Click HERE for more of August's Calendar Customs

- indicates an extract from England In Particular

 

Lammas
Loaf-mass, also known as the Feast of First Fruits, Lammas is a festival of the first harvest when the corn was made in to bread and offered in churches. Lammas lands were opened for common winter grazing. Trees (especially oaks) put on a second flush of bright leaves, known as Lammas growth.

Old Gooseberry Fair, Egton Bridge
The Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2001. The contest is won by the largest berry whether of a white, green, yellow or red variety, although there are also prizes for the largest berries in each class.

"The gooseberry is a 'cottager's' plant, sown by seed and cross-fertilised down the generations of gardeners to produce bigger and better varieties - green, red, white, yellow, oval, round, hairy and smooth ... In the 1750s the weavers of Lancashire founded the gooseberry clubs and shows, which soon spread to Cheshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire ... More than 2,500 varieties were raised during this time, and many of the most successful were introduced at the shows ... Most of the seven remaining gooseberry shows take place in mid-Cheshire at the end of July and beginning of August. One show survives in Egton Bridge, Yorkshire, in early August. The gooseberry 'trees' are pruned, pampered and cajoled into perfect ripeness. Timing is of the essence - the fruit must be at its heaviest but not burst before the show. Some trees are partly covered over by 'pens' to protect them from too much rain or sun; some are fed with special concoctions, secrets passed down."
(From 'Gooseberries', p.202 of England in Particular)

The judging is from 9am-12.30 with the fruits on display in the afternoon and music, prize giving and a raffle in the evening. In order to take part in the annual contest you must be a paid up member of the Society on Easter Tuesday of that year. Contact Mr Preston, Chairman of the Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society on +44(0)1947 810332.

Other Gooseberry Society shows across Cheshire in August are:
Drovers Allostock (First Saturday in August)
Marton (First Saturday in August)
Parkgate over Peover (First Sunday in August)
Swettenham Club (First Saturday in August)

For more information contact the Cheshire Landscape Trust, +44(0)1244 376333

 

Brigg Fair, Brigg, Lincolnshire
Horse trading has taken place in Brigg for centuries. The fair proper dates from the town charter of 1204, and now features street entertainments, music, crafts and local produce stalls. Brigg Fair was immortalised in a tone poem by the composer Frederick Delius.

"Before the combustion engine there were millions of horses and many markets. Horse fairs dealt in work horses, carriage horses, fine ponies and 'soldiers' (horses for the army), some attracting buyers from across Europe ... Eight hundred years of tradition embedded Brigg Fair into the locality. That was until this Lincolnshire town, named after its bridge, drove the travelling community away in the 1970s, after the right to sell horses was gained by a local auction company. In 1993 the Brigg and District Community Association agreed to re-organise things and travellers were encouraged to return. By the turn of the millennium more than twenty thousand visitors joined them in the centre of the town to see a hundred horses traded and enjoy a range of entertainments. With the loss of the traditional ground to a superstore, and the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001, the fair foundered further, exacerbated by official intransigence over the 'problem over where to have the horses'. With hard work and care the eight-hundredth anniversary in 2004 located itself by the railway station. Tom Glossop opened the day by singing 'Brigg Fair' (Delius's music is based on a gypsy song). Now, perhaps, the place can begin to enjoy this unpredictable side of its identity again."
(From 'Horse Fairs', p235-6 of England in Particular)

The day's events are now co-ordinated by BUGSS (Brigg Upgraded Summer Society). For more info, contact +44(0)1652 659091, e-mail sarahangell4 [at] aol.com.
www . brigglife . co . uk

 

22nd August

St Philibert's Day
Marks the beginning of the cobnut season.

Priddy Sheep Fair, Somerset
A traditional sheep fair with sheep and horse trading, along with fun-fair and stalls.

