhall Street. This was removed in Reformation times because of a riot. Maypoles were generally opposed by the Puritans because of their pagan implications. But at the Restoration in 1660 a huge Maypole was erected in the Strand, near the church of St Mary-le-Strand, which finally blew down in 1672.