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 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 of Bacon Factory (Exterior)

Dunmow Bacon Factory  – Pig Killing

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

Dunmow Bacon Factory – Cleaving the pigs

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

Dunmow Bacon Factory – The Hanging Hall II

Dunmow 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.

Hasler 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.

Close-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).

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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Thank you for reading this post.

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.

If you watched the recent BBC drama, The White Queen, and its bloody climax – the Battle of Bosworth Field – you would be forgiven for thinking that the battle took place during late autumn or even during early winter. For, according to the Beeb, a thick covering of fallen leaves lay on the battlefield floor and light snow covered the bridleways.

But the battle didn’t take place during winter.  It took place during the high summer of 1485 – on Monday, 22^nd August, to be precise.  On the 7^th August, Henry Tudor, soon to be crowned on a battlefield as King Henry VII, landed off the Welsh coast at Milford Haven. By late August, he was seven miles west of Leicester, near the village (or, in those days, the hamlet) of Market Bosworth.  Margaret Beaufort (born 1443, died 1509), the mother of Henry VII, recorded these momentous events in her Book of Hours.

‘August’ from The Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours (England, S. E. (London), c. 1430,
before 1443) shelfmark Royal 2 A XVIII f. 31v. (We do not know if this is her hand or if a scribe wrote the entries for her.)

The first left margin note in black reads

The day landed king harry the vijth at milford have[n] the yere of o[u]r lord vijth cccc lxxxv [1485]

The second left margin note reads

The day king harri the vijth won[n] the feeld [field] wher was slayn ki[n]g Richard the third Ao Do[m] 1485

The day before the battle, on the 21^st August, King Richard III, along with an army of 12,000, rode out from his temporary accommodation at the White Boar Inn in the city of Leicester and set up his overnight camp in a field on Ambion Hill.

Early 20^th Century etching of the Blue Boar Inn, Leicester. King Richard III spent the night of the 20^th August 1485 in the Inn. It is alleged that he left his bed behind in the inn – perhaps he thought that he’d be coming back to the inn after he had dispatched his enemy, Henry Tudor. A white boar was the personal emblem of Richard III.  Legend has it that the inn was originally called the ‘White Boar’ but after the battle and the death of Richard, the inn-keeper hastily changed the inn’s name to the Blue Boar.

By the end of that fateful day, 22^nd August 1485, King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets, lay dead on the battlefield.  And the Tudor dynasty began with King Henry VII crowned on Crown Hill in the nearby village of Stoke Golding by the treacherous Lord Thomas Stanley, the new king’s step-father.

King Richard III holds a council of war before the battle.

King Richard III’s trusty advisers.

The general area of the Battle of Bosworth Field.  These photos were taken in the early summer of 2013. In August 1485, it is likely that these fields had the remains of that year’s crops still in the ground.

The general area of the battle.  By the end of the battle, it is thought that approximately 1,000 men on Richard’s side lay dead on the field, along with 100 men from Henry Tudor’s forces.

Overlooking the general area of the battle-site.  The spire in the distance is the (post-medieval) church spire of Stoke Golding, near to which the first Tudor King of England was crowned.

1813 Monument to Richard III.  During the battle, the King drunk from the well that was located here.

The Fellowship of the White Boar’s plaque.

Legend has it that the dead king’s body was brought back to Leicester that same evening.  Stripped naked and devoid of any dignity or kingly regalia, his body was put on display for several days in Leicester.  His enemies (and, of course, his followers) could see for themselves that he really was dead and their new king was Henry VII. Shortly afterwards, he was buried quietly, without ceremony, in the church of the Greyfriars – a Franciscan monastic order.

Modern-day statue of Richard III in a park in Leicester.

Of course, over 520 years later, we now know this legend to be true.  King Richard III was indeed buried by the Franciscans in their monastery, where he lay undisturbed until his discovery in 2012.  I, like many other people around the world, was riveted to the television during the live press release by Leicester University in February 2013, when they confirmed to the waiting world that the body that they had found was indeed that of the last of the Plantagenets. As the Tudor kings of England had so rightly said, Richard III really did lyth buryed in Leicester.

