I have written before on my blog about the aerial photography taken of the town and environments of Great Dunmow by a small aircraft flying high in the skies of East Anglia in 1928.  During the same flight, the small airplane also flew over the tiny village of Little Dunmow and captured for posterity one of the area’s main employers, the factory of the Anglo Scottish Sugar Beet factory. This part of Essex and East Anglia has a long history of the refining of sugar beet and it is incredible to see an aerial photograph of a factory in it’s inter-war heyday.

Anglo-Scottish Sugar Beet Factory, Little Dunmow, 1928. 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.

During a recent rummage around an antiques shop in Lavenham, Suffolk (a small beautiful town which also has a history of small sugar beet factories), I found the 1976 book Essex and Sugar by the local historian Frank Lewis. It is to him I turn to now regarding the Anglo-Scottish Sugar Beet Factory in Little Dunmow, Essex. In his book, Mr Lewis refers to the factory as being in Felsted, the neighbouring village to Little Dunmow.  As the two villages are so near each other, the location of the factory changes in documents/books between Little Dunmow and Felsted.  The factory also appears to have changed name over time and at points in its history was known as the “Anglo-Scottish Sugar Beet Factory” or the “British Sugar Corporation Sugar Beet Factory”.

Our main Essex interest in beet sugar lies now with the Felsted factory of the British Sugar Corporation. With Mr. and Mrs. Chartres, I spent a full and interesting day at the village, now for over three decades [i.e. by the time of the book’s publication in 1976] associated with sugar production, but famed more for its ancient school [Felsted School]. In the morning at Princes Farm Mr. Gordon Crawford showed us the “Forecaster” at work, the most advanced beet-harvesting machine, and far from the days of hand-digging of obstinate roots is the operation of this mechanical giant, also an advance on machine harvesters needing an accompanying lorry in which to deposit the uplifted beet. The Forecaster is an Essex development, and is constructed as a compact unit, carrying the extricated beets to a receiving space at the top of the machine, detaching earth or mud en route, at the same time slicing off the tops of the next row of beets preparatory to lifting. Only when full did the harvester go off to deposit its contents in a lorry, thus one man only was needed for the actual harvesting; in the early days, several laboured at an arduous and unpopular toil. The crops, destined for the nearby factory are grown from seed supplied by the buyers to ensure uniformity and quality. Mr. Crawford harvested his first sugar beet with a pair of horses in 1930, and he is a member of the family formerly of Suttons Farm, Hornchurch, the site of the R.A.F. Station.

The Forecaster in 1976

…

During the day we had observed the lofty buildings of the British Sugar Corporation establishment with its plume of white smoke, and later its dominance in the scene when lit up at night. One writer has remarked that with a favouring wind the factory smell carries for miles around, and a former woman member of the office staff recalled her strongest memory was of the ‘sickly sweet smell you couldn’t get away from’, but though beet processing has its characteristic odour, as does a refinery, our party were not conscious of strong odours, either in or out of the buildings, though I questioned a girl on this point, knowing from experience how responsive young women are to sugar smells, pleasant or unpleasant. The warmth of the building was felt by her, not to a too trouble-some extent. On commencing this conducted tour, we were made aware of the fact that this was a factory in the country when we were informed that the visiting party in which we were included would be the last for a long period, as a precaution against the foot and mouth epidemic appearing in that region.

The factory tour showed the cleansed beets pass to machines slicing them into strips, a glimpse of the revolving drums in which the strips yielded their sweetness into water (diffusion), the resulting thin syrup of ‘juice’ charged with lime and carbonic acid gas which combined to form a precipitate trapping impurities in the juice (Carbonatation) the extraction by filtering of this precipitate, a second carbonatation and filtering, the juice treated with sulphur dioxide to a neutral reaction, the concentration of juice containing 15% sugar to syrup containing 65% sugar under vacuum in huge boilers or vessels called evaporators, another close filtering, no char, and the rest of the process as described in a refinery with vacuum pans, centrifugal machines, final drying.

