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Norfolk Archaeological & Historical Research Group N.A.H.R.G. Text Box: ‘Sites of Memory’: The spatial significance of the Rogationtide perambulation in early modern England. Anna Lloyd M.A. The Rogationtide perambulation around the parish bounds occurred annually during Ascension Week. By the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the aim of the ritual was to ensure that the boundary was clear in the minds of the parishioners. The substantial and propertied members of the community would perambulate the boundary with the parish priest and often a group of children. Much drinking and festivity usually accompanied the event. Historians have already tackled the importance of the social function of the custom.(1) This article, however, seeks to examine the significance of the physical boundary route within the landscape, and to discover the ways in which these geographic features structured people’s perceptions of the society in which they lived. It was important for the parishioners to have a clear knowledge of the limits of their parish for practical purposes. Knowing who was liable for poor relief was dependent upon the knowledge of the parish bounds. People from outside the bounds would obviously not receive the benefit from the parish. Also the annual perambulations allowed the inhabitants to observe any encroachments on to their land by neighbouring parishes. This was the case in Borden in Kent in 1778. It was recorded in the Vestry Minutes that the perambulators had “found some Incroachment made upon the Parish of Borden by the Parishes of Tunstal and Milton.”(2) So, perambulating the bounds clearly had important practical functions. However, the ritual could also contribute to creating a greater sense of communal identity, as it helped to reaffirm the social ideal within the local community. The boundary markers around the parish were of great importance in retaining local knowledge. These markers could take a number of forms, ranging from boundary stones to specific trees. The perambulators would often carve a mark, either a cross or the initial of the parish, onto these objects to reinforce the fact that this was the boundary of their parish. The churchwardens of Bressingham in Norfolk paid William Keene “vj” pence for marking the crosses in 1628, and these payments continued throughout the century. In the 1680s it was “John Brock” who was paid for “cutting the crosses.”(3) This practice continued in some regions into the nineteenth century. The Book of Bounds for Hever in Kent records that in 1806 the perambulators “mark’d a large Oak Pollard close to the Stile” in Barker Pound Field.(4) So this memory of the boundary markers was deeply embedded in the minds of the parishioners. One of the reasons for this was the use of ‘memory aids’ along the perambulation way. The depositions from the 1590s, concerning a dispute between the parishes of New Buckenham and Carleton Rode over the rights to a piece of common land, reveal that people could remember the places where the perambulation route had passed if a specific activity had occurred at that location. Thomas Rutland knew that the perambulation of the parish of New Buckenham went from the Borough of Buckenham to St Andrew’s Church, “which he better remembreth for that he hath druncke Beere out of an hande Bell.” The places where drinking took place seemed particularly memorable, illustrating the communal nature of Rogationtide. John Robertes “well remembreth that at Buckenham Haughe heade there was usuallye sett a firkin of Beere for the procession of Newe Buckenham,” and Peter Cullyner remembered that the “drinckings…were made at the hawe heade and the Castell garden.”(5) Bestowing gifts also helped to make a place memorable. During the perambulation of Hever in 1806, it was at the boundary post erected by the parishes of Hever and Cowden that the “boys scrambled for Ginger bread nuts.” (6) The places where the minister stopped to read the gospel and where the psalms were sung were also memorable. During the Carleton Rode dispute, Thomas Neave of New Buckenham claimed that he could remember the perambulation route, “for he was a singinge boye and was used to helpe singe the precession.”(7) Stopping to hear the gospel or sing the psalms at particular places meant that these locations were especially memorable. Added to this was the fact that the perambulators went out of their way to make sure that the younger generation remembered the route. In 1833 George Oliver described the old perambulation of Scopwick in Lincolnshire. He wrote of the small holes along the boundary route, noting that “the boys who accompanied the procession were made to stand on their heads in these holes as a method of assisting the memory.” He added, “several persons are now living, who by this expedient, can distinctly remember where every hole was placed.”(8) So we can see that the activities around the perambulation route helped to secure the knowledge of the parish boundary into the minds of the participants, and this knowledge was retained even after the physical markers no longer existed. The perambulation route of the parish of Purton in Wiltshire was punctuated by trees known as the “Gospel Oaks.” However, by 1733 these oaks no longer existed. Yet, the written account from this year makes it clear that the perambulators knew exactly where these trees had stood. They arrived at “a place where an Oak called Pin Oak formerly stood,” and then proceeded to “where an Oak called Jacques Oak formerly stood near Lockers Wood.” These were places where “a Gospel was read and a Crosse made and money thrown amongst the Boys.”(9) The perambulators of Hinxhill in Kent also remembered their boundary markers. The Bounds Booklet of 1792 describes the place “opposite the pound where formerly stood an Oak.”(10) These places must have held significance and meaning for the people. Knowing the boundary of the parish was important, not only because it kept outsiders out, but also because it helped to create a specific identity for the inhabitants. The boundary markers can be described as ‘sites of memory,’ and by using this term we are drawn to the ideas of Pierre Nora. Nora’s work aims at discovering the way that the people of France understand their history and identity through “Lieux de mémoire.” He focuses on a wide variety of ‘sites’, including: monuments to the dead; museums; archives; heraldic devices; forests and seacoasts; and national borders. He believes that each site or object retains significant memories for the people involved, and these sites can be “material, symbolic and functional.”