Richard ye was sonne to Richard Duwke of yorke & brother un to kyng Edward ye iiijth Was kyng after hys brother & raynyd ij yeres & lyth buryed at leator [Leicester].  From Biblical and genealogical chronicle from Adam and Eve to Edward VI (England, S. E. (London or Westminster), c. 1511 with additions before 1553) shelfmark King’s 395 ff.32v-33

Watching the astonishing live press release – showing the perfect synergy of archaeology, genealogy, forensic science, and DNA science – was my small home educated son.  He was entranced by the news.  So, keen to capture his excitement, a few months later we headed north to Leicester for our most spine tingling School Trip Friday for academically challenged.

If Leicester’s one-way system had been in existence in 1485, then Richard III would never have made it out of the city and into the nearby villages and fields to meet his nemesis.  In the 21^st Century, guided by my trusty SatNav (who told me several times to ‘please take the 7^th exit’ as I repeatedly circled the city), I eventually managed to navigate my way into Leicester, ready for a weekend of finding Richard.  Trying to be as authentic as possible, I decided to stay in the exact location where Richard III had spent his second-to-last night on earth – the Blue Boar Inn.  Except, of course, the Blue Boar Inn has long been demolished and swept away, but in its place is another hostelry with ‘blue’ as its insignia.  Yes, my son and I stayed in the Travelodge – a modern 21^st Century inn built on the exact site of its predecessor, the Blue Boar Inn.

The Blue Boar Inn 2013 (aka Travelodge).  The area is continuing its medieval drunken past by being, in the 21st century, the weekend home of countless hen and stag parties. The location is now part of Leicester’s multi-lane one way system, and so my son and I spent two nights sleeping more-or-less on a massive roundabout, with the steady stream of all-night cars noisely whizzing around the city. 

As well as visiting the site of the Battle of Bosworth (and the wonderful Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre), we, of course, made our way into the centre of the city to find Richard at the temporary exhibition within the medieval guildhall.

My son comes face to face with a medieval king.

The spire of Leicester Cathedral, overlooking the medieval guildhall.

Leicester Cathedral and the Guildhall.

Looking in one direction: the precinct of the Cathedral. To take this photograph, I had to stand directly in the middle of the small road shown in the next photograph.

Looking in the opposite direction: the location of the Greyfriars monastery. Behind the building on the left, halfway down is the entrance to the council car park containing the mortal remains of King Richard III.  The distance between Richard’s original resting place for over 500 years is a mere stone’s throw from his proposed next resting place. Should he be moved a mere few hundred yards into Leicester cathedral? Or should he be moved a hundred miles to be reburied in York?

Inside The Car Park. The forbidding green gates, with their modern-day graffeti and barbed-wire tops, .

The car park is tiny – a lot smaller then it appears on the television.  Georgian and Victorian buildings surround the space.  With five centuries of urban building-work, it truly is a miracle that the exact location of Richard III’s was left, in the main, undisturbed.  At some point during the Victorian period, builders managed to sever the king’s feet as they were not recovered with the remains of the rest of his body in 2012.

A temporary marque protects the grave of the five-hundred years dead king.  The building in the background is Alderman Newton’s grammar school, which will eventually become part of the new Richard III Visitors’ Centre.  If this building had been built even 50 yards further forward, then we would have lost Richard’s grave forever.

The grave of King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets.  The only king of England to die in battle, since Harold died in a hale of arrows in 1066. Stripped naked and buried without a shroud, with his hands tied after death, Richard was stuffed into a shallow grave which was too short for him.

Seeing Richard’s grave was spine-tingling – we so nearly lost him forever to urban development.  Eventually the site of his original grave will become part of a beautiful garden next to the new Visitors’ Centre.  However, seeing the grave in the setting of a stark and bare council car park was an experience I will never forget.

The quiet serenity and beauty of Leicester Cathedral. Will this be Richard’s final resting place?

Richard, Duke of Gloucester.  Born 2^nd October 1452 at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire; died 22^nd August 1485, Bosworth Field, Leicester.
King of England 1483-1485.  Buried 1485 to 2012 in Greyfriars monastery, Leicester.
His current location is known only by the University of Leicester.