"Priddy Sheep Fair fills the big triangle of a Somerset village green to overflowing with pens of sheep and stalls of jostling people. The farmers and the Roma revel in each others' company under the trees to one side of the green, where horses, mainly black and white, change hands."
(From 'Horse Fairs', p235-6 of England in Particular)

For general information, e-mail info [at] priddysheepfair.co.uk
www . priddysheepfair . co . uk

 

Burning Bartle, West Witton, Wensleydale, Yorkshire.
"In West Witton, Yorkshire, a rather brutal enactment of the killing of an effigy takes place on the Saturday night following St Bartholomew's day (24 August). Bartle, a larger-than-life straw, wool and cloth figure with eyes lit by light bulbs, appears from a doorway carried by its two creators and is paraded around the Wensleydale village to peer into windows and open doors ... On reaching the lane Grassgill End Bartle is stabbed, soaked with paraffin and set alight. Sometimes fireworks explode out of his body and the onlookers sing.

It is not known who Bartle was - perhaps a persistent pig stealer or the bad Giant of Pen Hill, or St Bartholomew of the local church on whose day the ceremony originally took place. Kightly recalled a local theory that Bartle was a plaster replica of the saint, paraded on his saint's day and kept in the church during the middle ages. At the Reformation, when the Protestants were destroying such things, the locals tried to carry him away for safe keeping but were seen and pursued across Pen Hill ... until he was finally burnt at Grassgill End."
(From 'Burning Bartle', p.62 of England in Particular)

Contact Leyburn TIC +44(0)1748 829100.

 

Saddleworth Rushcart weekend, Saddleworth, Yorkshire

"For hundreds of years rushes, hay or straw have been ceremonially strewn on the floors of churches (and houses) to make them warmer underfoot, to sweeten the air and to muffle the sound of heavy boots. Mixing the prosaic and the symbolic, rush-bearing ceremonies once took place all over the country, but maintained greater significance in the North West on the local saint's day or wakes week ... In the Pennine village of Saddleworth the rush cart may be pulled by up to one hundred morris men, with forty acting as brakes."
(From 'Rush-Bearing', p.361-2 of England in Particular)

In Saddleworth, this custom was revived in the mid-1970s, and continues to be held on the second weekend after 12 August, marking the weekend of the Saddleworth Wakes, when mills and factories had their annual week's holiday. The reeds (12-1500 bundles) are collected from the moors three weeks before the event and built onto the cart in the week before. A jockey from the Saddleworth Morris Men rides the 15' high cart as it is pulled around the Saddleworth villages during Saturday by Morris and mumming groups from all over the area and the home side. There are displays of all styles of Morris at each village and then an evening of music back at Uppermill, in the Church Inn and Cross Keys Inn. On Sunday morning the cart is pulled up the steep hill to the mother church for a service where the cart and morris men are blessed. There is a display from all the sides outside the church in the natural arena, where 2-3000 people have been know to attend, sitting on the banks. There are also competitions for wrestling, music, clog stepping and gurning and music in the pubs again on Sunday Night. Contact Richard Hankinson +44(0)1457 834871.
www . morrismen . saddleworth . org . uk

 

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What's in SEASON?

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Fruit & Vegetables

Globe artichokes, aubergines, beetroot, broad beans, French beans, runner beans, broccoli, autumn cabbage, calabrese, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chard, courgettes, cucumber, garlic, leeks, lettuce, marrow, onions, peas, peppers, potatoes, squash, sweetcorn, turnips.

First apples of the season – such as Beauty of Bath, Devonshire Quarrenden, Discovery, Exeter Cross, George Cave, George Neal, Grenddier, Howgate Wonder, Keswick Codlin, Lady Studeley, Laxton’s Advance, Laxton’s Epicure, Tydeman’s Early Worcester.

Apricots, blackberries, blackcurrants, blueberries, cobnuts, damsons, greengages, gooseberries, loganberries, plums, raspberries, redcurrants, rhubarb, strawberries

The Pleasure of Plums

"The season for English plums starts in July, with the Early Laxton and Rivers’s Early Prolific, and finishes with the September gages. Most plums do not keep long, so they have fallen from favour and interesting varieties may only be found in farm shops, PYO farms, W.I markets and independent greengrocers. In most supermarkets you will be lucky to find anything other than imported varieties when the Victoria is in season – our best-known and most successful plum, discovered as a chance seedling in a garden in Alderton, Sussex in 1840.

