If you pay a visit to the Museum in the Dorset town of
Shaftesbury you are quite likely to see a very strange exhibit that looks a bit
like a cross between an open umbrella and a May garland. It is a metal
structure that has been gilded to make it look like solid gold, although that
is not the case. This is the Shaftesbury Byzant (which is a corruption of
“besom”, a type of sweeping brush). It has a fascinating history.
Shaftesbury is a hill town – the only one of its kind in
Dorset – that was founded by King Alfred in the year 880. It stands on a
sandstone ridge several hundred feet above Blackmore Vale, which stretches away
to the north.
Although this was an excellent site for a settlement in
terms of its defence, there was always a problem when it came to water supply. In
the early days it was easy enough for the population to rely on rainwater
collected in cisterns, but as the town got bigger, and thousands of pilgrims
visited the Abbey to view the tomb of the martyred boy-king Edward, this was
insufficient, and no well could be dug deep enough to reach an adequate supply.
The people of Shaftesbury had no choice but to go down the
hill and take water from springs at Enmore Green. Although this is quite close
to Shaftesbury, it was traditionally part of the parish of Gillingham, a small
town four miles to the northwest.
There was never any real objection to Shaftesbury people
helping themselves to Gillingham’s water, but it was thought that some
acknowledgment of the fact should be made, and that is where the Byzant comes
in.
From the early 16th century it became the custom,
on the Sunday after Holy Roode day in May, for the entire population of
Shaftesbury, led by the Mayor and Burgesses, to walk in procession down the
hill to arrive at Enmore Green at 1pm. An hour of dancing was followed by a
ceremony in which the Mayor of Shaftesbury and the Lord of the Manor of Gillingham
would engage in a formal ceremony.
At the heart of the ceremony was the Byzant, which had been
made by a local craftsman and was usually adorned with precious stones and
other treasures donated by the town’s wealthier citizens. This was then offered
to the Lord of the Manor of Gillingham as payment for the water, and was duly
handed over.
However, the Byzant was such a precious artefact – not to
mention the attached jewels – that the Mayor of Shaftesbury immediately sought
to buy it back. This he did by making gifts to his opposite number of a pair of
white gloves, a calf’s head, two loaves, and a gallon of ale. The people of
Gillingham then entertained the citizens of Shaftesbury to a further hour of
dancing before the latter departed back up the hill, with the Byzant, and
carried on with the merrymaking for the rest of the day.
This ceremony was observed for about 400 years but ended in
1830 at a time of agricultural depression when it was felt that the expense of
the occasion could not be justified.
However, the Byzant was retained in Gillingham at this
juncture and did not return to Shaftesbury until 1924 when it was presented to
Shaftesbury Town Council by the daughter of the 2nd Marquess of
Westminster – whose father, as Lord of the Manor of Gillingham, had kept the
Byzant back in 1830.
There would now seem little doubt that the Byzant will not
leave Shaftesbury again, which these days has no fears about its water running
dry!
© John Welford
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