The Shaftesbury Byzant

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 16^th 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 2^nd 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

The Whitby Penny Hedge

All sorts of strange things go on in Great Britain! Some of them are ceremonies and customs that have been performed for centuries in certain places, although the reasons for so doing are either uncertain or completely forgotten. One such is the annual planting of the “penny hedge” at Whitby in North Yorkshire.

Every year, on the day before Ascension Day, a small hedge is planted on the east bank of the River Esk estuary that must be strong enough to withstand three tides before being washed away. The hedge must be completed before 9 a.m. The hedge is carefully woven from hazel and willow branches but is only a few feet in length.

Traditionally the hedge is laid by two men, one of whom plays the role of “factotum to the abbot of St Hilda’s” – which is the abbey the ruins of which overlook the town. The factotum blows a horn and shouts: “Out on ye!” (meaning “Shame on you”) three times.

The question that must surely strike anyone is: Why? Two explanations have been offered.

According to local folklore, in 1159 a group of hunters were thwarted by a hermit who gave sanctuary in his chapel to the wild boar they were hunting. They promptly beat the hermit to death, but with his last words he forgave the hunters on condition that they built a hedge every year on Ascension Eve as their penance. They, or their successors, would meet the abbot’s bailiff in a wood and cut a penny’s worth of sticks which they would then plant at the water’s edge before blowing a horn and denouncing themselves.

This sounds highly unlikely for all sorts of reasons, which is why a second explanation is more believable. This is that the custom derives from a medieval practice known as the “horngarth”, which is another name for the penny hedge ceremony. This was an obligation that tenants owed to the lord of the manor – the “garth” part of the word being an Old English term for an enclosure. The horngarth was originally a substantial boundary fence to land belonging to the abbey, but the obligation to maintain the fence had become a token event by the mid-14^th century.

The “penny” may refer to the cost of the knife used to cut the stems, or it may simply be a corruption of “penance”.

Whatever the explanation, the ceremony is still performed every year on the appointed day, and sometimes the hedge survives for more than three tides!

© John Welford