Bygone Berkshire

by Unknown

Between 1785 and 1803 there were probably at least two Scourings about which no reliable information seems to have been obtained.

At the Scouring of 1803 Beckingham of Baydon won the prize at wrestling; Flowers and Ellis from Somersetshire won the prize at backsword play; the waiter at the Bell Inn, Faringdon, won the cheese race and at jumping in sacks; and Thomas Street of Niton won the prize for grinning through horse-collars, but it was said "a man from Woodlands would ha' beeat, only he'd got no teeth. This geaam made the congregation laaf 'mazingly."

Then came a Scouring in 1808, at which the Hanney men came down in a strong body and made sure of winning the prize for wrestling. But all the other gamesters leagued against them, and at last their champion, Belcher, was thrown by Fowler of Baydon. Two men, "with very shiny top-boots, quite gentlemen, from London," won the prize for backsword play, one of which gentlemen was Shaw, the Lifeguardsman, said to be a Wiltshire man himself, who afterwards died at Waterloo. A new prize was given at this pastime, viz., a gallon of gin or half-a-guinea for the woman who would smoke most tobacco in an hour. Only two gipsy-women entered, and it seems to have been a very blackguardly business, but it is the only instance of the sort on record.

There seems to be some doubt as to the date of the next Scouring, which was either in 1812 or 1813, but Judge Hughes thinks it was most probably in the latter year, because the clerk of Kingston Lisle, an old Peninsula man, told him that he was at home on leave in that year, and that there was to be a Scouring, and all the people were talking about it when he had to go back to the wars. At this Scouring there was a prize of a loaf, made out of a bushel of flour, for running up the Manger, which was won by Philip New, of Kingston-in-the-Hole, who cut the great loaf into pieces at the top, and sold the pieces for a penny a piece. The low-country men won the first backsword prize, and one Ford, of Ashbury, the second; and the Baydon men won the prize for wrestling. One Henry Giles had wrestled for the prize, but it is supposed took too much beer afterwards; at any rate he fell into the canal on his way home, and was drowned.

The next Scouring, about which any record is found, did not take place till 1825, and it seems to have been the largest gathering there has ever been. The games were held at the Seven Barrows, which are distant two miles in a south-easterly direction from the White Horse, instead of in Uffington Castle, for some reason which does not appear. These seven barrows are popularly supposed to be the burial places of the principal men who were killed at Ashdown.

After this there was no Scouring till 1838, when, on the 19th and 20th of September, the old custom was revived under the patronage of Lord Craven. The Reading Mercury says that no more auspicious year could have been chosen for the revival "than that in which our youthful and beloved Queen first wore the British Crown, and in which an heir was born to the ancient and noble house of Craven, whom God preserve."

The next took place in September, 1843, about which it is recorded that the Berkshire and Wiltshire men, under Joe Giles, of Shrivenham, got the better of the Somersetshire men led by Simon Stone at backsword play; and then were two men who came down from London, who won the wrestling prize away from the countrymen. There seems to have been some difficulty in getting the elephant's caravan up the Hill, for Wombwell's menagerie came down for the Scouring, and, though four-and-twenty horses were put to, it stuck fast four or five times. It does not seem to have struck the Berkshire folk that it would have been simpler to turn the elephant out and make him pull his own caravan up.

In September, 1857, was celebrated the festival so admirably described by Judge Hughes in his book, "The Scouring of the White Horse," to which we would refer our readers.

Of subsequent Scourings there is little or no record, village festivals having fallen gradually into disuse through the advent of railways and other means of communication with the outer world. The last took place in 1892, and was undertaken at the sole expense of Lady Craven, of Ashdown Park, the Horse having become so obliterated by neglect that its outline could scarcely be traced even at a few miles distance. It was unaccompanied by any festivities whatever.