The Oxebode, Gloucester

The Oxebode is a street in central Gloucester, southwest England, that does not look particularly remarkable – a typical shopping street with broad pavements and several mature plane trees to shade it. However, the unusual name – found nowhere else in the country – is a clue to the strange story that  is associated with it.

Oxebode is a corruption of “ox body”. The story goes back to medieval times when oxen – castrated bulls – were often used in England as draft animals for hauling carts or drawing ploughs. It was the unfortunate fate of one such ox that gave the street its name.

Gloucester is a city that dates back to Roman times, although the oldest domestic buildings to be seen today are from the 15^th century. In mediaeval times Mitre Street was lined by houses that leaned towards each other on either side and were almost touching at the end of the street as it led into Northgate Street. Indeed, the funnel was so narrow that an ox, being led to market, became wedged solid between the houses and could not be freed. 

The solution to the problem was somewhat gruesome but it did the trick to the satisfaction of all concerned, with the sole exception of the ox.

A local butcher was summoned to kill the ox where it stood and cut it up into pieces of meat that were then sold to the local populace. 

The event led to the street being renamed Oxbody Street and to a local nursery rhyme: 

There’s an ox lying dead at the end of the lane
His head on the pathway, his feet in the drain.
The lane is so narrow, his back is so wide,
He got stuck in the road twixt a house on each side. 

He couldn’t go forward, he couldn’t go back
He was stuck just as fast as a nail in a crack.
And the people all shouted ‘So tightly he fits
We must kill him and carve him and move him in bits’.

So a butcher dispatched him and then had a sale
Of his ribs and his sirloin, his rump and his tail.
And the farmer he told me ‘I’ll never again
Drive cattle to market down Oxbode Lane’.

© John Welford

Dilys Price: skydiver

Dilys Price is a remarkable woman and the holder of a number of world records, her speciality being solo skydiving at an advanced age. She began this hobby at the age of 65 and is still doing so – at the time of writing she is 86 and shows no sign of giving up.

She was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1932 and followed a career as a dance teacher. She had the idea of practicing dancing in the air and joined a skydiving school so that she could adopt ballet positions as she hurtled down from an aeroplane.

When she was a mere youth of 69 she decided to try jumping from a balloon rather than an aeroplane. She did so from 5000 feet above the Arizona desert, which meant jumping into what is known as “dead air” – no wind but plenty of unpredictable thermals in the unusually thin air of that region. The net result is that one plunges earthwards like a stone.

After plenty of instruction from experts, Dilys made her first jump, which was a perfect success apart from landing on a cactus.

Dilys enjoyed the experience so much – apart from the last bit – that she just had to do it again. This time she landed in the exercise yard of Arizona’s state prison.

Dilys Price – who has been awarded the OBE for her charitable and practical work on behalf of disabled people – has to count as one of the UK’s most notable eccentrics.

© John Welford

One hour's TV was enough to start with

On 2^nd November 1936 the very first television broadcast by the BBC was made. It began at 3pm and lasted for exactly one hour. It was received by around 400 people in the London area who had been supplied with “Baird Televisors” and consisted of speeches, a news bulletin, and a variety show that included singing, jugglers, comedians and dancers. All very informative and entertaining!

The BBC had a problem from the outset because two rival transmission technologies were on offer – those offered by John Logie Baird – who had made the decisive breakthrough in the development of television in 1926 – and the Marconi-EMI joint venture. That first broadcast used the Baird system, with the choice being made by the traditional British method of tossing a coin! However, the rival system eventually prevailed.

But why only one hour of broadcasting to start with? There were several reasons, one being a lack of suitable material! Other reasons were the belief that viewers (who were referred to as “lookers-in” in the early days) would suffer from eye strain if they watched for too long, and a concern that too much television would disrupt family life. It could just be that they were right about this one!

© John Welford

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

Could a giant squid sink a ship?

In 2003 Olivier de Kersauson was skipper of a 34-metre trimaran sailing across the Atlantic when it suddenly came to a juddering halt. When he looked through a porthole he saw a massive tentacle, thicker than a human leg, wrapping itself round the boat’s rudder. Fortunately, the owner of the tentacle soon thought better of the idea and slid off back into the depths from where it had presumably come. It was estimated that the creature must have been about 10 metres long.

