Folklore of Essex

by Sylvia Kent

  In centuries past, it was traditional in upper-class circles to give gifts on this day. There are interesting well-documented diary notes by Samuel Pepys – a regular visitor to Essex – complaining of the expense of being obliged to buy Valentine’s Day gifts for lady friends, comprising expensive silk stockings and gloves.

  When people lived in the county’s smaller, more close-knit communities and the population was less mobile, the chances of already knowing one’s future spouse were high. In Harlow, High Roding and Chelmsford, the following verse is known to have been sung on Valentine’s Day:

  Good morrow, Valentine!

  God bless you ever.

  If you’ll be true to me

  I’ll be the like to thee,

  Old England for ever.

  Shrovetide

  The date of the Christian festival of Easter is fixed by the phases of the moon and can shift around by almost a month. The three days before the Lenten fast starts on Ash Wednesday were known as Shrove Sunday, Collop Monday – when fried ‘collops’ or slices of meat were eaten – and Shrove Tuesday, so named because it was the day on which Christians received absolution for confessing or ‘shriving’ their sins.

  On Shrove Tuesday, after a church service, there was pre-Lenten jollity in feasting on the kind of food which was forbidden in Lent. This took the form of pancakes made from any perishable food left in the cupboard, which was forbidden in the forthcoming strict fast. Eva Baxter remembers that, when she was a little girl in Great Warley before the First World War, she was told that eating three pancakes on Shrove Tuesday would bring good luck for the coming twelve months.

  In parts of North Essex, village sports and general merrymaking took place on Shrove Tuesday. Today, pancake races are held in some areas. In Billericay’s new Archer Hall, Sheila Bailey, a member of the Emmanuel church, organises teams of pancake racers – of all ages – who toss pancakes in an attempt to win a prize and the Emmanuel Pancake Plaque.

  This is an old rhyme from Great Dunmow:

  Shrovetide is nigh at hand

  And I be come a’shroving;

  Pray, dame, give something,

  An apple, or a dumpling.

  Ash Wednesday was the start of forty days of austerity leading up to Easter. During this period, Sundays were not counted as part of Lent but as days of normality or even celebration. Today, as in the past, many people give something up for Lent.

  Lenten charities and doles were common in the sixteenth century. At Clavering in 1537, John Thakes directed that barrels of white and red herrings should be given to the poor of the village to help feed them over the forty-day fast and a similar herring bequest was left by Lord Rich to Felsted and two adjoining parishes. Rich also founded Felsted School in 1564 and, two years later, set up a foundation to build almshouses.

  March

  St David’s (Dewi) Day

  A tradition associated with 1 March, St David’s (Dewi) Day, is the wearing of one of the national symbols of Wales: a leek, worn in the hatband, or a daffodil, worn in the buttonhole. Just after the Second World War, there was an inflow of Welsh teaching staff, particularly to Ilford, Barking, Dagenham and surrounding schools, and former pupils remember their teachers sporting a daffodil marking their national day.

  Mothering Sunday

  This day occurs in the middle of Lent and is now universally celebrated. Originally, at a time when many young Essex girls were in service and boys had live-in farm jobs, people were given the day off to visit their families and attend their village church service. Even at the beginning of the last century, Mrs Minnie Heseltine, wife of the wealthy squire at Goldings in Great Warley, would make sure that her maids and farm workers took a simnel cake home to their families. There is an old Essex rhyme that mentions this traditional cake:

  I’ll to thee a Simnel bring,

  ’Gainst thou go a-mothering,

  So that when she blesseth thee,

  Half that blessing thou’lt bring me.

  Easter

  It seems odd that Good Friday, which commemorates Christ’s crucifixion and is the most mournful day in the Christian calendar, has become a cheerful public holiday in much of the UK. Jon Ellis, who spent much of his childhood in Brentwood, recalled that ‘Years ago, most of the shops in the High Street were shut on Good Friday as a mark of respect, but these days nearly every shop is open for business’. The tradition of closing on Good Friday prevailed in many high streets around Essex until recent times. Many people still consider Good Friday to be the traditional start of the growing year and on allotments and vegetable patches all over the county, enthusiastic gardeners prepare their soil in readiness for sowing parsley and peas and planting potatoes.

  Across Essex, as in many other places, hot cross buns are traditionally eaten on this day. It was once believed that any buns that were left over would remain fresh forever because they were marked with the holy cross:

  Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns!

  One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns!

  Give them to your daughters, give them to your sons.

  One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns!

  An unusual tradition that goes back 100 years is known as ‘hanging the hot cross bun’ and takes place in the fifteenth-century Bell Inn in the heart of the lovely little village of Horndon-on-the-Hill. The custom started at the beginning of the last century, when Jack Turnell took over the pub. It was Good Friday and Jack marked the occasion by hanging a hot cross bun from a beam in the saloon bar. The tradition continued even during the Second World War, when a concrete bun bore witness to the shortage of food. Now, the large collection of hanging buns is part of the decor of this ancient inn. The practice continues every Good Friday, with the oldest person in the village – or at least the oldest available on the day – being ceremoniously hoisted up to ‘hang the bun’, to tremendous applause.

