Watch: Pearly Kings and Queens Harvest Festival 1948

The first harvest festival service organised by London's Pearly Kings and Queens took place in London about 100 years ago.

The festival is a celebration of the autumn harvest and is one of the biggest events in the Pearly calendar.

In 1948, BBC cameras went along to film the service at St Mary Magdalen Church on Old Kent Road in south-east London.

In a surprisingly postmodern move for the BBC in the 1940s, the reporter’s voiceover was hijacked by Pearly King Bill Nicklin, who helps explain the tradition in Cockney rhyming slang.

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