What do you think about the search and discovery of Richard III?
Where should his final resting place be?
Please do leave your thoughts in the Comments box below.

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Notes
Images from the British Library’s collection of Medieval Manuscripts are marked as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions in accordance with the British Library’s Reuse Guidance Notes for the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Richard III – ‘I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not’
– School Trip Friday – Of cabbages and kings
– Shakespeare’s version of King Richard III
– Richard III lyth buryed at Leicester
– Elizabeth of York

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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

St 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.

The 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 .

Hasler 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.

Hasler 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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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

When fellow local historian, Austin Reeve, read my post about Great Dunmow’s Through all the changing seasons and the comments about the local boarding school, Berbice House, it prompted him to get in touch with me and send me 6 postcard images of the school. Adding his images to my own collection means that today I can bring you 9 photographs of Berbice House boarding school from the 1950s.

This boarding school was located on Great Dunmow’s Causeway at the place where today’s roundabout to Godfrey Way is located. The school building was demolished during the 1970s or the 1980s – and now, in its place is Godfrey Way (named after one of the heads of Berbice House School), a large winding road to the top of a hill containing hundreds of houses. There is turning off Godfrey Way, called ‘Berbice Lane’ – named after the school. Prior to the school being located in the building shown in the first photograph, during the 1940s, it was located in the Clock House.

Then

The Clockhouse – sometime during the early part of the 19th century.

Now

The Clockhouse – Summer 2013 – from the same location as the Edwardian postcard.

The top of the church steeple – visible from the highest point on Godfrey Way. The sun-scorched yellow fields of Stebbing in the distance.

Godfrey Way – looking back down the hill to where Berbice House once stood.

Godfrey Way and the fields of Stebbing in the distance.

Do you have any photos of your time at Berbice House School?
If so, please do contact me

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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

– Great Dunmow – Through all the changing seasons
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Pre-Reformation English church clergy
– Medieval Essex dialect
– Henry VIII’s Lay Subsidy 1523-1524
– The Tudor witches of Essex
– Building a medieval church steeple
– Great Dunmow’s Medieval manors

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

The birth of a new child – a child who will one day be king of Great Britain – is an exciting event.  Today, I, along with seemingly all the tourists and City workers in London, headed towards the Tower of London to watch the 62 gun salute from Gun Wharf, overlooking the river Thames.

Why 62 gun salute?
– 21 for a royal celebration
– 20 because the Tower of London is a royal palace
– 21 because the Tower of London is in the City of London

The Honourable Artillery Company performed this honour of producing a grand total of 62 earth-shattering, ear-splitting gun shots which all resounded around the Tower to the applause and appreciation of the waiting crowd.

© Essex Voice Past 2013

Saturday 14 July 2012 was the date of the latest Dunmow Flitch: the ancient English tradition of couples proving their mutual love for each other in a court of law and thus winning (or losing) a side of bacon.  My previous post, The Dunmow Flitch: bringing home the bacon, gives the background to the Flitch trials and has images of The Dunmow Flitch’s past: from the fourteenth century (during the days of William Langland’s Piers Plowman and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales) to the nineteenth and twentieth century.  Today’s post contains images of yesterday’s Flitch Trials: a very modern twenty-first century celebration of this ancient custom.

Five couples each were separately tried by a court comprising of a judge, barristers (two for The Claimants and two for The Pig/Bacon) and a jury of six maidens and six bachelors. One trial was in the morning, two in the afternoon, and a further two in the evening.  My images are of the two couples on trial for their marriage during the evening’s proceedings.

In the town before the evening’s trials

 After the trial, any successful claimants of the Flitch have to kneel ‘on pointed stones’ and swear the Flitch Oath. This van acted as the platform to hold the Judge, Court Chaplain and the successful Claimants so that they could kneel on ‘pointed stones’ and swear the Flitch Oath in full view of the watching town.

Shortly after 6:30pm, sturdy yeoman of the town carried the Flitch of Bacon and the empty Flitch chairs to the court-house in  Talberds Ley.  Successful Claimants are carried on these chairs back through the town after the trial.

Carrying the Flitch and empty chairs through the town before the trial.

The Flitch of Bacon.

