St Martha’s Church on St Martha’s Hill Peter Trimming / St.Martha’s Church, St.Martha’s Hill, Surrey
High above Guildford is St Martha’s Hill where a curious Good Friday existed as a report in the Times in 1870 of a curious lost custom:
“Thither from all the country side youths and maidens, old folks and children, betake themselves, and gathered together on one of the most beautiful spots in Surrey, in full sight of an old Norman Church which crowns the green summit of the hill, beguile the time with music and dancing.”
The author notes:
“Whatever the origin of this pilgrimage to St. Martha’s, it is apparently one that commends itself to the taste of the present generation, and is not likely to die out with the lapse of years, but to increase in popular estimation as long as the green hill lasts to attract the worshippers of natural beauty, or to furnish the mere votaries of pleasure with the excuse and the opportunity for a pleasant holiday”
Walter Johnson in his 1908 Folk-memory: Or, The Continuity of British Archaeology suggests a link with the custom with some local archaeological remains:
“are some curious earth-rings, which may represent the remains of a maze. In olden times, the youths and maidens met there on Good Friday, and indulged in music and boisterous dancing.”
A view the author repeated in his In Byways in British Archaeology (1912):
“there are some curious earth-rings situated to the south of the church, haIf-hidden by heather, and I have elsewhere suggested that these represent part of a maze, within which the sports were once held.”
However, this is mere supposition as is the belief that the custom itself was of age. Matthew Alexander in his More Surrey Tales believes that it was not established time out of memory but begun in the 1809s.
The County, Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser on April 14th 1868 reports that there was a:
“the usual gathering of the lower orders on Good Friday at Tyting Farm”
This suggestion that the Hill was not perhaps the main focus on activity as they gathered at Bent piece near Tyting Farm in what could be described as a rural fete with fruit vendors, hockey, shying orange peel and ‘kissing in the ring’ The main appeal however was a kind of massed dancing which in 1870 attracted a blind fiddler and has been described as akin to the Helston Furry dance with little evidence! The paper complained that it should, as not to offend religious sensitivities, move to Easter Monday. Indeed in 1871 an evangelical preacher ranted at the party being ‘giddy and gay’ and was subsequently pelted with orange peel! However, this rather confused custom which appeared dancing the custom did die out around the turn of the twentieth century. Of course the custom resembled in many ways the annual Good Friday climbing of hills around Lancashire which is still current however no mention of egg rolling
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