Customs occasional: Great Brockham Stone Turning

‘We’re basically just trying to get everybody together and it’s been fun. It’s very British and totally pointless but we all enjoy it.’

Twenty-twenty three will go down in history of course as the date for the Coronation of King Charles III; thus it seems important to discuss a custom and tradition associated with the event. But not the actual event; watched by millions; which although high in pomp, was not the most exciting event and anyway I did not get an invite! No more exciting was a traditional event undertaken largely under the noses of Royal commentators and indeed any Press, but far more exciting. This is the Turning of the Great Brockham Stone.

What is fascinating in my survey of our colourful customs and traditions that despite all the books and thousands of words upon the internet; one can still find a custom unbeknownst to me. This was it. Indeed, it was a bit last minute. I had eschewed the obvious waiting on the Mall for the procession on the Saturday for a more sedate and curious attendance to a remote village in Norfolk.

Why they should turn this stone is unclear. There is as far as I am aware only one other stone turning event in the customs calendar. That of Shebbear done on November the 5^th to improbably perhaps awaken the Devil who lies beneath. Two events is a rather small ‘club’ and in this case there is no reason to turn it but to add something to the time capsule underneath. Furthermore, the stone itself despite appearing to all intents to be some prehistoric sentinel watching over the village from its heart- only arrived in 1880! Tradition locally being that it was in a farmer’s way and so was dragged by horses to the village green. For what reason we do not know. The stone is certainly an erratic, largely out of place on the sandy Breckland soils, but to me dragging a two tonne rock to the village seems pretty erratic too.

At some point a local person suggested that they should try and turn it. The first time appears to be soon after it arrived to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond jubilee, soon followed by her 1897 Golden jubilee, Edward Vis coronation, George IV’s coronation and Jubilee and George VI’s coronations followed. Overall there have been twelve turnings. Oddly enough Elizabeth’s coronation had been missed due it is thought to very wet weather, but fame came to the village when in 1977 it was flipped for the Silver Jubilee and filmed by ITV apparently.

No stone left unturned!

In the last thirty years they appear to have taken ample opportunity to turn it: 1995, the 50^th anniversary of VE day, the millennium and then back to the Queen for 2002 Golden Jubilee, 2008 for the celebration of the saving of Hockham Woods from quarrying and then 2012 for the Diamond Jubilee. I am sure that in 2022 for the Queen’s Platinum they were thought they might be in for a bit more than a year’s rest – after all the Queen’s mum did live to over 100…but no May 2023 was Charles III’s coronation and so a stone turning would be undertaken. I could imagine having done four turns in twenty years or so there would be some keen and strong experts in the village!

The Eastern Daily Press reported in 2022 in an article by a certain Sarah Hussain called Village revives bizarre Victorian ritual to mark Jubilee:

“It took place last Thursday – the first day of the Jubilee bank holiday – and saw around 250 watch, as the eight local men struggled with the task. The group used chocks of wood, large levers and “lot of pondering and brute force” to flip the stone over. Chris Garrod, clerk at Great Hockham Parish Council, said the tradition is something members are “incredibly proud of…The villagers turned out in force to watch the spectacle. It’s known as a glacial erratic, is full of fossils and one of several found across the country, deposited in a previous ice age. Its turning is likely a nationally unique event.”

Perhaps not totally unique, as stated above, but certainly in Royal customs, it is and it is surprising that they are not more curious royal customs like this.

I arrived just as a small group of turners were getting organised, wearing their yellow shirts with their lifting rods eyeing up what to do and looking forward to breaking last year’s record. It’s a slow process, I was warned by the organiser that last time it took 1 and a half hours. Indeed, it took a fair while to even see what progress had been made, perhaps the hardest part being getting any movement from perpendicular.

Rolling stone gathers no moss

A curious sort of fascination developed watching the slow and meticulous process of the turners who using block and tackle, a well-placed lifting rod and some considerable force being enacted upon to raise the stone a few centimetres. As it is one of the team, rush in to secure every millimetre of height gained with a block.  That in itself, considering the considerable mass teetering on an ever-increasing angle, requiring quick action and considerable nerves. After over an hour the stone was clear of a considerable area of its base such that the time capsule could be lifted, inspected and new materials placed within. Again, nerves of steel were needed to dig the hole again and place it down whilst the turners continued their arduous task. At certain points, the group stopped, huddled in discussion, pointing, and tapping the rock, and moved on. At one point I thought this thirsty work would be unrewarded but sure enough the pub appeared with some beers which gave the turners a very brief respite.

But it was soon back to action. An hour and a half in and it were clear that last year’s record would not be broken. Rods were placed in front of the stone to steady it but it was clear it was not going anywhere yet. A sizeable crowd had developed around the stone including a well-known stand-up comedy legend, who at first I thought ‘Here’s another 80s light entertainment celeb making a programme on British traditions and customs’ I’ll let the reader pass judgement on that. But no, he was a local, who had moved to the village for some well-earned privacy no doubt: I shall not name him consequently. He appeared to be enjoying all the spectacle and perhaps it will make it into one of his summer season routines.