During the Second World War forty to fifty thousand tons of plums were grown every year for jam in the traditional plum-growing areas: the Vale of Evesham in Worcstershire, parts of Warwickshire, East Anglia – especially around Wisbech and the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Huntingdon – and Kent. Since then demand has declined drastically and we are losing valuable local and commercial varieties.

‘The Blaisdon Red is a plum grown within a five-mile radius of Blaisdon in west Gloucestershire. In this district it flourishes with the health and vigour of a weed, but with very few exceptions it does not thrive elsewhere,’ wrote Humphrey Phelps, a local grower. It was a popular plum for jam making and canning, and heavy crops were picked from late August by Forest of Dean miners during their holidays. Even though most of the orchards have gone, Blaisdon celebrates the plum on the Sunday before the August bank holiday.

The Kea plum grows in rambling orchards on the Fal estuary in Cornwall and even on the beach, unaffected by the salt-laden sou’westerlies. It is a jamming plum, too tart to eat fresh, and, with a glut every third year, it typically satisfied only local consumption. However, during the past few years a number of Cornish producers and cider makers have been diversifying into commercial Kea jam, ice-cream and wine production.

The first and second weeks of August are the time to be along the river Dart in Devon, where the Dittisham Ploughman or Small Red still grows in the sheltered valleys. At one time this juicy, rich plum was sold in Dartmouth and Torquay for flavouring ice-cream. Most of the orchards have been ousted by houses, but enough trees grow in local gardens to supply Bramley and Gage, which makes fruit liqueurs. The fresh plums are sold in Dittisham post office in season. Another, much rarer, Devon plum is the Landkey Yellow, a sweet variety from north Devon, which is being propagated by suckers and planted in local community orchards and mazzard greens to save it from extinction.

The Aylesbury Prune is associated with the upper Greensand at the foot of the Chilterns between Weston Turville in Buckinghamshire and Totternhoe in Bedfordshire. In Worcestershire the Pershore Yellow Egg was found in Tiddesley Wood in 1827 by George Crooke, who saw its potential and brought it into cultivation. What remains of the Worcestershire plum industry can be seen on the Vale of Evesham Blossom Route and Cycle trail devised by Wychavon district council around Pershore and Evesham. The plum blossom comes out first in March, followed by pear in April, then apple. On Pershore Plum Day, every August bank holiday since 1996, many varieties are for sale, including the Pershore Yellow Egg, Pershore Purple and Pershore Emblem, introduced by a local grower in 2000, as well as chutneys, wines and juices.

Gloucestershire is taking its fruit heritage seriously. A mother orchard containing the country’s fruit trees is being developed by the county council, and Charles Martell’s collection of Gloucestershire plums includes Blaisdon Plum, Bristol Plum, Dymock Red, Old Pruin and Shit Smock.

The most honeyed and succulent flavours are found in the green and yellow gages, which originally came to us from Armenia via Greece and Italy in the 1680s. The Cambridge Gage was grown by smallholders in Cambridgeshire and is now cultivated by Wilkin and Sons of Tiptree, Essex for delicious greengage jam.

The plum family has its wild relations in the hedgerows – bullaces, sloes and damsons. The small, round bullace is common in East Anglia and Herefordshire, the damson in Shropshire and Kent. The cherry-plum frequents Oxford and Cambridge, and in Herefordshire it is known as ‘melly-bellies’ – Francesca Greenoak thought this might be a corruption of its alternative name, myrobalan. It is still used as a hedging plant; the Rothschilds planted pure hedges of it around their estates in the Chilterns and Vale of Aylesbury."
(from 'Plums', p.329 of England in Particular)

 

Bathing

Oh, many a time have I, a five years’ child,
In a small mill-race severed from his stream,
Made one long bathing of a summer’s day;
Basked in the sun, and plunged and basked again
Alternate, all in a summer’s day, or scoured
The sandy fields, leaping through flowery groves
Of yellow ragwort; or when rock and hill,
The woods, and distant Skiddaw’s lofty height,
Were bronzed with deepest radiance, stood alone
Beneath the sky, as if I had been born
On Indian plains, and from my mother’s hut
Had run abroad in wantonneess, to sport,
A naked savage, in the thunder shower.

William Wordsworth

Featured in our poetry anthology The Rivers Voice - see our MARKET PLACE for details.

 

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