The brand new Flitch Chair.  The chair was hand made by a 21 year-old student of Leeds College of Art.  He was a former pupil of the Helena Romanes school on Great Dunmow’s Parsonage Down.

The original Flitch chair is kept in the parish church in Little Dunmow and brought out for the Dunmow Flitch.

Members of the Court. In the front, the Court Usher and the Clerk of the Court; followed by the four barristers (including BBC Essex’s Dave Monk).  At the back, the Court Chaplain, the Reverend Canon David Ainge (the current vicar of Great Dunmow’s St Mary’s church).

Reverend Canon David Ainge, the vicar of Great Dunmow, latest in a long line of distinguished vicars of Great Dunmow; followed by the Judge, Michael R Chapman.

In the court-room

The Court Usher, the Judge and the Court Chaplain before the trial.

The swearing in of the jury: 6 maidens and 6 bachelors.

The swearing in of the first of the evening’s Flitch Claimants.

The shenanigans of the barristers: two are for the Claimants and the other two are for the Pig.  The Claimants have to prove that they have never ‘wished themselves unwed’ and are happily married.  The barristers for the Pig have to prove that they are not happily married and the Claimants are unworthy of winning the Pig.  (It’s all very light-hearted and funny – nothing too serious at all.)

The verdict from the jury for the first of the evening’s couples: they successfully fought their case!

The swearing in of the second couple.

Dave Monk vigorously defending the Pig.

Dave Monk taking extreme umbrage at comments the Judge made about his wife.

The verdict from the jury for the second of the evening’s couples: they also successfully fought their case!

The procession through the town to the location of Great Dunmow’s ancient market

Shortly before 10pm the Court moved in procession from the Court’s location in Talberds Ley, up through Stortford Road and then down into Market Street.

Great Dunmow’s Town Crier and Mayor.

Carrying the winners of the Flitch aloft.

The first couple kneeling on pointed stones whilst listening to the Flitch Oath and Sentence.

The second couple kneeling on pointed stones whilst listening to the Flitch Oath and Sentence.

The end of the day’s proceedings.

The Flitch Oath
You shall swear by the Custom of our Confession
That you never made any Nuptial Transgression
Since you were married Man and Wife
By Household Brawls or Contentious Strife
Or otherwise in Bed or at Board
Offended each other in deed or in word
Or since the Parish Clerk said Amen
Wished yourselves unmarried again
Or in a Twelvemonth and a day.
Repented not in thought any way
But continued true and in Desire
As when you joined Hands in holy Quire

The Sentence
If to these Conditions without all fear
Of your own accord you will freely swear
A Gammon of Bacon you shall receive
And bear it hence with love and good Leave
For this is our Custom at Dunmow well known
Though the sport be ours, the Bacon’s your own.

[This last line is normally said to great rousing cheers from the watching audience and the yeomen throwing their  caps in the air.]

If you liked this post, you may also like this
– The Dunmow Flitch: bringing home the bacon
– Thomas Bowyer, weaver and martyr of Great Dunmow d.1556

Copyright notice
This article is © Essex Voices Past 2012. Unless otherwise indicated, the images on this post are also © Essex Voices Past 2012.

This Saturday, 14 July 2012, heralds the much awaited ancient custom of The Dunmow Flitch whereby couples from all over Britain (and, in recent years, the world) come to Dunmow to persuade a formal court that they have not wished themselves unwed for a year and day.  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).  This court is very formal with a judge, jury and barristers: one barrister defends the Pig, and the other is 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 ‘yeomans’ in a parade through the streets of the town .  Once the parade arrives in the market place, the winners of the Flitch have to kneel on pointed stones and say The Oath.

The Flitch Oath
You shall swear by the Custom of our Confession
That you never made any Nuptial Transgression
Since you were married Man and Wife
By Household Brawls or Contentious Strife
Or otherwise in Bed or at Board
Offended each other in deed or in word
Or since the Parish Clerk said Amen
Wished yourselves unmarried again
Or in a Twelvemonth and a day.
Repented not in thought any way
But continued true and in Desire
As when you joined Hands in holy Quire

The Sentence
If to these Conditions without all fear
Of your own accord you will freely swear
A Gammon of Bacon you shall receive
And bear it hence with love and good Leave
For this is our Custom at Dunmow well known
Though the sport be ours, the Bacon’s your own.