…

This huge Essex successor to the ventures of Marriage and Duncan treats annually over 300,000 tons of beets from 23,000 acres spread over Essex and surrounding counties from Cambridge to Kent, and each day can process 2,500 tons of beet to yield 350 tons of white sugar, 250 tons of dried pulp or pulp nuts for cattle food and 130 tons of molasses for industrial and other uses. (An acre of beet will yield from 38 to 40 cwt of sugar against 8 to 12 tons per acre from cane; and the sugar content of the beet is 15% to 16%, the cane about 13%.) The personal of 325 men and women operate the process continuously day and night for approximately 120 days, each season or campaign from about late September to the end of January; and this seasonal labour force is recruited from the surrounding locality and from Ireland. Delivery of beets to the factory is by road, though in the past some cargoes in sailing boats travelled from Walton to a suitable point for Felsted. 

…

Mrs B. McArdle, who mentioned the ‘sickly smell’ has provided me with some other early memories of the Felsted factory where in her early 20s she was employed as a compotometer operator in the 1927 and 1928 campaigns. In those days no refining plant existed and she recalls the piles of brown sugar to be sent to Tate and Lyle. The small office had a canteen attached for the clerical and similar staff of 12; she can remember that wellington boots were worn for the necessary journeys to muddy and wet floors where the beet was washed and writes of having to work out prices for the farmers according to sugar content of beets, and allocating molasses on the amount of beet sent in. She lodged at a farm near the Flitch of Bacon [a pub still in existence today] in Little Dunmow, where only one shop existed, and without public transport the journey to and from the factory was a fair walk, unless a lucky car picked her up. Apparently there was little time for amusements as she worked ‘fairly late’, also Saturday and Sunday mornings when the beets were coming in; but a hard tennis court was outside the office, there were whist drives and dances in surrounding villages, a cinema at Braintree where you had to book your seat and the music was supplied by one tinny piano, and the manager sprung a party at his home for the staff. She was young and evidently found her situation not uncongenial, for both in her letters to me and to the Essex Countryside [a monthly local interest magazine] she writes of a ‘happy time of long ago’ and ‘pleasant memories of the happy time I spent at Felsted’.

Essex and Sugar by Frank Lewis, 1976 pp107-p111

Sugar Beet Factory in 1976

Sugar-beet harvesting in 1948.  Click on the image above to be taken to British Pathe’s website to see a short film of Felsted’s sugar-beet harvesting in 1948.

In February 1999, the Sugar Beet factory was demolished and now in its place is a large housing development.  The estate was originally known as Oakwood Park, but in very recent years has now been renamed to Flitch Green – a throw-back to the days of the Dunmow Flitch, when it was originally held in Little Dunmow.

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Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in
– The Dunmow Flitch Bacon Factory
– 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 2014.

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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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
– 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.

Yesterday and today I am publishing my most viewed 12 posts from the last year. My top 1 to 6 posts were described yesterday – so today I am sharing with you my top posts from 7 to 12.

7. The Medieval Spinsters – The medieval ladies from Raymund of Peñafort’s Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals’)

8. Mappy Monday – My top 7 websites for medieval, early-modern & modern maps of London & Great Britain

9. Tudor tradesmen of Great Dunmow – John Parker, the Fletcher, of Great Dunmow: the richest man in the parish.

10. Primary sources – ‘Unwitting Testimony’ – Research techniques for a trainee historian.

11. Coronation and Diamond Jubilee Goldwork – My time at the Royal School of Needlework mastering the technique of goldwork embroidery.

12. The Dunmow Flitch – Can you prove that you’ve been happily married for a year and a day without a cross word passing between you? Read my account of the 2012 Dunmow Flitch.

Which were your favourite posts and why?
Please do leave your thoughts on my blog below.
Thank you!

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

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

If you liked this post, you may also like this
– 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.

