Custom occasional: The Chertsey Curfew Bell

Lady Day is the last day for the ringing of the curfew bell at Chertsey. Manning and Bray’s “The History and Antiquities of Surrey” (c.1811) records that this curfew was rung, at 8pm on weekdays but also on Sunday mornings at 8am on the largest (tenor) bell. However, although the practice of the 8am ringing of the tenor curfew was discontinued, the 8pm week-night ringing is now done by a bell from 1856 rather than the Abbey bell as established obviously to protect this well. The curfew is not now rung on Saturday nights.

Curfew bells were established across the country as has been discussed before, and some counties such as Kent had a number. Often a story about their establishment is told but in this case this appears lost and is replaced by the story of Blanche Heriot.

For whom the bell tolls

The story is based around the time of the War of the Roses, when in 1471, Yorkist King Edward IV retook the throne such that Blanche’s suitor, a Lancastrian Knight, Neville Audrey, having fought against Edward, had now become a traitor. Thus, he sought sanctuary in the Abbey. However, the authorities did not regard this as sanctuary and he was captured and sentenced to death. The execution was by the chiming of the following day’s first toll of the town’s curfew bell.

However, a reprieve was on offer. For the knight remembered that he had saved the life of a Yorkist nobler who grateful for the sparing of his life, that he gave him his signet ring stating he was a moral and honourable character. So, with the ring him hand he sent a rider to reach the king in search of a pardon.

The King did give him a pardon but the distance between London and Chertsey would be a challenge to get the message to the knight’s potential executioners. Legend tells that the rider was a mile away when Blanche decided to climb the abbey’s bell tower and jumped to grab the clapper. The bell was about to ring, but Blanche holding fast muted the sound by preventing it hitting the bell, until the rider appeared with the pardon. Which indeed happened and he was saved.

In 1840, Albert Smith published the story, and it became very popular West End melodrama. The story also inspired American writer Rose Hartwick Thorpe write ‘The Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’ which was one of Queen Victoria’s favourite poems. Today one can continue to hear the curfews and see a monument erected to re-remember it.

Custom revived: Carlin Peas on Carlin sunday

“The tradition of cooking carlins is relatively unheard of today. But we still mark the occasion at Beamish, usually by cooking peas, seasoned with either salt and vinegar or sugar! See carlin pea displays at Pockerley Old Hall and The 1900s Pit Village.”

Beamish Museum website

The fifth Sunday in Lent and is known as Carlin Sunday due to its association with Carlin peas, one of the few surviving localised dishes perhaps in England – I had never heard of them until I had visited the north and read more in books on folk customs – but despite what Beamish says above is still enacted and the peas can be seen for sale in northern soups and elsewhere. In the North a saying; developed to help people remember what days were what being derived from the psalms and hymns and names of the Sundays in Lent:

“Tid, Mid, Miseray, Carlin, Palm, Pace-Egg Day”

Tid was the second Sunday when Ye Deum Laudamus was sung, Mid was third Sunday when the Mi Deus Hymn was sung, Miseray – the fourth Sunday, was when the Misere Mei Psalmwould be chanted and then Carlin, the fifth Sunday, Palm the sixth and final and Pace Egg was Easter Sunday. As the communities became separated from the Catholic doctrine it would seem only the last three would be remembered.

Give peas a chance!

So what are Carlin peas? They are dried maple peas or pigeon peas often fed to bord and used for fish bait, but somehow became a Lenten staple. The were usually soaked in salt water overnight on Friday, then on Saturday boiled in bacon fat enabling them to be eaten cold or hot on the Sunday, often being served  with a sprinkling of salt and pepper, vinegar or rum.

Two peas in a pod

So why the North only? Well, there are two origins said to why the peas were restricted to the North-east as related in Chris Lloyd in his excellent 2021 Northern Echo article “Why the North-East traditionally spends today eating dried pigeon peas.:

“This tradition may have started in 1327 when Robert the Bruce and his Scots were besieging Newcastle. The starving Novacastrians were saved on Palm Sunday when a shipload of dried peas – perhaps sailed by Captain Karlin – arrived from Norway. Fortified by the carlins, the defenders fought off the Scots who went and attacked Durham instead.

Or it may have started during the Civil War in 1644 when, from February 3 to October 27, another army of Scots besieged the Royalist forces in Newcastle. This time, Captain Karlin arrived with a boatload of peas from France to save the day”

Versions of this later story have the ship of peas wrecked or stranded at Southshields a fortnight before Easter Day, which was also in time of famine and the peas washed ashore and were eaten, the salt adding to the flavour, which is still recommended to eating it. And equally say the shop came from Canada. Despite being a North -eastern tradition it soon spread to Yorkshire and Lancashire – my first experience was at a Good Friday fair just south of Manchester..

In the 20th Century, the tradition began to die out, although it seems to have clung on in pubs. With all pubs now closed, perhaps the pandemic will kill off a North-East tradition that may be 700 years old and could have been started by Captain Karlin.

A correspondent of Notes & Queries (1st S. vol. iii. 449) tells us that on the north-east coast of England, where the custom of frying dry peas on this day is attended with much augury, some ascribe its origin to the loss of a ship freighted with peas on the coast of Northumberland. Carling is the foundation beam of a ship, or the beam on the keel.