(11) Within this wide variety of “lieux de mémoire,” Nora identifies topographical sites, “which owe everything to the specifity of their location and to being rooted in the ground.”(12) We can place boundary markers into this category. It was their physical location and what this signified that made the memory of these sites so important. The markers represented the physical limits of the parish, and also the sentiments and identity of the parishioners. Steven Justice writes, “the community was a community because of the place that sustained it.”(13) So the boundary markers preserved the memory of the geographic location of the parish and the identity of the community within that boundary. Phythian-Adams agrees that physical locations could hold important knowledge about the community. He writes that “roads and streets were frequently transformed for ritual purposes.”(14) David Kertzer also suggests that rituals are “often enacted at certain places… that are themselves endowed with special symbolic meaning.”(15) So we can see that the act of perambulating and the knowledge of the local landscape helped to structure people’s perceptions about the society in which they lived. This fits in with the work of David Rollison. He believes that the “local landscape served as a ‘memory palace,’” arguing that the “landscape was literally used to store information.”(16) Rollison’s study of local proverbs and dialect in Gloucestershire between 1500 and 1800 reveals “the intimate links that existed between culture and specific location in the pre-nationalist era.”(17) He focuses on the development of capitalism in Gloucestershire, and looks at the ways in which capitalism destroyed the traditional landscape. This has implications for Rogationtide, as the enclosure of the fields for capitalist gains meant that the customary perambulations were restricted, and this had the added effect of eliminating the traditional social rights and obligations associated with the custom. Rollison claims that one of the ways in which land could be turned into property was “by changing the physical face of the land,” thereby, “eradicating (in one or two generations) many of the signs of the old culture, and making it difficult for people to imagine a time when the land was anything other than a commodity to be converted into cash.”(18) He argues that the transformation of the landscape destroyed human memory, writing, “land was a memory palace, so that irrevocably to alter or destroy a landform (as in a mining operation, or in enclosures) was to erase a part of the collective memory.”(19) But what is interesting is how persistent the memory of the ‘old’ landscape appeared to be in early modern England. We have already seen examples of the perambulators remembering where old boundary markers had once stood, and this was also the case in Stanhoe in Norfolk. The perambulators in the eighteenth century were aware of the significant points which used to mark their boundary. The written account explains, “there is neither Gate nor Dyke now,”(20) indicating that previously these must have been important landmarks around the parish. The landscape was of great significance to the people of early modern England. The memory of the perambulation route helped them to remember how society had once been. The landscape was more than a physical location; it represented the ideas and values of the community. The retained knowledge of the boundary markers suggests how important the memory and vision of the past way of life was to people. This clinging on to the past may have been due to the changes that were occurring in society. The alterations in land use, the increasing desire for private property, and the rise of individualism were changing the nature of society. Memory gave a sense of stability and continuity in a society which was developing into something different. Rogationtide was a conservative custom, which sought to protect the traditional rights of the community, and reinforce the hierarchy of the parish through select pariticipation in the perambulations and the demonstration of hospitality by the better sort. Therefore, the knowledge of the perambulation route and the features of the ‘old’ landscape helped to maintain people’s awareness of the ‘old’ neighbourly community, and reminded them of the traditional rights and expectations which were gradually slipping away. For interesting examples of this see: Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England, (London, 1971), 62-65; Bob Bushaway, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England, 1700-1880, (London, 1982), esp. 82-87; & Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, (Oxford, 1996), Ch. 26. Centre for Kentish Studies, (hereafter CKS), MF673, Borden Vestry Minutes, 1778. Norfolk Record Office, (hereafter NRO), MF948/4, Bressingham Churchwarden accounts. CKS, P184/7/1, Hever Parish Book of Bounds, 1805-1863. NRO, PD254/171, Wakering v Page, depositions of witnesses taken at New Buckenham on the part of the plaintiff, 1595. CKS, P184/7/1, Hever Parish Book of Bounds, 1805-1863. NRO, PD254/171, Wakering v Page, 1595. George Oliver, “Village customs at Scopwick, Lincolnshire, 1833,” in George Laurence Gomme, (ed.), The Gentleman’s Magazine Library: Manners and Customs, (London, 1885), 37. T.S. Maskelyne, “Perambulation of Purton, 1733,” Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, (40, 1918), 123 &124. CKS, P186/8/1, Hinxhill Bounds Booklet, 1792. Pierre Nora, (ed.), Rethinking France, Les Lieux de Mémoire: Volume I The State, (London, 2001, translated by Mary Trouille), xix; & Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations, (26, 1989), 18-19. Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 22. Steven Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381, (London, 1994), 165. Charles Phythian-Adams, Local History and Folklore: A New Framework, (London, 1975), 18. David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics and Power, (London, 1988), 9. David Rollison, The Local Origins of Modern Society, Gloucestershire 1500-1800, (London, 1992), 4 & 71. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 73. NRO, PD36/23, “Perambulation of Stanhow Bounds, 1732-66.” Text Box: BACK