Bringing home the bacon: The Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory

Dunmow* is known throughout the world and history as being the English town where the curious but ancient custom of the Dunmow Flitch takes place.  This ancient ceremony is when couples come into the town, and, in front of a judge and jury, try to persuade a court of law that for a year and a day they haven’t wished themselves unwed.  If they win the court case, and persuade the judge and jury of their love for each other, then they win a ‘flitch of bacon’ (a large side of cured pig).  The court is quasi-formal with a proper judge, jury and barristers.  However, all is not as it seems as the legal proceedings are very light-hearted with  one barrister defending the Pig, and the other for the couple.  Any couple who wins the Flitch is said to be ‘bringing home the bacon’ and is carried aloft on the ancient Dunmow Flitch chair by the town’s ‘yeomans’ in a parade through the streets of Great Dunmow.

The Dunmow FlitchThe last Dunmow Flitch – in 2012 –
carrying the flitch of bacon through the town
before the Flitch Trials

This ancient custom was mentioned in medieval literature by both Geoffrey Chaucer  and William Langland towards the end of the 14th century.  Chaucer’s Canterbury’s Tales – The Wife of Bath’s Tale states

The bacon was nat fet for hem, I trowe, 
That som men han in Essex at Dunmowe.

William Langland’s Piers Plowman states

Though they go
to Dunmow,
they never fetch
the Flitch.

In the 20th century, the Dunmow Flitch – the side of cured bacon – was provided by the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory.  This was a large factory and employer of many people within Great Dunmow and surrounding areas until its closure in the 1980s.  Sometime in the 1920s or the 1930s, the owners of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory commissioned Willett’s of Great Dunmow to take photos of the workforce in action at the factory and thus create a unique set of postcards of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory.  As one of my readers pointed out on my post about Great Dunmow’s Berbice House school – why were these postcards produced? Who were they aimed at?  I cannot answer these questions, but I can show you the postcards of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory and flitches of bacon produced in the factory.

Dunmow Flitch Bacon FactoryDunmow Flitch of Bacon Factory (Exterior)

Dunmow Flitch Bacon FactoryDunmow Bacon Factory  – Pig Killing

Dunmow Flitch Bacon FactoryDunmow Bacon Factory – The Hanging Hall I. The child at the left of the picture looks to be about 12-14 years of age.

Dunmow Flitch Bacon FactoryDunmow Bacon Factory – Cleaving the pigs

Dunmow Flitch Bacon FactoryDunmow Bacon Factory – The Employees.  Is the person 3rd from the left a woman?

Dunmow Flitch Bacon FactoryDunmow Bacon Factory – The Hanging Hall II

Dunmow Flitch Bacon FactoryDunmow Bacon Factory – The Manager and Irish Employees. It is interesting that the Irish Employees are in a photograph separate from the other employees.

These postcards are incredible pieces of 20th century social history showing us the employees and the inside of the factory.  In addition to the inside of the factory, there are also in existence external photographs.  In 1928, an aeroplane flying the skies of Essex and Suffolk took the photo below of Great Dunmow.  The large building in the centre is Hasler’s Corn and Seed mill, and the low-lowing buildings to the right-edge of the photo is the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory.

Great Dunmow from the air, 1928Hasler and Company Corn and Seed Merchants, Great Dunmow. This photo is from English Heritage’s Britain from Above project. Click the photo to be taken directly to a zoomable image of this photo from their website.

Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory from the air in 1928Close-up of the Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory from the air in 1928.
To the left of the factory are the railway sidings running to
the factory from Dunmow’s station.

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*I use the word “Dunmow” with great care, because the medieval Dunmow Flitch originated in the tiny village of Little Dunmow and its pre-Reformation priory.  But in modern times – certainly since the Flitch’s revival in the nineteenth century – the ceremony has moved to the neighbouring larger town/village of Great Dunmow some three miles away from its original location.  There are two Dunmows – Great and Little.  In the Tudor records, Great Dunmow  was called “Much(e) Dunmow” and Little Dunmow was called “Dunmow Parva”. During my research on Great Dunmow, I have read many many accounts about the medieval/Tudor Dunmow from many commentators and even from well-known historians who fail to realise that there are two Dunmows. It annoys me intensely when I read “facts” about Tudor Great Dunmow, but the events actually took place in Little Dunmow (and vice versa).

Little Dunmow Priory

An artist’s impression of Dunmow Priory in 1820 (now part of Little Dunmow’s church) – the original home of the Dunmow Flitch.

Update February 2014: That well-known internet auction site currently has for sale the card “The Hanging Hall II”.  On that card, there is a postmark: 1 July 1910.  So my estimate (above) that these cards were from the 1920s is totally incorrect!  The set dates must date from sometime around 1910.

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You may also be interested in
– Interwar Great Dunmow from the air
– The Dunmow Flitch – Bringing home the bacon
– The 2012 Dunmow Flitch
– Berbice House School, Great Dunmow
– War and Remembrance: Great Dunmow’s Military Funeral 1914
– Great Dunmow’s 1914 Military Funeral: A followup
– The Willett family of Great Dunmow

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Interwar Great Dunmow from the air

In 1928, an aeroplane flying above the skies of East Anglia, took these incredible aerial photographs of Great Dunmow

Great Dunmow from the air, 1928St Mary’s Church, Churchend, Great Dunmow.  The churchyard is in the top left of the photo; the vicarage is opposite the entrance to the church.  Bottom right is the cluster of houses in Church Street.

Great Dunmow from the air, 1928The junction of Market Street and High Street, Great Dunmow.  The building at the top of the photograph (facing towards the camera) is the Starr Inn.  The Tudor Town Hall (dating from the 16th Century) is the large building (with 3 windows facing the camera) on the right just after the junction .

Great Dunmow from the air, 1928Hasler and Company Corn and Seed Merchants, Great Dunmow.  The tracks of the Bishops Stortford to Braintree branch line visible at the front of Hasler’s building. Chelmsford Road is the line of houses running horizontally across the photograph – with the fields & trees of Dunmow Park immediately behind the road.  Great Dunmow Park is the far edge of the site of the original medieval manor of Great Dunmow.  This manor was dower land given to Katherine of Aragon by Henry VIII when he married her in 1509.

Great Dunmow from the air, 1928Hasler and Company Corn and Seed Merchants, Great Dunmow.  The railway line was closed to passengers in 1952, and freight in 1971.  Great Dunmow’s bypass (the B1256) now follows the route of the railway line and the Flitch Way Country Park runs alongside.

All photos on this page appear by kind courtesy of English Heritage’s Britain from Above project. Click each photo to be taken directly to the Britain from Above website.

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This blog
If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following
(These posts have early 20th Century real photograph postcards of the areas covered in this page’s aerial photographs)
Queen Elizabeth’s Visit to Great Dunmow
Postcard home from the front
Medieval Wills and Religious Bequests
The Willet Family of Great Dunmow
Tudor Administration within Great Dunmow