After around one hour and forty minutes the stone was looking quite precarious in its setting and was beginning to wobble a bit it seemed. Every wobble greeted by the crowds excited oohs and ahhs! Then after quite a few false hopes, the stone stubbornly staying situ, the team appeared confidence this would be it, and a warning went out. Then using their rods for the last time and giving an almighty creak the stone fell producing a cloud of dust as result to the sound of cheers and claps. It was just over two hours.

What is great about Great Brockham’s stone turning is that unlike perhaps its only comparable custom, Abingdon’s Bun throwing, it is firmly a local custom, a local celebration and something that certainly brings this small community together in a joyful fun way.

When’s the next one I asked. One of the turners ruefully acknowledged that although 2047 would be the Silver Jubilee, King Charles would be 99 – possibly considering his family’s longevity, but they said they’d but more chances on another coronation before than..and equally the 100^th anniversary of the Second World War. Whenever the next turning will be, who knows, but I am sure that this community will leave no stone unturned finding a suitable date!

Custom survived: Cooper’s Hill Cheese rolling

Hard cheese

It is perhaps rare that an attendee to a calendar custom or tradition could claim to have a feeling of dread verging on PTSD attending one. However, I got that feeling returning to the internationally famous Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling. It has been a long to, 27 odd years since my first and only visit. A lot had changed. But one thing remains, the bizarreness of running after a 7-8Ib Double Gloucester!

The Coopers Hill or Brockworth cheese rolling is perhaps after a royal occasion the most famous of British customs. However, it was not always like that. Indeed its history is a bit mysterious. The first recorded evidence is in a message written to the Town crier of Gloucester in 1826; although it locally thought to date back six hundred years. Many suggestions have been made for its meaning. Was it done to secure grazing rights on common land? Did it have an association with the turning year, the cheese representing the sun? Afterall cartwheels were rolled down hills in England at Midsummer and still are in Scandinavian countries. Did it thus represent a pagan tradition? A fertility rite? Indeed, the scattering of sweets at the start which was done for children could be associated with such viewpoints. What is certain is that was once associated with Whit Monday which suggests it may have had been part of a wider Whitsun fair; akin to that on the Uffington White Horse. And indeed, here too cheeses were rolled and chased.

A description from the Folklore journal of 1912 states

“The Master of Ceremonies, Mr W. Brookes, who has officiated in this capacity for over 30 years, appeared wearing, as usual, a brown top-hat which his parents won in a dancing competition many years ago, and with a chemise over his coat. He stood by the maypole and repeatedly called the crowd to form ‘the alley’ down the slope. The course being clear, the Vicar opened the ball by sending the first ‘cheese’ (a disc of wood wrapped in pink paper) rolling down the hill. Helter-skelter ran nine young men after it, and most of them pitch-polled. The first to secure the disc, stopped at the bottom by a hedge, had to trudge uphill again, and there exchange it for the prize cheese.”

So to 2023 and after making the considerable arduous climb to the slope the first thing that amazes you are the crowds – 1000s – all ages, all nations assembled to watch what is clearly the most pointless, crazy and dangerous of all calendar customs. The grandfather of all extreme sports and certainly the progenitor of all ‘down the pub’ wacky customs. At the brow of the hill could be seen the master of ceremonies adorning a large top hat and white smock and beside him a crowd of participants, precariously perched ready to launch after the cheese they could never hope of catching.

Then

“One to be ready!”
“Two to be steady!”
“Three to prepare!”
“and four to be off!”

Off went the Double Gloucester and off went the racers, in their impossible attempt to gain the cheese. At first the majority had managed their composer, its just like any other race, but then momentum hits and the ground does not appear as even as first appeared. A few start tumbling forward, then more, then they fall, cartwheel and tumble head long into the row of rugby tacklers below. All fuelled by the considerable cacophony of cheers from right across the hills.  Some despite a few bruises leave standing up with the dignity upheld and proud to have done it. The majority disappear back into obscurity, save the boast to all that will hear that they ran the race. A small number go on to greater fame. Hopefully as the winner, denoted as the first to arrive at the bottom. Some as the ones injured by the experience.

The later often as was in the Women’s race often as not the same, as the adrenalin to win pushes you on and it seems a body devoid of the purposed propulsion of one’s legs is quicker! Indeed, it looked fairly inevitable for that winner and as the curtain closed around her and medical team came to her aid, a hush developed around the hill as we worried the cheese would be awarded posthumously. However, after a rather tense 20 minutes or so, the curtains retreated, a cheer went up as the winner naturally looking rather dazed and confused stood up and greeted her cheese and the clicks of the assembled photographers. The men did not go unscathed either with the men’s winner having a brief moment of recovery before not only being given the cheese but the new world record which he took with considerable humility. The previous record winner, a local, taking the loss with good nature but as he appeared each year to regale in his honour, the new winner hailing from Washington State, USA his regular challenge might be a challenge…but such is the international nature of this event now.

Roll back to the 90s!

