It ended in 1968 amid concerns about safety and also because it became difficult to find anyone to pay for the oranges!
Crowds of people would take part the scramble for free fruit, hurled in continuous volleys from the top of the precipitous slope. From at least the early part of the 19th century it was an excuse for all sorts of jollity, with a fairground at the foot of the hill, near the Rifle Volunteer pub, music from an organ-grinder and “Lady Teasers” on sale (these were rubber missiles filled with water).
Numerous pictures of the spectacle have survived, but the one here is less familiar and undated. The original may eventually be traced in the files of the Dunstable Gazette but the best guess so far is that it was taken in the 1930s.
The Gazette in 1899 records in great detail the fantastic free-for-all when anything within the law was allowed. Those people really keen on catching as much fruit as possible used to make themselves conspicuous as targets by turning their coats inside out or wearing enormously tall top hats.
In 1900 the wind on the hill was so fierce that it played havoc with ladies’ skirts – the journalist from the Gazette reported that a wonderfully pretty display of multi-coloured petticoats could be seen!
Orange rolling seems to have been a custom unique to Dunstable, although other places have celebrated Easter by rolling eggs down grassy slopes.
Yesteryear is compiled by John Buckledee, chairman of Dunstable and District Local History Society.