[This last line is normally said to great rousing cheers from the watching audience.]

If you are in the area of North Essex, I do recommend watching one of these very funny and witty trials.  Sadly, this year’s trials will be without the lovely agony aunt Claire Rayner, who died in 2010.  She was always tremendous fun at the Trials and gave a wonderful performance to the audience.  It was fitting that during the last Dunmow Flitch in 2008, she and her husband took ‘home the bacon’ as they successfully fought their case that they hadn’t argued for a year and a day.  She will be much missed at this year’s Trials.

The ‘custom of the flitch’ appears to have started in the twelfth or thirteenth century by the prior of the priory at Little Dunmow – although no evidence has survived to verify this. The first recorded mention of the Flitch is by William Langland in his 1362 ‘The Vision of Piers Plowman’ and his contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer in his ‘Canterbury Tales’.  Both of these authors, writing in the fourteenth century, use words that imply that this custom was, at the time of their writings, well known.

In ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, Chaucer said

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

‘The Wife of Bath’ from Caxton’s second edition of The Canterbury Tales,
(circa last half fifteenth century) shelfmark G. 11586, fol. b5 v, © British Library Board.

In ‘The Vision of Piers Plowman’ Langland wrote

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

William Langland, Piers Plowman (England, 1st half of the 15th century)
shelfmark Harley 2376 f.1, © British Library Board.

Confusingly, there are two places next to each other in Essex called Dunmow:  Great Dunmow and Little Dunmow.  During the  medieval and Tudor period, Little Dunmow was normally styled as ‘Dunmow Parva ’ and Great Dunmow was ‘Muche Dunmow’.  It was within Dunmow Parva that there was Austin priory which, according the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, had the net value of £150 3s 4d.  The priory was dissolved in 1536 under the Act for the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries.  However, before it was dissolved, there is recorded instances of the Dunmow Flitch taking place at the Priory in 1445 and 1510.

During the eighteen century, the ancient custom of The Flitch was moved from the village of Little Dunmow to the nearby town of Great Dunmow where it is now held every four years.

British Pathé film archive
The Pathé film archive has some interesting silent film-reels of the Dunmow Flitches held in the 1920s at Ilford: 1920s Dunmow Flitch

Postcards and magazine articles

Dunmow Flitch

A Note on the Flitch Trials held between 1890-1906, and 1912-1913
Between the years 1890 to 1906, and 1912 to 1913, the Dunmow Flitch was held every year within the town and the events of the day reported in newspapers such as Essex County Chronicle, Essex Standard, Essex County Standard, Pall Mall Gazette, and The Sketch.  From these newspapers, the author Francis W Steer of the Essex Record Office in his book The History of the Dunmow Flitch Ceremony drew up a list of all those that took part in the Trials.  This list includes those that claimed the Flitch, members of the jury (young men and women of the area all under 18), barristers and judges.  The judge, barristers, and jury were all chiefly from Great Dunmow and its surrounding villages.

Sadly, these lists contain the names of sons, brothers, lovers, and husbands of many who marched away to war in 1914 never to return to home.  One such person was my grandfather’s cousin, Harold James Nelson Kemp, son of the James and Alice Kemp, first of the White Horse, then of the Royal Oak.  On the 1st August 1904 Harold was one of the young jurymen for the Flitch Trials held in a meadow near the Causeway in Great Dunmow.  On 28 May 1916, he was killed in action in German East Africa (now Zambia). His brother, Gordon Parnall Kemp, was killed in action the following year in the mud and gore of Passchendaele (the 3rd Battle of Ypres).