Back in 1996 I met up with some old Uni friends who after even after seeing the carnage of previous attempts roped themselves and me into the race. To be honest either due to fortune, folly or favour, I do not recall making it right to the bottom; pretty sure they did; but at least I can claim to have done it. A boast that wins considerable kudos amongst the 1000s who now watch on in disbelief.  Certainly, watching it from the bottom up is far more anxiety inducing than watching it from the top I can attest.

Much of the custom appears to be the same, the curiously attired master of ceremonies, the cheeses and races and the equally crazy run and finally crawl up the hill. The one thing I didn’t notice was the distribution of sweets. This certainly happened at the top of the hill when I attended and either I missed it or its gone. I would not be surprised it has vanished; the large numbers of spectators make it bit unlikely small children would be at the top ready to scramble for them.

I was not aware of any injuries when I went but only a few years earlier in 1993 it was noted that 15 people were injured, four seriously so and only three years after I went, in 1999 the council banned it, but a small group defied the ban and moved the race to earlier in the day to allay the councils fears over the sobriety of the participants. It worked and as Steve Roud (2005) notes in The English Year:

“Oddly enough, this was just in a time when the custom was becoming popular with the national press, who now report on it each year, usually accompanied by a piece on the eccentricities of the English. Now that its fame has spread, the event attracts entrants from far and wide, and seems ilittle danger of being allowed to lapse.”

Cheesed off!

However, Roud spoke too soon for in 2009 perhaps the inevitable did happen. Health and safety again unsurprisingly raised its head and it was officially cancelled. There was no rolling in 2009 and it seemed like the end. However, you cannot keep a good roll down and the next year a smaller event was organised by an unusual alliance of journalists and locals. Such that in 2011 when locals Candis Phillips and Sara Stevens bought their own four cheeses, as the company who had donated them had been prevented from doing so due to the legality of the situation, the event thus running without management. Around 500 people turned up and interestingly no injuries were reported: A former winner being quoted as saying:

“No-one’s going to stop us doing it. They say it’s not official, but we are all Brockworth people, and we’re running cheese today, so it is official. We strongly believe in it.”

A ‘Save the Cheese Roll’ campaign was started and the revival and global fame built and built. Only a major pandemic would stop it in 2020 and 2021, returning yet again in its rather spontaneous fashion unusually on Sunday 5 June 2022 due to the Jubilee celebrations.

So since the late 90s the fame of the cheese rolling has grown perhaps as a result of its near banning; such responses often result, such that it has become festival like. Thousands of onlookers crowd the banks either side of the ‘track’ and on the hill sides below, which incidentally give a remarkable unblocked view where the chases appear to tumble like dominos down the near vertical slope. Yet despite this fame and notoriety it remains unfettered by commercialism. There are no Cheese rolling T shirts. No mugs. No merchandise at all. Plenty of people come dressed up in a cheese fashion including some rather fetching cheese hats, but there is no attempt to make money from the event. To over commercialise it bar the car parking that is perhaps! In 1996 parking nearby was relatively easy and above the hill; now all roads are blocked and attendance does require a lengthy uphill pilgrimage.

Custom demised: May Day in Huntingdonshire

Villages across the country of course still celebrate May day, but it is interesting to note how widespread it was within certain counties. A contributor to the third series of the Notes and Queries records that:

“In the village of Glatton, May-day is observed by the election of Queen of the May, and the making of the garland. The garland is of a pyramidal shape, and in this respect resembles the old milk-maid’s garland; it is composed of crown-imperials, tulips, anemones, cowslips, kingcups, daffodils, meadow-orchis, wallflowers, primroses, lilacs, laburnums, and as many roses and bright flowers as the season may have produced. These, with the addition of green boughs, are made into a huge pyramidal nosegay, from the front of which a gaily-dressed doll stares vacantly at her admirers. This doll is intended to represent Flora. From the base of the nosegay hang ribbons, handkerchiefs, pieces of silk, and any other gay-coloured fabric that can be borrowed for the occasion. The garland is carried by the two maids of honour to the May queen who place their hands beneath the nosegay, and allow the gay-coloured streamers to fall towards the ground. The garland is thus some six feet high.”

The contributor records the following song, sung by “the Mayers” on May-day, 1865, in the village of Denton and Chaldecote, when they went round with their “garland”:

“Here comes us poor Mayers all,

And thus do we begin,

To lead our lives in righteousness,

For fear we should die in sin.

To die in sin is a dreadful thing,

To die in sin for nought;

It would have been better for us poor souls If we had never been born.”

    Good morning, lords and ladies,  It is the first of May;

    I hope you’ll view the garland,

      For it looks so very gay.

    The cuckoo sings in April,

      The cuckoo sings in May,

    The cuckoo sings in June,

      In July she flies away.

    Now take a Bible in your hand,

      And read a chapter through;

    And when the day of judgment comes

      The Lord will think of you.”–

Another correspondent records that:

“It is the custom at Warboys for certain of the poor of the parish to be allowed to go into Warboys Wood on May-day morning for the purpose of gathering and taking away bundles of sticks. It may possibly be a relic of the old custom of going to a wood in the early morning of May-day for the purpose of gathering May-dew.”

Whilst similar customs do survive the extent of May day customs in the county indicates how widespread such traditions were and for whatever reason, such traditions were lost!