Home for many years to the Levett family of Lichfield, Wychnor Hall is also home to an unusual marital custom that began in the reign of Edward III.  A couple, still happily married after a year and a day, could go to the hall, accompanied by some neighbours, who were prepared to testify to their marital bliss.

After the husband had sworn under oath that he ‘would not have changed for none other, farer ne fowler, richer ne powrer, ne for none other descended of gretter lynage, slepyng ne waking, at noo tyme; and if the seid X were sole, and I sole, I wolde take her to be my wife before all the wymen of the worlde, of what condytions soevere they be, good or evyle, as helpe me God, and his seyntys, and this flesh, and all fleshes’, the couple were presented with a flitch of bacon (which I understand is half a pig).

Apparently, the records show that only three couples were ever awarded the bacon.  The first couple argued so much over it on the way out, they had to give it striaght back!  The second couple hadn’t seen each other since their wedding day, as the husband was a seaman.  It’s said that the third couple were ‘a good-natured man and his dumb wife’.Thomas Pennant writing in the 1780s noted that ‘the flitch has remained untouched, from the first century of its institution to the present: and we are credibly informed, that the late and present worthy owners of the manor were deterred from entering into the holy state, through the dread of not obtaining a single rasher from their own bacon’.   However, in Horace Walpole’s letter to the Countess of Aylesbury, on Aug. 23, 1760 he states that ‘it is thirty years since the flitch was claimed’.

According to The Spectator in 1714, one hungry couple applied soon after their honeymoon.  However, it was deemed that insufficient time since their marriage had elapsed and they were sent away with just one rasher of bacon for their troubles.   I’m assuming things went a bit wrong for them, as they didn’t return to claim the full flitch.

The Wychnor Flitch by LadyJake (2008)

By the second half of the 18^th century, the flitch was symbolic – a picture carved into the wood above the fireplace, in the main hall.  Apparently it still hangs there, as can be seen on  this photo, found on ladyJake’s Flickr photostream, which she has kindly given me permission to use here.

Some centuries old graffiti.

(There is also a connection with my previous post about Drayton Manor.  Robert Dudley, married Lettice Knollys in 1578 and they are buried together at St Mary’s, Warwick, opposite the tomb of their three year old son).

Sources:

Perhaps the sun has gone to my head, but I’m going to bring part of this post to you in the form of a poem.  With apologies to Alfred Noyes, whose famous poem I have plundered, here is my story of Lichfield born highwayman Jack Withers, based on information found in Charles Johnson’s “General History of the Lives and Adventures of the most famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street Robbers etc” and in the Newgate Calendar.  

Young Jack Withers was a Lichfield lad,
Trained to be a butcher, same as his Dad,
And butcher he did, in a terrible way.
This is the villain’s story,
So bloody and so gory,
This is Jack Withers story, I tell to you today.

With no work in Lichfield, the city he departed,
And found himself in London with a band of thieves black hearted.
He found himself in trouble, and away Jack was sent,
Off to be a soldier,
A soldier, a soldier,
Off to be a soldier in the Flanders town of Ghent.

At the local Church in Ghent, coins were collected in a box,
Jack seized his opportunity and picked the holy lock,
His pockets bulged with coins, yet he still took more
And the money of the Virgin,
The Blessed Virgin Mary,
Fell jingling and a jangling upon the marble floor.

Jack was taken to the Cardinal, to receive his punishment
But told him that his heretical life, he did repent
His sinner’s prayers had been answered by a miracle tis true!
The box was opened by the statue,
The Blessed Virgin’s statue
And the coins had been a gift from her to start his life anew.

Jack abandoned then his colours and returned to his homeland
Where he took to the highways, upon which he would demand,
That travellers should, if they valued their life,
Stand and deliver,
Their worldly goods deliver,
Stand and deliver, or else meet his butcher’s knife.  

A mile outside of Uxbridge, an ill-fated Postman came,
Jack stole the man’s eight shillings; then to conceal his blame,
He slit the man’s throat open with his sharp butcher’s knife,
Gut filled with stones,
And thrown into a pond,
Jack the Highwayman and Butcher had taken his first life.

In the Norfolk town of Thetford, in April 1703,
Found guilty of foul murder and highway robbery,
Lichfield’s Jack Withers was condemned to be hung,
And no miracle could save him,
Save him, save him
No miracle could save him, from the gallows, Withers swung.

