Earlier this year, after a day mending fences on Parsonage Down, I drove the Landrover to the waste metal skip to offload the old barbed wire and stock netting that could not be re-used. As I threw the first load into the skip I saw an old ammunition tin lying on the bottom. I thought to myself “I know someone who could make use of that” so I leaned in and hoiked it out.
Fast forward six months or so and whilst clearing some rubbish out of my garage I found the ammo tin lying in a corner gathering dust. My regular walking buddy Stu and I had planned a walk after a couple of months’ lay-off so this gave me an idea. We could take the tin up to its intended recipient, Gerry Faithful in Grovely Wood, and make a day of it in this glorious autumn light. If you have a read of my blog, Grovely Wood and the Woodsman, you will discover who Gerry is and find a photograph of him.
On a quiet Wednesday morning in November we set off. But our first port of call was to be Great Wishford before we ascended the escarpment to the forest. I thought I’d write a piece about the Bread Stones and the Great Wishford Oak Apple Day. Whilst the latter is fairly well known it’s surprising how many people don’t know about the Bread Stones. And of course, no trip to a small Wiltshire village would be complete without a visit to the church, which is also where you will find the Bread Stones.
So what are the Bread Stones and where will you find them? I’ve known about the Bread Stones for about 25 years but never researched their origin. I frequently catch the number 2 bus into Salisbury and at Stoford it turns up the narrow lane towards Great Wishford before turning into the even narrower South Street at St Giles Church. (From here the bus does a peculiar little manoeuvres – it goes to the Town End Tree at the end of South Street where it turns right into Station Road whereupon it stops by an apple tree and reverses up the single track road before driving back along South Street!) The Bread Stones are set into the church wall facing onto the corner of South Street and West Street.
The stone tablets record bread prices starting at 1800. The story goes that during the Napoleonic Wars the country was blockaded by the French. As a result prices of many foodstuffs rose substantially. For some reason the people of Great Wishford were affected more than others. Bread prices were 8d higher than in Newbury, 4 ½d higher than in Basingstoke and 4d higher than in Winchester. In an effort to introduce some transparency the local baker posted his bread prices on the wall of the church. The prices are shown per gallon which was the unit used for the dry ingredients. According to the Great Wishford website “The practice was fairly widespread, by all accounts, but this is the only example where the tablets have been grouped together – and persisted for such a long period. The present stones are 20th century replacements for worn and barely legible originals.” The last stone tablet is dated 2000.
Having photographed the stones the next thing was to visit the church, via the gate right next to the stones, as we knew it contained some real gems. A church has existed in Great Wishford (or Wishford Magna to which it is referred in the church) since 1208. As with most of our churches it was extended, modified and restored over many centuries including in the mid 19th century by T H White whose handiwork can be seen in a number of Wiltshire churches. “Now the only parts left of the original church are most of the chancel, including the Early English triple lancet east window, and the lower stages of the tower.” (village website).
As you enter the church the first thing that greets you is the Bier used for bearing coffins. This was made in about 1922 by William Mundy – the family building firm still exists today.
Opposite the door is the amazing parish fire engine. I must admit the church seemed an odd place to find this. Intended to be drawn by horses and pumped manually, it was bought by the church wardens in 1728 for £33 and 3 shillings.
Immediately behind is the stone monument depicting a recumbent woman set half into the wall. This is thought to be Edith de Bonham.
To the right is a magnificent oak chest. Legend has it was recovered from a wreck of a Spanish Armada ship but apparently it is more likely to be of English workmanship dating to about 1600.
Behind the chest is the stone monument to Edith’s husband Nicholas de Bonham who died in 1386. A brass plaque above the monument to Nicholas states that beneath the floor at this spot lie Nicholas and Edith’s grandson Thomas who died in 1473 and his wife, also Edith, who died in 1469. The plaque was placed above the monument to Nichola in error.