Mr J N Kemp of the Golden Lion, The Conge, Great Yarmouth for many years resident in Dunmow has received information from the British South Africa Co that his son Harold has been killed in action with the Northern Rhodesian Force.  Harold was educated at the Dunmow Church Schools.  He started in life with the late Mr F J Snelland at his death continued with Mr Gifford, under whose instructions he became very proficient and acting on Mr Gifford’s advice obtained a situation in the Council offices at Sidcup where his instructions stood him in good steed.  From there he joined the R.S.A. Police and became the manager of the Police Review.  When he had served his time he obtained a good situation with Messrs. Arnold and Co of Salisbury and London.  On the outbreak of the war he volunteered for active service and now, alas, his end.  He was a member of the Dunmow church choir from his school days up to the time of his leaving Dunmow and he will be remembered as singing solo in the old church the Sunday before his departure for South Africa.
                                                                          From Essex Chronicle 9 June 1916

Mr J N Kemp for many years a resident at Dunmow and now of Yarmouth has received the sad news that his second son, Gordon, has been killed in action in France.
                                                                 From Essex Chronicle 19 October 1917

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– The Dunmow Flitch Trials 2012

Copyright notice
This article is © Essex Voices Past 2012. Unless otherwise indicated, the images on this post are also © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Update 19 June 2012: thegentleauthor of Spitalfields Life has today published my story with more accompanying photos: The Coles of Brushfield Street

I have long resisted the temptation to publish any stories from my own non-Essex family history on my blog.  But today, because of this post with images of Spitalfields Market and Brushfield Street on the delicious Spitalfields Life blog and the recent BBC programme about the market traders of New Spitalfields Market, I can resist no longer.  For the first time on my blog, I will be publishing a non-Essex story from the Victorian period. Although, if you persevere to the end of this post, you will see how this post is most definitely related to my interest in the local history of Great Dunmow.

I must be among a very rare number of 21^st Century Londoners who can visit the East London home of my ancestors and walk in their steps.  Many of my Victorian ancestors lived in the street of Bishopsgate in the City of London and its neighbouring street, Brushfield Street. Whilst I can no longer visit my ancestors’ substantial Victorian Bishopsgate home and factory, as it was compulsory purchased and swept away in the 1880s by the powerful Great Eastern Railway so they could build the mighty Great Eastern Hotel in its place, I can still visit my ‘ancestral’ home  in Brushfield Street on the edge of Spitalfields Market.  This market is an ancient market that lies on the edge of City of London and for centuries, was THE fruit and veg market of London. Sadly, now, as is the fate of many other ancient markets, it is the home of swanky boutiques, shops and posh eateries with house-prices to match.  If you want to read about the history of the area, then I do recommend the Spitalfields Life blog.

One of the major roads next to Spitalfields Market is Brushfield Street.   Up until the 1870s, Brushfield Street’s name was ‘Union Street East’.  Halfway down, on the right-hand side is a parade of shops all dating from the 18th century.  Many readers of my blog may be familiar with the restored lovely Victorian frontage of the food shop A Gold and the next door women’s fashion shop, Whistles.

Restored shop front of A. Gold, Brushfield Street

Brushfield Street

If you do know these two shops, have you ever looked up above their signage and spotted a small plaque on the wall in between the two?  This is a plaque from 1871 marking the Christchurch Middlesex parish boundary.

Christchurch Parish Boundary marker in Brushfield Street

And here is the same plaque from a photo I took about 20 years ago before the area was redeveloped.

Brushfield Street

Brushfield Street in the late 1990s

There on the wall for all of London to see, is the name of my great-great grandfather, R. A. Cole!

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Robert Andrew Cole was a grocer and tea-dealer – living above his shop and trading from the shop which is now Whistles.   Robert Andrew, along with his wife, Sarah Elizabeth (nee Ollenbuttel) and their five children, William, Sarah, Margaret, Robert and Arthur, all lived in Brushfield Street/Union Street East for some 30 years from the 1850s until the 1880s when the market was redeveloped and Robert Andrew Cole retired to Walthamstow.  As an aside, I do find it ironic that today’s swanky redeveloped Spitalfields Market is now known as Old Spitalfields Market.  In Robert Andrew Cole’s day, it was a brand spanking new, and perhaps an unwanted market with posh new buildings!  Its very existence and construction was probably one of the reasons why the Coles gave up their shop and retired to the countryside of Walthamstow.

