Royston municipal picnic

THIS ITEM IS A SPOOF ENTRY. There was no such event as described, and there are a number of factual errors in the references that demonstrate this. Items like this, whilst superficially amusing, are a BAD THING. Firstly, they tend to spread and become accepted as factual (this item has already done so); and secondly, they damage the integrity of the information on itself.
Simon Walker Editor, Hitchin Journal Hitchin Historical Society
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The Royston municipal picnic was an annual event held on the First of August in Royston, Hertfordshire during the early years of the twentieth century, hosted by the Mayor and Corporation. The last such picnic was held in 1914: the ostensible reason for their discontinuation was the outbreak of the Great War but it later transpired that the final event had become an open-air orgy.
The local newspaper, the Royston Crow was clearly aware of the event and published a veiled allusion but the outbreak of war the same day eclipsed all interest in local scandal.
Burgo Partridge, whose mother Frances Partridge was a relative of the Mayor of Royston who presided over the last picnic in 1914, mentioned it somewhat circumspectly in his 1958 book A History of Orgies. Partridge attributes the final event to artistic motives, consistent with his cousin's position on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group, but in 1968 Lord Kennet described it as an outbreak of the life-force. By 1971 it might have been assumed that all the participants in the notorious picnic were now dead, but Oz magazine located Hetty Henchard who agreed to be interviewed. She said

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