This is an historic event that is celebrated by walking an ancient boundary usually an ecclesiastical or civil parish.
In Wythall this takes place every 2 years the 2001 event in May is still at the planning stage.
"Beating the Bounds" is an ancient custom.
Rogation, the fifth week after Easter, is the traditional period when a parish celebrates its territory. The Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Ascension week are known as Rogation Days. The custom is believed to have started in Vienna in AD 470 and to have reached England in the eighth century. The roots of this ceremony are religious rather than legal. Clergy, Church Wardens and Parishioners would walk in procession around the parish boundary, stopping on route to offer up prayers for a good harvest.
After a period of disuse the custom was revived in Elizabethan times. Perhaps one of the reasons for its restoration was the widely acknowledged usefulness of bound beating. It was essential that every man who lived in the parish should know the parish limits; when maps were few and most people illiterate, the easiest way to ensure that everyone concerned did know, was for all to follow the parish boundary line and to visit each landmark every year. Children, and young lads especially, had the nature and situation of each mark impressed upon their memories by more than visual contact. They were bumped upon boundary stones, dragged through hedges and ditches, thrown into streams and ponds, and forced to climb over buildings that straddled the line. On particular points on the route they were beaten with rods of willow or elder. At the end of it all they were rewarded with gifts of money and cakes.
It was then believed that they would never forget this rough-and-tumble experience and that in years afterwards in any case of boundary dispute they would speak with authority of the boundary along which they had once endured so much discomfort.
.Beating the boundary was re-introduced in Wythall in 1989, after over 50 years. The bounds are walked every two years. We normally walk the boundary in two halves which makes it a manageable distance.
It does not have to be the Parish Boundary, any boundary of open space can be used, but Wythall tradition has always been the Parish.
Each Route requires :-
To Perambulate the Boundary
This took place in glorious sunshine on Monday 3rd May.
There were 2 walks: the whole boundary, approximately 15 miles, walked by 11 people led by Stephen Miller, Chairman of Wythall Countryside Carers. Starting at the Peacock Inn at 9.00 am they finished there at 2.45 pm with a welcome drink at the inn.
A 4 mile section was walked by 56 people led by Roy Pearson, Wythall Parish Tree Warden and Footpath Officer.
Explanations concerning the event were given at various points along the route.
Photographs of the 1999 event.
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Participants
Handing out certificates
A short poem for the event from Flinthan,Notts
- In days of old, the young are told
- To love their native village,
- Its bounds to know, and yearly show
- The expanse of its tillage.
- So, this year, with merry cheer,
- We walk around the Parish,
- By roots and corn, and river small
- Through land or dry or marise.
- And when a stone, or mark well known,
- To all in course they'd meet,
- To keep in mind its place to find
- The choirboys all were beat.
- And as they'd trot, their bottoms hot,
- They'd certainly remember
- Where boundaries lay, whatever the day
- From springtime to December
- But now to-day, all blithe and gay,
- We ramble round together,
- And pray each field may bounteous yield
- In good, propitious weather.
Information about History and Wythall customs provided by Roy Pearson.
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