The Bonham family inherited half the manor of Wishford in 1278 and it remained in the family until 1597 when it was acquired by Sir Richard Grobham. In the chancel next to the alter is his elaborate tomb – the tomb of Sir Richard Grobham, knight, Lord of the Manor, who died in 1629. His helmet and sword can be found opposite his tomb. The plaque above his tomb also commemorates his wife Margaret.
After our brief tour of the church we turned our thoughts to Oak Apple Day. This falls on 29 May each year and was observed across England, Wales and Ireland to commemorate the restoration of the Stuarts to the monarchy in May 1660 after King Charles hid in an oak in Boscopel in Shropshire. Whilst it is no longer a public holiday it is still observed in some places. Great Wishford has its own unique take on this day of celebration.
Listeners to the podcast will know that one of my favourite authors is Roger Deakin, whose infectious passion for nature and the environment has long captivated me. Roger died in 2006 shortly after completing the manuscript for Wildwood, a book about his love of woodland, one that draws the reader in so completely that it feels like you are there with him. His description of the Great Wishford Oak Apple Day in Wildwood may not be the most historically accurate but it is surely the most immersive and lyrical so I have borrowed heavily from his experience of the event.
Oak Apple Day was adopted by the residents of Great Wishford to reassert their right to collect wood from the Royal Forest of Grovely enshrined in a Royal charter granted in 1603. These rights had been exercised long before this, perhaps from before Domesday. But the rights had come under threat from various Forest Rangers (usually the Lord of the Manor) including in 1292, 1318 and 1332. On each occasion the villagers fought off the challenge in court. The Manor, including parts of Grovely Wood, were acquired by the aforementioned Sir Richard Grobham in 1603 who presumably also wanted Grovely to himself so the charter was secured to perpetuate the right and it required the villagers “to go in dance” the six miles to Salisbury in order to maintain their right. However, the right was only to collect dead wood which has little calorific value in a fire. Prior to this they would likely have had the commoners’ right to coppice and pollard the living under-wood (to cut boughs) so this really was crumbs from the rich man’s table.
In 1807 the Manor and was bought by an ancestor of the current owner, the Earl of Pembroke. The then Earl of Pembroke introduced an Enclosure Act into Parliament in 1809 and in 1825 made another attempt to extinguish the rights of the villagers. This was challenged by the 18 year old Grace Reed who with three other girls went to collect wood as usual. They were promptly arrested and being too poor to pay the fine imprisoned in Salisbury Prison. They were later released after a public outcry and the intervention of a lawyer, and their rights were once again upheld in court. This did not stop the earls of Pembroke attempting to remove the rights in subsequent years. The situation became so dire that in 1892 74 Wishford Parishioners formed the Oak Apple Club, adopting the motto ‘Unity is Strength’ reflecting the upsurge of socialist political ideas at the time.
Disputes continued in 1931 and 1933. But in 1987 Lieutenant Colonel C C G Ross published a history of Oak Apple Day. The foreword was written by the Earl of Pembroke who wrote this – “I believe Oak Apple Day plays a very important part in the history of English Village life and sincerely hope it will continue for “time out of mind”’. Let’s hope that puts an end to the matter.
So, to the Oak Apple Day in Great Wishford. The day begins at around 4:00 am. Roger Deakin describes how, illegally, he slept overnight in Grovely Wood. Dozing fitfully in his bivvy bag hidden behind a bank adjacent to the road up from the village he heard footsteps pass right by him at 03:40. He remained still until 03:55 when the ‘rough band’, a “cacophony of everything that is noisy” including pots and pans, struck up from the village below. He rose at 04:00 and climbed down onto the road. It was by now dawn and as he turned to look up the road into the wood he saw “a green figure, half-tree, half-stag, striding towards me… fully enveloped in antlers of leafy oak boughs.” This wodwo wished him a cheery good morning as he marched towards the village! Now that to me sounds like the recipe for a heart attack.