  A century ago, communal skipping was a traditional Good Friday custom in the Saffron Walden area, as it is today on the promenade at Scarborough and other places in England, where everyone joins in to skip with huge ropes until dusk.

  In towns and villages across Essex, morning church services are held on Good Friday, followed by church processions. Members of Churches Together in Billericay, carrying crosses and banners, customarily take part in the moving, Silent Walk of Witness, which winds its way through the High Street. At the lovely Emmanuel church, members remove the greenery from the huge Christmas tree that has been cut and formed into a cross. This bare cross is then decorated with white lilies prior to the Easter Sunday service of worship.

  Easter has the most important religious significance in the Church calendar but in Essex this festival is celebrated in secular ways, such as egg rolling or pacing. ‘Pace eggs’ or ‘peace eggs’ derive from Pasche, the Latin-based medieval word for Easter. This tradition was once associated with folk in the north of England. In recent years, Easter egg hunts are organised around the county and are a regular occurrence in Colchester, Chelmsford, Clacton and Southend.

  The predominant custom at Easter is the giving and receiving of chocolate eggs. These were not available to Essex families during the Second World War due to rationing (which did not end until February 1953) but in Dagenham, Mary Bray made sure her five young daughters enjoyed their Easter breakfast:

  During the war, when it was impossible to get hold of chocolate eggs for the children at Easter, we used to hard-boil hens’ eggs, and add onion-skins to make them yellow, cochineal to make them red or pink. A popular custom also was to ‘blow’ eggs by inserting a needle through the top part of the shell and the bottom, blow the contents through a hole in the bottom and then the children decorated them.

  Sheila Bailey with the cross decorated for Easter Sunday at Emmanuel church, Billericay.

  Lady Day

  Lady Day, 25 March, was an important date in the farming calendar until the twentieth century, as Essex was regarded very much as an agricultural county. Lady Day is the first of four trad
itional English quarter days in the year, the days when farm rents were paid and legal transactions took place. It takes its name from the Feast of the Annunciation. Before 1752, when the country moved from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, it was also the start of the year. A vestige of this remains in the United Kingdom’s tax year, which starts on 6 April, i.e. Lady Day adjusted for the lost days of the calendar change.

  April

  April Fool’s Day

  This custom is celebrated universally and BBC Essex usually devotes part of its programme to April fool topics on this day. People in Essex enjoy practical jokes and hoaxing by the media has come to be expected at this time. If you fall for them, you are an April Fool – but only until midday. As the old rhyme goes, ‘April Fool’s Day’s past and gone; you’re the fool for making one!’

  St George’s Day

  On 23 April, Essex, along with the rest of England, celebrates the feast day of St George, that enigmatic Christian soldier who was killed for his faith on 23 April 303 at Lydda, Palestine, so the legend tells us. St George was reputed to have rescued the daughter of the King of Silene when she was in danger of being a sacrificial victim offered to a dragon which was devouring the people. When St George arrived on his white horse, he beheaded the dragon with his sword and saved the princess. The legend of St George and the Dragon is believed to date back to the twelfth century but John Aubrey, writing in the 1680s, was doubtful about the authenticity of the story:

  To save a mayd, St George the Dragon slew,

  A pretty tale if all is told be true,

  Most say there are no dragons; and this say’d

  There was no George; Pray God there was a Mayd!

  The stained-glass window at St Andrew’s church at Wormingford shows St George rescuing a maiden from a crocodile. He is credited with performing miracles. On St George’s Day, the Billericay Mayflower Morrismen celebrate by enacting a mumming play with all the traditional characters, such as St George, the Doctor and the Turkish Knight.

  Since the new millennium, there have been repeated attempts to persuade English people to celebrate St George’s Day by flying flags or wearing a rose, and frequent newspaper complaints about the lack of a national holiday. Local celebrations were fairly common in the 1930s but faded out again after the Second World War. The flag of St George – a red cross on a white ground – has been taken over by English football fans as a national symbol.

  Increasingly, many Essex residents hoist the English flag and patriotic Essex people wear a rose in their buttonhole. Aubrey Temple from the Royal Society of St George’s Wickford branch joins other Essex members in attending local church services, followed by a trip to London’s Cenotaph, where a wreath is laid. Younger branch members join navy, army and Air Training Corps cadets in a march down Whitehall, followed by a service at Westminster Abbey.

  May

  May Day

  The first day of May, formerly the Roman feast of Floralia and later the Celtic Beltane festival, is widely considered to be one of the most magical days of the year and was probably celebrated by the Romans in Essex.

  There are many superstitious beliefs connected with the beginning of May. For example, it is thought that the crown of thorns placed on Christ’s head during the crucifixion came from the hawthorn (crataegus) or May tree. May blossom was therefore never brought into the home, as it was felt to be unlucky. The sickly smell of the blossom is said to be similar to the smell that pervaded London during the Great Plague in 1665, from which many fled into neighbouring Essex.

  Although May seems to have attracted this doleful history, there are in Essex more optimistic ceremonies. In Colchester, branches of May blossom were given to newly married couples to ensure protection against witches, while babies’ cradles were often adorned with its early blossom. Certainly, it brings the Essex countryside alive with sweeping white flowers along our beautiful lanes.

