Tontine Street Hoodening

Hoodening returned to Tontine Street in about 2006-07. The horse was out in the town centre as part of a local street performance: hood, horse, pavement and shopfront, with no need to turn the occasion into anything more elaborate.

The picture matters because it places Hoodening in the street before the later redevelopment of the area. It is not a rehearsal for the game. The later Hooden Horse Trials takes up related material in another form; this is simply the horse moving through Tontine Street when it happened.

The later Bear Watch and pub-barring material gives this earlier appearance an awkward afterlife. Once the Bear began appearing at pub doors, pavement games and street gatherings, he treated the return of Hoodening as a local licence for his own public business. The distinction was not always clear to him.

For the Club Shepway record, the image remains an early street-level point of reference: an ordinary town-centre setting where local custom, public performance and the changing fabric of Tontine Street meet.