So there is another explanation of the name. Yet another suggestion is made by Brand in his 1849 Popular. Antiquities:

“In the Roman Calendar, I find it observed on this day, that a dole is made of soft beans. I can hardly entertain a doubt but that our custom is derived from hence. It was usual among the Romanists to give away beans in the doles at funerals; it was also a rite in the funeral ceremonies of heathen Rome. Why we have substituted peas I know not, unless it was because they are a pulse somewhat fitter to be eaten at this season of the year.” Having observed from Erasmus that Plutarch held pulse (legumina) to be of the highest efficacy in invocation of the Manes, he adds: “Ridiculous and absurd as these superstitions may appear, it is quite certain that Carlings deduce their origin from thence.”

This explanation, however, is by no means regarded as satisfactory.

Pease offering

Chris Lloyd (2021) states:

“I remember when I lived in the Stokesley area, neighbours used to mention Carlin Sunday and it was something to do with eating peas on that day. I wondered if you would be able to find out more about it, please?”

He also states that they were commonly sold at fairgrounds and mobile food counters, being eaten with salt and vinegar as I had. Lloyd (2021) notes that:

“At fairgrounds, they were traditionally served in white porcelain mugs and eaten with a spoon. In more recent years, they have been served in thick white disposable cups”

And that in:

“ world famous Bury Market and in Preston, parched peas are sold ready-cooked and served in brown-paper bags or in plastic tubs.”

He also claims that:

“Consumption is limited to certain areas within the historical boundaries of  Lancashire, notably Oldham, Wigan, Bury, Rochdale, Prestob, Stalybridge, Leigh, Atherton, Tyldesley and Bolton.“

However it may have had a wider distribution. Thistleton-Dwyer’s 1836 Popular customs states:

“On this day, in the northern counties, and in Scotland, a custom obtains of eating Carlings, which are grey peas, steeped all night in water, and fried the next day with butter.”

It is indeed remembered in Ritson’s Scottish songs:

“There’ll be all the lads and lassies. Set down in the midst of the ha’, With sybows, and ryfarts, and carlings, That are bath sodden and raw.”

Whatever the truth despite a decline and apparent disappearance in the early 20^th century, carlin peas are now again sold in pubs and in food stores and carlin Sunday continues.

Custom demised: Whirlin’ cakes of Cambridgeshire

Culinary customs are unusual ones in that they can, being domestic in origin, survive unnoticed. The Whirling cakes made traditionally around Wisbech may be one. The earliest record being in the Gentleman’s Magasine in 1789 which reports

“In several villages in the vicinity of Wisbeach, in the Isle of Ely, the fifth Sunday in Lent has been, time immemorial, commemorated by the name of Whirlin Sunday, when cakes are made by almost every family, and are called, from the day, Whirlin Cakes.”

The legend behind it originates in the village of Leverington. Here an old woman made some cakes which were so enjoyed by one of her guests. Unfortunately, this guest was Satan in disguise and so keen was he with the cakes that he decided to carry both her and her cakes off in whirlwind – hence the name. A curious origin of a tradition. Fenland Notes and queries states from a correspondent that:

“Whirlwind Cakes at Leverington  — It is many years now since I was at Leverington , but I well remember that it used to be the custom at the feast then to make Whirlwind cakes. There was a curious Old folklore legend attached to this custom. It was to the effect that while a certain old lady of Leverington was one day making cakes for the purpose of entertaining her guests at the feast, the devil came to her, and creating a whirlwind carried her Off over the church steeple . In commemoration of this improbable event the custom had grown of making Whirlwind cakes. T . LAWRENCE, The Grove, Hammersmith”

The Cambridge Chronicle in 1865 reported:

 “The Sunday before Palm Sunday, in the Parish of Leverington, is called Whirling Sunday. We are not aware that the origin of it is anywhere recorded, or that in any other place there is a similar observance. It is very probable that the name is a corruption, and the tradition of its having originated in a whirlwind is too glaring an absurdity. The superstition attached to it, which, a few years since, had not entirely died away, was, that if you did not spend your penny in the purchase of whirling cake, you be unlucky the year through. Under cover of this excuse it became the scene of rioting and drunkenness. Of late years the disgraceful part of the observance has had scarcely any existence; but still great numbers, particularly from the town, walk down in the afternoon, with no other object than to walk back again. Some of the older inhabitants of the village invite their friends to tea, and treat them with hot whirling cakes, which, we believe, in their composition is nothing more than ordinary buns.”

In 1891 Frederick Carlyon, rector of Leverington, described it as “Whirling Sunday:

“None of the old people know anything of the origin of the Legend. But there are still many who recollect when there was a regular pleasure fair held in Leverington on Whirling Sunday, when a particular kind of whirling cake was made in most houses, and sports of all kinds, especially boxing matches, were carried on, and a regular holiday observed. There was no religious ceremony that I can hear of observed of on the day beyond the ordinary Church Services. Whirling cakes still continue to be made in one or two houses, but that and the memory of the day only remain. The Legend of the old woman being whirled over the church steeple is still repeated.”

It would seem that by the 20^th century the custom had demised probably with the disappearance of the fair…so much that no-one knew what the cakes looked like.