Maypole, Hemswell, Lincolnshire

Maypole: OS Grid Reference – SK 92954 90947

Historic photo from Church Street
Historic photo from Church Street

Also Known as:

  1. English Heritage ID: 196736

Getting Here

In Hemswell Village at the junction of Church Street and Maypole Street.

History & Archeaology

According to a 2010 report in the Scunthorpe Telegraph, the Hemswell villagers,

“claim to be the hosts to one of the oldest maypole celebrations in the world, dating back to at least 1660”.

The then clerk to the parish council, Dianne Millward is quoted as saying:

“Hemswell is widely regarded in historical circles as having one of the oldest if not the oldest celebrations for May Day. We have pictures of the pole being prepared for the big day in the very early 1900s.”

Hemswell maypole on 1906 map

This writer has not yet been able to independently verify these claims.

May Day is still celebrated in the village with dancing around the maypole and an accompanying fete. Recent online photographs show that it is now only children, in ‘historic’ fancy dress who ribbon-dance around the Pole.

© Paul T. Hornby 2016 The Northern Antiquarian


The Maypole Tree, Little Paxton, Huntingdonshire

Maypole & Ritual Tree (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference TL 18831 62757

Getting Here

Imposing trunk of The Maypole Tree, right background
Imposing trunk of The Maypole Tree, right background

The road layout of the village has changed since the destruction of the Tree, but its approximate position was on the north side of the present High Street, at the junction with the east side of St James’ Road.

Archaeology & History

The Little Paxton Maypole Tree was a very late survival of a tradition where Mayday revellers danced around an actual tree rather than a symbolic tree in the form of a maypole.  It was described as “a tall straight elm tree” that stood in front of what was then the village Post Office, and from what may be the only surviving photograph, it appears that only the very substantial trunk survived of what was clearly a very old tree.

The 1887 6" OS Map, showing the Maypole Tree outlined in red
The 1887 6″ OS Map, showing the Maypole Tree outlined in red

A Miss Ethel Ladds, who had been born in Little Paxton, recalled in the early 1940s:

I remember the old tree very well, it was always called ‘the Maypole’, but I don’t know any more about it, except that they used to dance round it“.

The St Neots Advertiser recorded that the Maypole Tree was blown down in a great gale on 24th March 1895.

Folklore

While this writer has been unable to find direct folklore relating to the Little Paxton Maypole Tree, it may be worth remarking that botanically the Elm tree is a cousin of the Stinging Nettle, the Hop and Cannabis.  Another Elm Tree used for May revels was the Tubney Elm, near Fyfield in Berkshire and recorded by Matthew Arnold, in his ‘Scholar Gipsy’.

References:

  1. C.F. Tebbutt, “Huntingdonshire Folk And Their Folklore”, in Transactions of the Cambridgeshire & Huntingdonshire Archaeological Society, Volume VI, Part V, 1942
  2. C.F. Tebbutt, “Huntingdonshire Folk And Their Folklore”, in Transactions of the Cambridgeshire & Huntingdonshire Archaeological Society, Volume VII, Part III, 1950
  3. Gerald Wilkinson, Epitaph For The Elm, Arrow Books, London, 1979

© Paul T. Hornby 2016 The Northern Antiquarian 


Nanny’s Well, Chapel le Frith, Derbyshire

Holy Well:  OS Grid-Reference – SK 061 810

Getting Here

Nanny's Well, Chapel-le-Frith
Nanny’s Well, Chapel-le-Frith

To find Nanny’s Well, take B5474 out of Chapel and take the right hand turning called Crossings road (which goes to Chinley) which is before Frith view on the left. Continue until the small wall surrounding the site can be seen on the right.

Archaeology & History

The name it is said to be either from St Ninian (less likely) or St Anne (more likely as she is also considered the mother of Mary and thus Grandmother of Jesus).

copyright Pixyled
The Nanny well pump

 

It is described in M.J.B Baddeley’s Peak district of Derbyshire (1913) and the neighbourhood as:

“a valuable but neglected spring of chalybeate water.”

 

Yet in 1895, a Manchester firm of Grace, Calvert and Thompson  analysed it and found it:

“not polluted to any extent with organic matter of animal or vegetable origin and comes from a spring of considerable depth and that no surface water has become mixed with it’…in same respects the water of this well is of the same nature as that from the Tunbridge Wells springs.”

The site is now an iron pump by the side of Crossings Road, known as Nanny Well Road, enclosed in a low wall along which. The pump no longer works and the well capped but it can be heard and just about seen through a crack beneath.

Copyright Pixyled
A peer through the crack shows running water!

Folklore 

copyright Pixyled
Nanny well plaque

It was visited on Easter Morning, with sugar or licorice to make Spanish Water, and then the bottles were hung around their necks. The site is one of four wells dressed annually since the 1980s in July and the site is blessed.

Extracted from Parish, R. B., (2008) Holy Wells and Healing springs of Derbyshire

http://insearchofholywellsandhealingsprings.wordpress.com

© R.B. Parish, The Northern Antiquarian


Martinsell Hill, Oare, Pewsey, Wiltshire

Hillfort:  OS Grid Reference – SU 1764 6396

Also Known as:

  1. Martin’s Hill

Archaeology & History

Martinsell Hill on 1888 map
Martinsell Hill on 1888 map

The second highest of Wiltshire’s prehistoric camps or hillforts, Martinsell Hill was described as early as the 13th century as ‘Mattelsore’ and was known in local dialect and literary forms as variants around the word mattels, until the 16th century, when the title became altered in literature and for the first time became known as ‘Martinshall’ (and variants thereof), which has stuck ever since.  As the etymologists Gover, Mawer & Stenton (1939) proclaimed,

“the first element (mattels, PB) must be associated with the old english name for the camp which stands on top of it: the Mætelmesburg of the Pewsey charter” —

A.C. Smith’s old map

Which the authors think derived from “Mætelmesora, i.e., ‘Mæþelhelm’s bank'”, being the name of a tribal leader or elder who gave his name to the hill upon which the fort was built.  Margaret Gelling echoes the sentiment in her Place-Names in the Landscape, but we must keep in mind that such derivation is still a quite speculative etymology and one which doesn’t seem to be able to be proven (as yet!).