My post today is about trusting your own judgement when you researching – whether your research is for a local history topic or is a genealogical project.  Just because you have read something by someone else – even if it is in a published book by an academic – if you don’t agree with others’ interpretations and theories, then have the courage to follow your own line of thorough and comprehensive research.  Because, unfortunately, sometimes the suppositions of one historian (or genealogist) can, overtime, become the established ‘truth’.

Secondary literature interest in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
When I was researching my dissertation, I spent a great deal of time tracking down, reading and researching all the secondary sources that had cited Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts.  Because the accounts are such a rich and fruitful source, there are countless academic books and journal articles whose authors have used them.  The secondary source interest had started in the 1870s when the then vicar of Great Dunmow, W. T. Scott, wrote a small book on the history of the church of St Mary the Virgin.  At that time, the accounts were still in the parish chest in the church at Great Dunmow.  I have in my minds’ eye a vivid picture of our Victorian vicar, Scott, night-by-night sitting in front of the blazing vicarage fire, reading and scrutinizing each folio by candle-light and puzzling over the writings of his predecessors from 350 years earlier.  During my research, I found his book, Antiquities of an Essex Parish: Or pages from the history of Great Dunmow(1), to be one of the most accurate in terms of using the churchwardens’ accounts in building a reasonably correct history of both Great Dunmow’s church and the parish.  However, unfortunately there are some incorrect suppositions in his book that, over time, have been picked up and reused by other researchers.

My own, much-loved and much-read, copy of
W T Scott’s 1873 history of Great Dunmow

Whilst Scott’s book was a local history book, other commentators and historians have also used the churchwardens’ accounts for their own research too.  In particular, because of the accounts’ extensive entries for Corpus Christi plays, historians of medieval drama have much cited and quoted the accounts for hypothesises on early English drama and pre-Shakespearean plays.

During my own research phase, I daily read folios from the churchwardens’ accounts alongside reading the secondary literature.  To my surprise, I found that I very rarely agreed with any modern-day interpretations of the accounts.  I read section after section of the accounts directly from the originals written 500 hundred years ago.  Then I read the secondary literature.  The originals  simply did not tie up with secondary sources.  I was puzzled and baffled by this.  It took me some time to realise that I should trust my own reading of the primary sources.  Just because the secondary sources were in published books and academic journals, it didn’t necessary mean that these historians interpretations were correct – particularly as only a few of the historians had gone back to the original primary source.  Unfortunately, the suppositions of Scott had, over time, become the hard-facts of others.

The church steeple’s scaffolding
For instance, in Clifford Davidson’s 2007 book Festivals and plays in late medieval Britain, Davidson cites the entries in the churchwardens’ accounts regarding Great Dunmow’s Corpus Christi Plays and quotes the earlier research of both W. A. Mepham, (a 1930s/1940s historian of Essex drama) and the 1972 research of John C Coldeway.  Davidson comments:

‘Already in 1526-1527 there is a mention of a scaffold that may have been used for playing [ie Corpus Christi plays](2), perhaps in a single location in the village since, as W.A. Mepham notes, Great Dunmow “was not sufficiently extensive to warrant the use of moveable pageants.(3)”’(4)

Leaving aside that the date is slightly incorrect – the entries for the scaffolding was in 1525-6 (folio 4r and folio 5v) – by only examining the drama elements within the churchwardens’ accounts, the entries for scaffolding have been taken out of context.   As we have seen on folio 4r, there was an entry for money received in by the church for scaffolding, not paid out by the church – which it would have been if it was scaffolding used for the church’s regular Corpus Christi plays.  On folio 5v (still in the same year) we have also seen that there were several items for the making of scaffolding and the building of a windlass.   Putting the entries for scaffolding back into context, we know that a great deal of scaffolding was used to help the construction of the new church steeple.  The same steeple which had been paid for by the entire parish in the 1525-6 parish collection (fos. 2r–4r  Thus, any entries in the churchwardens’ accounts for scaffolding cannot be used to support a hypothesis that the Corpus Christi plays were played in one fixed place in the town.