There have long been stories about giant sea monsters that could grab hold of large ships and drag them under the waves with the loss of all their crew. The word “kraken” has been used in many stories and myths to describe squid-like creatures that were capable of such deeds. Alfred Tennyson wrote a sonnet in the 1820s with the title “The Kraken”, and that inspired John Wyndham to write his 1953 science-fiction novel “The Kraken Wakes”, although his plot involves an invasion of the world by aliens from another planet. 

Kraken is a Norwegian word, and early accounts were based on monsters that lived in the North Atlantic, but stories of this kind are also told in other parts of the world. In the same year that Olivier de Kersauson had his heart-stopping moment in the Atlantic, a squid was caught that had attacked a trawler off Antarctica. This was believed to be a juvenile of the species Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, a super-squid that can grow to as much as 15 metres (50 feet) in length. 

So could this cold water species be the origin of all those old stories? Maybe!

© John Welford

Mr Lyle's crimconmeter

If the word crimconmeter means nothing to you that is hardly a surprise. The word was invented by a judge in the 1850s to describe a device that – as far as is known – was only used once. “Crimcon” was short for “criminal conversation”, which was itself a concept that disappeared when abolished by the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. Even stranger, the activity in question – namely causing another man’s wife to commit adultery – was a civil offence and not a criminal one.

Mr Lyle had strong suspicions that his wife was being unfaithful to him and that the other man was his business partner, Mr Herbert. However, in order to bring an action in court for criminal conversation against Mr Herbert, Mr Lyle needed proof.

Mr Lyle was in the upholstery business and he knew an excellent cabinet maker, Mr Taylor, with whom he had worked in the past. Mr Taylor made the crimconmeter to Mr Lyle’s instructions.

The crimconmeter was a lever that fell to a certain level when one person got into bed and to a lower level when there were two people on board. The occupants of the bed would have no idea that their presence was being measured in this way, especially as Mr Lyle had set up the device so that it operated via a hole in the wall to a room in the adjoining terraced house, which Mr Lyle had rented for this express purpose.

On a day when Mr Lyle was pretty sure that his wife would be entertaining Mr Herbert, he and Mr Taylor went to the room next door and got the proof they needed from the crimconmeter. They then rushed round to confront the guilty pair.

It might be thought that this story was odd enough as it stood, but it now it descended to the truly bizarre. Mr Herbert had taken a bottle of gin with him to the Lyle abode, and Mr Taylor took it upon himself to grab hold of the bottle which, so he said, should rightfully belong to Mr Lyle, as the injured party, and himself – as his fee for services rendered.

So Mr Lyle and Mr Taylor then left the house with the bottle of gin and made their way to the local pub, where there was plenty more to drink after the gin was finished. They finished the day completely out for the count.

And what about Mr Herbert? He stayed behind at the Lyle house – he had little choice in the matter, because Mr Lyle and Mr Taylor had taken the precaution of taking Mr Herbert’s boots with them to the pub. So presumably Mr Herbert and Mrs Lyle carried on where they had left off, but without the benefit of a drink or two to relax with afterwards.

When he sobered up, Mr Lyle brought his case to court for criminal conversation against Mr Herbert. When the full story was told, the learned judge ruled in Mr Lyle’s favour – and awarded him damages of one farthing (a quarter of a penny).

© John Welford

Chinese thoughts on salt and blood pressure

Have the Chinese got the right idea on how to reduce blood pressure?

It is well known that salt in the diet is a major cause of high blood pressure, which in turn is a contributory factor in strokes and heart disease. It therefore follows that reducing one’s salt intake is a good idea.

In China this message has been conveyed by teaching children in primary school about the dangers of salt, and they in turn have passed this on to their parents and grandparents. The programme began in 14 schools, with follow-up monitoring of their immediate families. This found that levels of blood pressure showed a marked decline, with daily salt intake declining by a third of a teaspoon in children and half a teaspoon in adults.

It has been estimated that if this rate of progress was replicated across the whole country, more than 150,000 deaths from strokes and 47,000 from heart attacks could be prevented every year.

So could this method of getting kids to preach the anti-salt message work in other countries? It sounds as though it could be worth a try!

© John Welford