The hillfort and its remains were described in some detail in the second volume of Colt Hoare’s classic Ancient Wiltshire (1819: 107), where he wrote:

“Martin’s Hill or Martinshal Hill is in North Wilts what Long Knoll near Maiden Bradley is in South Wilts, ‘collis longe spectabilis’.  This elevated point commands a most advantageous prospect of the rich vale that separates the northern and southern districts of our county, , and is rendered interesting to the antiquary by an extensive earthenwork that crowns the summit of the hill.  Its form resembles an oblong square on all sides, except towards the east, where it bends inward in order to humour the natural shape of the hill.  Its area, which is in tillage, comprehends thirty-one acres; and as several entrances have been made through the ramparts for the convenience of agriculture, it is difficult to ascertain on which side were the original approaches to the camp.  This hill, in its formation, presents a peculiarity rather contrary to the usual system of nature, by rising in height towards the east, where a bold and tremendous precipice of smooth turf shelves down from the summit to the base of the hill.  This eminence is more remarkable for the rich and extensive prospect which it affords than for the plan of its entrenchments, which consists of a single vallum and fosse.  Not having discovered by digging any certain marks of ancient populations within its area, I am inclined to think that it may be considered as an asylum to which the Britons, who were very numerous in its environs, sent their families and herds in times of danger: the single vallum and ditch prove its British origin, and the great extent of its area seems to warrant this conjecture.”

Hippisley Cox’s ground-plan

This aint a bad assumption for a fella who wrote this 200 years ago without the aid of excavation or modern archaeocentric analysis.  But we can see that Hoare was utilizing that dying virtue of common sense here, and find that much of what he said remains the echoed narrative of modern archaeologists who, I believe, still aint done a detailed excavation on the site themselves. (weird for down South!)  Later in the 19th century, when the reverend A.C. Smith (1885) visited and wrote about the hillfort, he added little to Hoare’s earlier words.  And the descriptive narrative of the site remained roughly the same (Massingham’s intriguing ascriptions aside!) even after a small excavation was undertaken in 1907, which found very little.  Hippisley Cox (1927) passed this way in his fine travelogue of ancient roads and trackways in Wessex, describing the enclosed top of this hill as

“the site of a complete neolithic settlement, including dew-ponds, a cattle compound, a flint quarry, lynchetts, dicthes of defence and deep cattle tracks formed by much going and coming of beasts from the valley.”

He may have been right!  In more recent times Geoffrey Williams (1993) describes the Martinsell hillfort, which again only gives slightly more info than Colt Hoare’s 1819 narrative.  The site covers 32 acres in size, is roughly rectangular in form, measuring roughly 330 yards (302m) across east to west, and 480 yards (439m) north to south.   There appears to be at least one entrance on its northeastern edge.

Folklore

What seems to be a survival of prechristian sun lore is found in one or two of the events that used to happen upon and around Martinsell.  A number of local history books give varying descriptions of the events here, but Devereux and Thomson (1979) condense the information nicely, telling us that

“The camp seems to have been a focus for curious Palm Sunday ‘games’ in past centuries, one of which involved a line of boys standing at intervals  from the base to the summit of the hill.  Using hockey sticks, they then proceeded to knock a ball in succession up the hill to the top.  Another activity was the throwing of oranges down the hill slopes with boys going headlong after them.  Evene more strangely, local youths used to slither down the escarpment on horses skulls.”

Mythographer and writer Michael Dames (1977) thought that such festive activities on and around the hill related to remnants of ancient goddess worship here.

Ley line running from Martinsell (image courtesy Paul Devereux)

In Paul Devereux & Ian Thomson’s (1979) ley hunter’s guide, the Martinsell Hill site stands at the beginning of a ley, which then runs northwest for more than seven miles, eventually ending at the well known causewayed enclosure of Windmill Hill — but not before passing by the Avebury stone circle and several prehistoric tombs on route.  This ley is a simple alignment between sites (as the ‘discover’ of leys, Alfred Watkins described them) and has nothing to do with the modern contrivance of energy lines.

…to be continued…

References:

  1. Bradley, A.G., Round about Wiltshire, Methuen: London 1948.
  2. Dames, Michael, The Avebury Cycle, Thames & Hudson: London 1977.
  3. Devereux, Paul & Thomson, Ian, The Ley Hunter’s Companion, Thames & Hudson: London 1979.
  4. Gomme, Alice B., “Folklore Scraps from Several Localities,” in Folklore Journal, 20:1, 1909.
  5. Gover, J.E.B., Mawer, A. & Stenton, F.M., The Place-Names of Wiltshire, Cambridge University Press 1939.
  6. Harding, D.W., The Iron Age in Lowland Britain, RKP: London 1974.
  7. Hoare, Richard Colt, The Ancient History of North Wiltshire, Lackington, Hughes, Mavor & Jones: London 1819.
  8. Massingham, H.J., Downland Man, Jonathan Cape: London 1926.
  9. Partidge, T.B., “Wiltshire Folklore,” in Folklore Journal, 26:2, 1915.
  10. Smith, A.C., A Guide to the British and Roman Antiquities of the North Wiltshire Downs, Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Society 1885.
  11. Williams, Geoffrey, The Iron Age Hillforts of England, Horace Books 1993.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian