LOCAL HISTORY
Riding the Stang 1982
Climbing the greasy pole 1982
Corby Pole Fair
I
A celebration of living history!
t’s barely dawn, the birds are just waking up, and suddenly the bells of the Parish Church of St John, start to ring out. A crowd of folks dressed in a variety of costumes gather around to listen to the proclamation of a three hundred- and forty-year-old document, signed by King Charles II. Wait! This can only be the Corby Pole Fair!
Laura Malpas finds out what is planned to take place in Corby on June 3rd and delves into the history behind this ancient event.
You are forgiven if you have never heard of this event. It only happens once every twenty years after all. And it’s going to happen this year, over the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee bank holiday, on Friday June 3rd. The origins of the Corby Pole Fair may go back nearly nine hundred years. The earliest known settlement is thought to be even earlier, some thirteen hundred years ago. A Danish Viking, 18
Queen Elizabeth I hawking
Kori gave his name to the village, and it may have been the early Viking settlers who introduced the idea of the ‘pole’, giving its name to the fair. A typical Viking punishment for men who had committed minor offences was to be captured and carried through the community astride an ash pole or ‘stang’, where villagers were free to hurl abuse, rocks or even rotten vegetables. This was known as ‘riding the stang’. By the time the Domesday book was written in 1086, the thriving village was known as Corbei. Forty years later, Henry III granted the right for Corbei to hold two annual fairs and a market. But it was Elizabeth I who gave the greatest gift to the village in 1586. Local legend tells that the Queen was indulging her love of hunting in Rockingham Forest when during a storm, her horse stumbled into a bog and she fell.
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