Back in the village the ensemble marches round waking the residents. They then march up the road into the forest to exercise their right to cut boughs, no greater than the width of a man’s forearm. These are brought back to the village where one, the ‘Marriage Bough’, is hoisted to the top of the church tower. The formal reassertion of their rights then takes place six miles away at Salisbury Cathedral. Four women known as the Nitch Ladies, representing Grace Reed and her friends, perform a dance on the green to the sound of a musician playing an accordion. (Nitch refers to the bundles of dry wood that they carry which are symbolic of their ancient rights in Grovely Wood.) The congregation then troops into the Cathedral carrying a banner bearing the motto of the Oak Apple Club “Unity is Strength”. They all cry “Grovely, Grovely, Grovely and all Grovely” in defiance as they assert their rights over all three thirds of Grovely Wood.
Once more back in the Great Wishford the boughs are processed around the village and dancing is repeated in the Oak Apple Field by the Oak Apple Barn. The festivities continue throughout the day, some of which take place in the Royal Oak pub, including Morris Men, a Carnival Queen and dancing round a May Pole. But sadly, in recent years, the numbers attending this event have dwindled. The Oak Apple Club still exists and they have a Facebook site. But in 2020 the fete part of the day had to be cancelled due to COVID. From the photographs I’ve seen of the 2021 and 2022 Oak Apple Days numbers dropped from the hundreds who used to take part to just a small handful. And now the Royal Oak pub has closed, although I believe it is due to re-open.
I do hope this wonderful tradition doesn’t die. It would be an absolute tragedy. And who knows, maybe the Earl of Pembroke will decide again to challenge the ancient rights of the villagers if the cease to assert their rights. I suspect not now that our lives are governed by the internet. The outcry that accompanied the imprisonment of Grace Reed and her courageous friends would now take place in the court of social media and be felt by people around the world.
Our journey around Great Wishford and our exploration of the Bread Stones and Oak Apple Day complete, Stu and I lazily drove up to the car park by Grovely Wood. If daylight hours had been longer we would probably have walked, following in the footsteps of the procession on 29 May. Having parked the car I pulled the ammo tin from the back and continued on foot, past the place where Roger Deakin would have slept all those years ago and where he met his half-man half animal spirit of the forest, and on into the forest for a much hoped-for rendezvous with Gerry Faithful at his yard. And joy upon joy, he was there! Bless him Gerry recognised us from our meeting seven months ago. He said he hadn’t seen anybody in his part of the wood for six weeks, so he was glad of the conversation. We handed over the ammo tin which Gerry will decorate with paint of many colours. We chatted for the best part of an hour covering subjects such as wildlife, farming, woodcraft, rights of way and access, pubs (it was Gerry that told us the good news about The Royal Oak), local history and much besides. He pointed us in the direction of some of the secrets of the forest which enabled us to later discover hidden paths and places that we’d never seen before.
He directed us to a stone table that he had recovered from the quarry at Chicksgrove next to which he had carved a wooden bench from the trunk of a tree, and he told us about the path leading up from the place of his birth into the forest which has long since been lost such that it is no longer shown as a right of way on the OS map. Looking at the map most of the villages have a path leading up to the forest, all but this one still a public right of way. My assumption is that these paths were forged long ago to enable villagers to exercise their commoners’ rights.
Having taken our leave of Gerry we explored deep into the forest, sunk almost into darkness as the sun made its way towards the horizon. Shafts of golden light sliced through the trees illuminating the rich yellows and oranges of fallen leaves and edging the Douglas Firs in a red glow. And we too shared in the rights established by residents of Wishford a thousand years ago, cutting a walking stick each – one from Holly and one from Hazel. I suspect we were guilty of some great crime but will the owners on the forest miss those two sticks? “Grovely, Grovely, Grovely and all Grovely” we cried. Unity is Strength!
I last attended Oak Apple day a year or two before Covid - it was a wet one. My family were there playing in the band as usual…