  With its origins in paganism, the May Day festival was temporarily abandoned in England in the mid-seventeenth century after the Puritans banned it and burned all the maypoles. However, the popularity of the event ensured its revival a few years later.

  Enid Brown remembers a childhood verse sung on May Day at Basildon, between the two world wars, long before the huge housing estate was built:

  May Day at Great Burstead in 1913.

  The First of May is Garland Day

  So please remember the garland

  We don’t come here but once a year

  So please remember the garland.

  Many older Essex folk remember the May Day festivities of their youth. Enid Brown remembers how some of the locals took a growing tree from the wood and brought it on to the village green to decorate with flowers and leaves. In modern times, dancing around the maypole has become a popular event once again at village fêtes, and at Ingrave crowning the May queen is a highlight of the afternoon.

  Empire Day

  Terry Parsons, who was brought up in Brentwood, remembered the importance of Empire Day, 24 May, when he was a lad in the 1920s. Empire Day was Queen Victoria’s birthday and in later years was renamed Commonwealth Day. In Terry’s time, the children, dressed in their best clothes, marched into the playground and saluted the Union Jack flag, which was ceremoniously hoisted on the school flagpole, and were given the rest of the day off.

  Beating the Bounds

  Beating the bounds at Rogationtide, a custom believed to date back to Saxon times, is enjoying a revival in many villages across the county. Covering the three days preceding Ascension Day, Rogationtide usually falls about forty days after Easter. In the days when people were illiterate and maps were rare among the ordinary folk, parish boundaries were usually marked by streams, trees, hedges or large stones and Rogationtide was the time for children to learn where the markers were – with the help of a little beating. Traditionally, parishioners set off to walk round the boundaries in large groups or ‘gangs’ led by the parish priest, who carried the cross. The walkers stripped wands of willow from the trees, garlanded them with milkwort – still known as gang or rogation flowers – and used them to beat the boundary markers. The children in the gang were lightly beaten too, and were also ducked in boundary ponds or streams – thus ensuring that their own patch was imprinted on their memories.

  In Brentwood, when the parish was much smaller than today, ‘beating the bounds’ would not have taken very long. John Larkin, in his book Fireside Talks about Brentwood, tells how people would gather at the William Hunter memorial and proceed on a time-honoured route along the parish boundary line, which passed right through Mr Cottee’s cottage. The procession entered his front door, marched through his home and went out through the back, the parishioners making their way down his garden path to the nearby brook, where the children were ducked. We have no idea what Mr Cottee’s views were on the matter.

  Oak Apple Day

  Until the Second World War, Oak Apple Day on 29 May was remembered in parts of deepest Essex. The old tradition commemorates the day in 1651 when, following his defeat by Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester, King Charles II hid in a huge oak to escape his Parliamentarian pursuers. In honour of this event, loyal subjects took to wearing oak galls, or oak apples, on this day, to proclaim their Royalist sympathies after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Anyone failing to comply was beaten with swatches of stinging nettles. The custom has lapsed but Fred Eales, the well-known last harness-maker of Billericay, wore a sprig of oak leaves in his buttonhole to remind people of Oak Apple Day until his death in 1958.

  Fred Eales, harness-maker of Billericay, 1895.

  June

  Weddings

  Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage, gave her name to this favourite wedding month. There are many local traditions connected with weddings. A well known national superstition is that the bride must wear something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. Something old ensures that the bride’s friends will be faithful when they are needed, somethi
ng new promises success in her new life, something borrowed means that she may take with her the love of her family, and something blue represents constancy.

  Before the Reformation, the Church only allowed marriages to take place during thirty-two weeks of the year, skirting around the main church festivals. To marry at other times, couples had to obtain a special dispensation from the local priest.

  The day chosen for a wedding was considered very important. Today, the most popular day in Essex is Saturday – convenience outweighs any lingering superstition – but one old Essex rhyme suggests:

  Monday for wealth

  Tuesday for health

  Wednesday the best day of all

  Thursday for losses Friday for crosses

  And Saturday no luck at all.

  Since the 1994 Marriage Act, which allowed premises other than churches and registry offices to host marriage ceremonies, Essex has seen a huge increase in June weddings held in hotels, restaurants and many unusual venues.

  The custom of throwing confetti is the modern version of showering the couple with rice and, as befits an agricultural county, wheat, corn and flowers at village weddings. Often the nave of the church was scattered with rose petals. Another tradition is that a kiss for the bride from a black-faced chimney sweep, universally regarded as a lucky figure, brings good luck. Mr Derek Williams, a popular Master Sweep from Pitsea, is happy to oblige.

  One old county custom observed until the mid-Victorian era was ‘blowing up the anvil’. When the village blacksmith married, neighbouring smiths fired a rejoicing salute by making a hole in their anvils, filling it with powder plugged well in – then exploding it. John Scrivener, the Bradfield blacksmith, made the usual preparations and recklessly forced the plug home with a hammer, which caused the powder to explode and the handle of the sledgehammer to be driven through his body, killing him instantly.