For many years, Robert Andrew Cole was also a churchwarden of the nearby stunning Hawksmoor church, Christchurch, Spitalfields and also the Governor and Director of the Poor of the parish of Christchurch Spitalfields.  So he must have been amongst some of the wealthiest of this poor east London parish.   In circa 1869-1870, Union Street East was renamed to Brushfield Street, and it is possibly the renaming of this street which lead to the church boundary being marked in the wall in 1871.  Hence  churchwarden R. A. Cole’s name was recorded for posterity in the brick-work and fabric of Brushfield Street.  He must have been a very proud man when his name was unveiled!

Brushfield Street with Hawksmoor’s Christ Church in the background

However, despite their standing in the community, the Cole’s time in Brushfield Street was not an entirely happy time.  Two of the Cole children, Sarah Elizabeth and William Henry, succumbed to a devastating outbreak of scarletina– at that time a deadly infectious disease for many who caught it.   Both children were buried in Tower Hamlets Cemetery on 2^nd August 1857.  William was aged only 22 months and Sarah was a month short of her 4^th birthday.  One can only imagine the pain and horror of their parents along with their fear and hope that their only surviving child, Robert, then aged 5, wouldn’t also fall victim to this terrible disease.  This must have been an awful time for this one Victorian family living in the shadows of Christchurch Spitalfields and the fruit and veg market.  However, their son Robert, didn’t become another victim (for, if he had, I wouldn’t be writing their story, as he’s my great-grandfather).  Eight months after burying their two children, a new child, Margaret was born, and a further year later, Arthur was born.  Sadly, Margaret also didn’t survive childhood and once again, in 1869, this small family of Union Street East buried one of their own in one of the two Cole family graves in Tower Hamlets Cemetery.

I have often pondered the fate of this small east-end family.  Of the five children, only two survived into adulthood, and of those two, only one had children of his own.  Arthur Cole died a bachelor in his 50s and was buried in the second Cole family grave in Tower Hamlets cemetery alongside his mother, grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles – true Londoners who had worked, lived and died in the eastend of the 18th and 19th century.  Robert Andrew Cole, grocer and tea-dealer of Spitalfields Market, was buried in the same grave as his three children who hadn’t survived childhood.  Robert Cole, the only child of Robert Andrew and Sarah Elizabeth Cole who went on to marry and father his own children, married Louisa Parnall.  Louisa was a member of a fantastically successful Welsh family of industrialists and philanthropists who had a substantial Victorian clothes-making factory on Bishopsgate:  the Parnalls of Carmarthenshire and Bishopsgate.

As I said at the start of this post, it is not often a 21st century person can visit the home their Victorian ancestors within the East End of London.  However, not only can I visit my ancestors home, but I can also see them and almost feel and touch them.   Here are three members of the Cole family of Spitalfields Market in their Sunday-best finery, captured forever through the lens of the east-end photographer, Elias Gottheil, sometime in the mid 1860s.

Robert Andrew Cole, born 10 February 1819, Anthony Street, St George in the East, east London, baptised 7 March 1819 in the parish church of St George in the East.  Married 25 December 1850 St Thomas’ Church, Stepney to Sarah Elizabeth Ollenbuttel. Died March 1895 in Walthamstow. Buried in one of two Cole family graves in Tower Hamlets Cemetery. Grocer and tea-dealer of Spitalfields Market for over 30 years. Upper churchwarden of Christchurch Spitalfields c1870-74, member of several parish committees such as the committee founded by G. Fournier in the 1840s to carry out charity-work, and Governor and Director of the poor of the parish.

Robert Cole – eldest child of Robert Andrew and Sarah Elizabeth (nee Ollenbuttel) Cole, born 4 May 1852 in Tunbridge Wells (I have no idea why he was born here).  Married 11 January 1880 in St Thomas, Mile End Old Town to Louisa Parnall (great-niece of Robert and Henry Parnall of Bishopsgate).  Died 17 June 1927 in Raynes Park, South London.  Buried in Putney Vale Cemetery, London.  Grocer and teadealer.

Margaret Cole, baptised 28 March 1858 at Christchurch Spitalfields.  Buried 20 January 1869 in Tower Hamlets Cemetery aged 11 years.  The child in this photo looks to be about 7 or 8 years old, which dates all three photos to approximately the mid 1860s.