This doesn’t mean to say that there wasn’t a fixed ‘playing area’ (or stage) of sorts assembled in the town.  Indeed, my own hypothesis (to be explored in later posts), is that there was most certainly one central area in the town where the plays were performed – and this could quite possibly have been on a fixed scaffold/stage.  Moreover, my hypothesis is that villagers  from the surrounding villages from miles around came into Great Dunmow to watch the Corpus Christi plays in this one central area (which directly conflicts with both Scott’s and Mepham’s interpretations).   However, putting the entries for the scaffolding properly back into their original context means that any entries for scaffolding in the 1520s churchwardens’ accounts must not be used to support a hypothesis of a fixed playing area or stage for Corpus Christi plays within Great Dunmow.  The scaffolding documented in the churchwardens’ accounts was, quite simply, just for the construction of the new church steeple.

Corpus Christi Moveable Pageants
In the extract above, 1930s historian Mepham (whose work, as can be seen above, is still quoted today) said that Great Dunmow was not big enough to have a moveable pageant.  I don’t know where Mepham lived in the 1930s but he almost certainly could not have paid a visit to Great Dunmow!  If he had, he would have known that Great Dunow was (and always has been) large enough to have had moving pageants passing through the town.  As we have seen from the 1525-6 parish collection for the church steeple, several areas of the parish are identified.  Then, as it is now, the parish church in Church End was nearly one mile distant from the town’s High Street. Ample room for a moving pageant, if there was one, to pass through from the starting point of the town’s small pre-Reformation chapel (located in the High Street), moving through the ancient Causeway (the road is still there today) and down through Church End via Lime Tree Hill (again, this road is still there) and onto the church.  When my son was a baby, I walked this precise route (from the town to the church) many many times trying to get him to go to sleep.   I can assure you there was/is certainly room enough for any size of  moving pageant whether a walking pageant or one on horseback and horse-drawn wagon!

Indeed, in modern times, every year the same route is used by the September Dunmow Carnival with movable (and very large) lorries and floats.  Moreover, every four years there is a very large moving walking procession around the entire town area of Great Dunmow when the ancient custom of the Dunmow Flitch is performed.  Again, all the roads used by the modern-day September Carnival and Dunmow Flitch procession existed during the Tudor period – as demonstrated by the entries in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts for the 1520s parish collections.

Conclusion
So the moral to my post is that sometimes peoples’ suppositions and theories unfortunately end up becoming the historical truth.  Trust your own instincts when you are conducting your own research.  Always research others’ theories, but if they don’t ‘add-up’, then, provided you have performed your own high-quality, thorough and diligent research, believe in your own work.

The other morals to this story is,

• If possible, always always always go back to any original primary sources; and
• If your research is connected to local history (or the genealogy of a family based in a certain location), always physically walk the area you researching – particular if the geography of the area has been used in any secondary literature or someone else’s research.  If you can’t physically walk it, then use Google maps and/or a contemporary map to help research your area .  Or, better still, make contact with someone that does live in the area and ask them to walk the high-ways and by-ways for you!

Bibliography and Further reading
1) Scott. W.T., Antiquities of an Essex Parish: Or pages from the history of Great Dunmow (London, 1873).
2) Coldewey, J. C., ‘Early English Drama: A History of its rise and fall, and a Theory regarding the Digby Plays’ Unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Colorado, 1972).
3) Mepham, W.A., ‘Villages Plays at Dunmow, Essex, in the sixteenth century’, Notes and Queries, 166 (May 1934), 345-348 and 362-366.
4) Davidson, C., Festivals and plays in late medieval Britain (Aldershot, 2007), p.55.

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You may also be interested in the following
– The craft of being a historian: Research Techniques
– The craft of being a historian: Analysing primary sources
– The craft of being a historian: Using maps for local history
– The craft of being a historian: Online resources
– The craft of being a historian: Palaeography/handwriting

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