The town of Whitstable has been associated with oysters for hundreds of years, with Festival roots that go back much further than even locals might think.

In Norman times, with Whitstable already an established fishing port, fishers and dredgers customarily held an annual ceremony of thanksgiving for their survival and harvest. As practical, hard-working people, Whitstable fishermen naturally held their festival celebration during the slack period and closed season for oysters.

As a ’Holy Day’ the Festival would include a formal church ceremony, after which the townspeople would spend the rest of the day in feasting, dancing, playing games and contests. With the feast day of St James of Compostella (patron saint of oysters) falling conveniently on July 25 this date eventually became the accepted time to hold the festival, which is why the Festival is still held in summer even today.

The exact form the original ceremony would have taken is unknown, but would have probably have centred around a formal blessing of the town, the sea, the fishing fleet, and indeed, the fishermen and dredgers themselves. Today we symbolically recreate the ‘Landing of the Oysters’ , with Whitstable Sea Scouts bringing oysters ashore for a formal
Blessing by clergy before being presented to the Lord Mayor. They are then passed to inns and restaurants as part of the vibrant Oyster Parade as it travels through the town centre.

The Blessing of the Waters service is still held at Reeves Beach on one of the Festival evenings, today organised by the Association of Men of Kent and Kentish Men, and the local tradition of Grotter building (creating hollow mounds of sand or mud with an outside decoration of oyster shells) is still practised on the same day. Originally built by children who would beg “a penny for the grotter” much as other children did for Guy Fawkes, today’s grotters are built purely for the fun of it and lit by candles to produce an intriguing night-time spectacle.

Today’s oyster festival was reintroduced when the local oyster industry, almost wiped out in the 1920s by a combination of disease and overfishing, was revived in the 1980s. It is best decribed as a modern evolution of the older ‘Holy Day’ festivals, being a mixture of arts, family events, and food and drink, with some contests thrown in, but it does not include any water-based games or contests. By the end of the 18th century these had evolved seperately into a series of events that became known as the Whitstable Regatta. Originally composed of of yawl, rowing and swimming races, the Regatta is still continued in the town today. Like the Oyster Festival this too has evolved and no longer includes ’walking the greasy pole’ or ‘millers and sweeps’, (where the occupants of two small boats fought each other with soot and flour! before blowing up a ship provided by the Whitstable Salvage Company) but it is still a great day out and a good resaon to visit Whitstable again.

(Video - Oyster Fishing at Whitstable, England (1920) - From the BFI National Archive.)