Robert Cole

Louisa Parnall

Robert Cole and Louisa Parnall.  Tintype photos possibly taken at their betrothal, before their January 1880 marriage.   It was Louisa Parnall’s sister, Alice Parnall, who along with her husband, James Nelson Kemp, left East London to live in Great Dunmow, first in the White Horse and then the Royal Oak.  And, whilst I was researching the  Parnall family and the Kemps of Great Dunmow in the Essex Record Office, I stumbled across the town’s Tudor churchwarden accounts and thus sparked the flame of my passion in discovering the lost voices of Tudor Great Dunmow.

If you are ever fortunate enough to be in the Spitalfields Market area of East London, take a stroll down Brushfield Street and look at the plaque there marking the parish boundary of Christchurch, Middlesex.  Then look into the windows of Whistles women’s clothes shop and imagine the Victorian tragedy and triumph that went on between those four walls and the drama of the daily family life of the grocer and tea-dealer, Robert Andrew and Sarah Elizabeth Cole.

(c) Essex Voices Past 2012

Parsonage Downs is an area in the north of the town of Great Dunmow.  As these pictures shows, it is one of the prettiest areas of Great Dunmow.

In medieval times, the area was dominated by the manor of Newton Hall (owned then by Mr Kynwelmarshe).  In more recent times, in the first part of the twentieth century, Newton Hall was owned by Julian Byng, 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy.  Lord Byng unveiled Great Dunmow’s War Memorial in July 1921.  Today, many younger Great Dunmowians will know this  area very well as the site of their school – the Helena Romanes Secondary School.

All photos below were taken on Good Friday 2012 by The Narrator. © Essex Voices Past.

Edwardian Parsonage Downs, Great Dunmow.  All postcards below are in the personal collection of The Narrator.  Newton Hall postcard was posted in 1905.  The second postcard below is a similar view to the second photo above.

Genealogist Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers runs a great website for genealogists. He suggests ‘Daily Blogging Prompts’ to help inspire bloggers to write genealogical posts.  His prompt ‘Thankful Thursday’ is all about expressing gratitude for someone/something connected to your own personal family history.   My own ‘someone’ was Great Dunmow’s 1960s & 70s local historian, Dorothy Dowsett.

No local history of Great Dunmow is complete without reference to her work.  She was a lifelong resident of Great Dunmow and had vast knowledge about her home town which she shared in her local history books and articles in the local magazine, Essex Countryside.  I owe Dorothy Dowsett’s work a debt of gratitude both for my academic research on my dissertation into Tudor & Reformation Great Dunmow and also for her work on Edwardian and early 1900s Great Dunmow.

Amazingly, in one of her books on Great Dunmow, Through all the changing seasons, I found a photo of my grandfather’s aunt, uncle and their children (my grandfather’s cousins), the Kemps of the White Horse pub and the Royal Oak, Great Dunmow.   She was a contemporary of my grandfather’s cousins, and I would have loved to have sat and talked to her about them.  Particularly to hear her memories of Gordon and Harold Kemp, two sons of Great Dunmow, tragically killed in the Great War.

So my own ‘Through all the changing Seasons’ is dedicated to the memory of Great Dunmow’s local historian, Dorothy Dowsett.

St Mary the Virgin and Church End, Great Dunmow,
February 2012, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Dr’s Pond, Great Dunmow,
December 2010, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Lime Tree Hill, leading down to Church End, Great Dunmow,
February 2012, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Overlooking Merks Hall and Stebbing, from The Causeway, Great Dunmow,
February 2012, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

St Mary the Virgin, Great Dunmow,
Spring 2011, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

On the road between Bigods and the church at Church End, Great Dunmow,
Spring 2011, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Bigods (Alfrestons) Farmhouse and spring lambs, Great Dunmow,
Spring 2011, © Essex Voices Past 2012.

Great Dunmow local history books
Dowsett, D., Dunmow Through The Ages (Letchworth, 1968).
Dowsett, D., Through all the changing seasons (1975).

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You may also be interested in the following
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Pre-Reformation English church clergy
– Medieval Essex dialect
– Henry VIII’s Lay Subsidy 1523-1524
– The Tudor witches of Essex
– Building a medieval church steeple
– Great Dunmow’s Medieval manors

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.