6 minute read
Hocktide in Hungerford
Something unusual is happening in this pretty town on the Great West Way. As the medieval festival of Hocktide nears, the Tutti Poles are being prepared for the Tutti Men. Intrigued? Come and discover this delightful town and its unique, time-honoured traditions.
One hundred years after her great grandfather was Tithing Man, also known as Tutti Man, Fiona Hobson, dressed in top hat and tails, carried a six-feet-long pole topped with a posey of flowers around Hungerford. With her fellow Tutti Man, Tutti girls carrying wicker baskets of sweets and a man carrying a sack of oranges, the retinue visited forty homes up and down the High Street. At each one they collected token rents, or tithes, and residents plied them with drinks. “By the end of the day, I was propping up my fellow Tutti Man, he could barely stand,” laughs Fiona as we sit with a pot of tea in her old fashioned tea shop, The Tutti Pole. Fiona’s day as bearer of one of the most unusual offices in the land was something she had dreamt of since childhood. “I used to think it would never be possible for me to be Tutti Man because for centuries, the Tutti Man has always been, well, a man.” Fiona’s mother was the first female Tutti Man in 2001.
Such is life in this small market town in West Berkshire. Tutti Day, the second Tuesday after Easter, is the highlight of Hocktide, a nearly two-week long festival of strangeness with medieval origins. One important preparation for Tutti Day takes place the day before when, in her cafe near the canal, Fiona painstakingly makes the two posey-topped tutti poles. “The quickest I’ve made them is nine hours,” she says. “It depends how many people call in to talk during the day.” The word ‘tutti’ –which rhymes with butty – is West Country dialect for a posey of flowers, explains Fiona.
After pouring me another cup of tea, she tells me more about Hocktide; how it was once celebrated widely throughout Britain but now Hungerford seems to be the only place maintaining the tradition. The collection of tithes – “or now sometimes just a kiss from the lady of the house” – allows those with ‘common rights’ to graze cattle on the common, fish in the local rivers and pick watercress. Despite having common rights, Fiona does none of these.
“Each year I tell myself that I’ll go fishing, but I haven’t yet.” From her conversation and an album of photos we look through, the events of Hocktide, most of which take place in the fine Victorian town hall, seem full of much drinking from pewter tankards, top hats with pheasant feathers, chains of office and oranges.
It is a bizarre Mad Hatters’ Party. There is a macaroni supper, an ale tasting session, court meetings, a ‘bell man’ and – the highlight of Tutti Day – Hocktide Lunch, where, after the vicar has said grace, there is a four-course meal featuring local trout, watercress and beef that grazes on the common. Ye olde Plantagenet punch is drunk. There are toasts to the King and John O’Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III, who granted the town fishing rights in the 14th century. Hocktide Lunch is open to the public with a limited number of tickets on sale beforehand.
Beware, though, that if it is your first Hocktide Lunch, you may be wrestled to the ground and shod by the local blacksmith. Nothing surprises. Yes, as a first-timer, you are known as a ‘colt to be shod’. Having a large man sit on you is optional these days and no nails will really be hammered into your foot. Then, after lunch, across the road from the town hall at the Three Swans Hotel, there is free anchovies on toast and more merriment. The traditions might appear fun, but underlying them is a unique system of local government.
“Hungerford town hall is the only privately owned town hall in the country as far as we know,” says a man I meet as he walks out of his beautiful large Georgian house on the High Street. Philip Porter is a trustee and honorary fishery secretary of ‘The town and manor of Hungerford and Liberty of Sanden Fee’, a local charity whose long name is usually shortened to ‘Town and Manor’. The Town and Manor functions like a local council and possibly owes its origins to King Henry III granting Hungerford the rights to hold markets and fairs in the 13th century. Today, the majority of the Town and Manor’s income derives from fishing rights along five miles of the Rivers Dun and Kennet and other chalk streams.
The trustees work closely with government bodies and charities such as Natural England and British Trust for Ornithology, overseeing conservation programmes. They are in the process of creating a new wetland with a visitor centre. “Some Hungerford residents don’t like the Town and Manor,” admits Philip. “They say we’re a gerontocracy, an Old Boys’ Club, but we’re all volunteers.”
First impressions of Hungerford are of a handsome market town with lots of antique shops, fine houses and a canal. Scratch a little deeper though and there are centuries of intriguing history and traditions waiting to be discovered.
Hungerford's Hocktide Festival takes place over nearly two weeks from the Tuesday immediately after Easter Monday. Many events – such as ale tasting – are invitation only but Tutti Day, on the second Tuesday after Easter, is open to all as it mostly takes place on the streets, starting at 8am with the sounding of a ceremonial horn outside the Town Hall. At 9am, the two Tutti Men set off with their entourage while the Hocktide Court meets. Visitors are welcome to observe proceedings. Hocktide Lunch at the Corn Exchange in the Town Hall is at 1pm. Tickets go on sale in advance. After Hocktide lunch, festivities continue in The Three Swans hotel opposite with free anchovies on toast. This year's Tutti Day is on 29 April. visithungerford.com; townandmanor.co.uk
Words | Paul Miles
Images courtesy of Fiona Hobson and The Hungerford Virtual Museum