Whilst Jack Withers was born in Lichfield, he committed most of his crimes elsewhere.  However, there were other dangerous robbers in the area. On 30th January 1703, a gang held up the Shrewsbury coach in Brownhills, robbing the passengers.  A few days later, the same gang robbed two drovers returning from Newcastle Fair, murdering one of them and wounding the other.  Two days after the gang attacked none other than the High Sheriff of Staffordshire, accompanying his lady and servants from Lichfield Fair. The gang took sixty guineas, and cut off one of the servants’ hands. However, this latest attack was to prove the gang’s undoing. After a huge search nine of them were apprehended – three of them were women dressed in men’s clothes!
As you would expect, some of the tales about highwaymen in this area can be dismissed as nothing more than fanciful legend (there is a story about Dick Turpin jumping the tollgate at Brownhills, but as BrownhillsBob points out on his website this would have been chronologically impossible.) Others could be true – several pubs in and around Lichfield make claims that they sheltered the notorious Turpin and his associates.  Whitehall, on Beacon St, was once an inn called the Coach and Horses and according to a book by H Snowden Ward in 1893 it was a favourite rendezvous of Dick Turpin and his highwaymen.  “The inn was kept by Judith Jackson, a famous beauty and a powerful and unscrupulous woman, an efficient ally of Turpin and his men”. People who have visited Abbots Bromley may have noticed that at the Goats Head, a room is named after Turpin, to commemorate the night he spent there after supposedly stealing Black Bess from Rugeley Horse Fair. Also, Turpin’s partner in crime at one point was Matthew ‘Captain Tom’ King, said to have been born either at the Welsh Harp in Stonnall (now Wordsley House) or at the Irish Harp in Aldridge and both these highwaymen and others are said to have frequented these areas!
By coincidence,  a certain song was released 30(!) years ago this month. So, we started with a poem and we’ll end with a song.  All together now! “Stand and deliver! I’m the dandy highway man who you’re too scared to mention….”

Most of the medieval figures on the Western Front of Lichfield Cathedral, damaged during the Civil War, were removed in 1744.  However, a few were removed a later date (possibly 1749) by a young chimney sweep at the request of the Dean who was afraid that one of them might fall on his head on his way into or out off the Cathedral!

WR Ingram, on sculpture of St Stephen

Public sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country by George Thomas Noszlopy, Fiona Waterhouse
TheCatherals of England MJ Taber

 In 1950, the second Drayton Manor, the one most would associate with today was born, opening with one restaurant, a tea room, three hand operated rides, six rowing boats and some dodgems.  Some of my memories from the 1980s are of frisbee, football and picnics on the grassy car park, trying to stretch the day out, because Mum and Dad wouldn’t buy any more ride tickets; the horror of plastic animals jolting up out of the water and the dark tunnel of the Jungle Cruise *shudder*; finding out the hard way that sitting on the end of the Pirate Ship is not the same ride as sitting in the middle of the Pirate Ship, and perhaps most of all The Snake Train, which was toned down in 1986 and finally closed in 1993, saving future generations from bruises, whiplash and worse. For some pictures of Drayton Manor Park from the 1950s to the 1990s visit their website Drayton Manor 60th Anniversary 

Now, I can’t resist a ghost story, and Drayton Manor has a fair few.  Sir Robert Peel, whilst Prime Minister, was taking a walk in the grounds of Drayton Manor, when apparently his father (deceased) appeared to him and had a chat.

One final interesting fact about Drayton Manor is that the Tamworth Breed Pig originated at the Estate.  Also, there are some pictures of the house and estate at the StaffsPastTrack website

In 1840 Dr Rawson published ‘An Inquiry into the History and Influence of the Lichfield Waters: intended to show the Necessity of an Immediate and Final Drainage of the Pools’. The work was originally anonymous according to medical journal The Lancet.

According to the Lancet, Dr Rawson “contends that the stagnant pools around Lichfield are injurious to the health of the inhabitants, and urges several reasons for draining, and filling them up. This is objected to by certain lovers of the picturesque; and by another very opposite class of persons, who button up their breeches-pockets very closely, that the money may fructify there,when a call is made upon them for any public purpose”.

Part of Dr Rawson’s argument was that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Lichfield suffered five or six plagues. Although the whole of England had been affected, Dr Rawson argued that the effects in Lichfield were disproportionate for its size.

The doctor used statistics quoted in ‘ Harwood’s History,’ to produce the following table:

Statistics of the Plague in Lichfield, in 1645-6.

NORTH TOWN.

Beacon-street, Gaia-lane, Shaw-lane, Close, value £8.—Chiefly on ridge land, and all well ventilated, except the vicarage. The Close ditch was drained in 1643, and part of Beacon-street burned down, during the plague.

SOUTH TOWN.

Market-street, value £4 18s 4d; deaths 38; per cent. 18.—Defended by domestic comforts.

Dam-street, Butcher-row, Tamworthstreet, Boar-street, the Woman’s Chyping, value £4 14s 8d ; deaths 200; per cent. 16. —Exposed to external ventilation, except one side of Butcher-row; but partly adjoining the most infected districts, and containing a common channel, with stagnant water in it.

Stow-street, Lombard-street, Bird-street, Sandford-street, value £4 2s 7d; deaths 282; per cent. 41.—The extreme parts, small houses close to the pools. Bird-street, in the centre, being so narrow, that it has since been widened by act of Parliament.

Green-hill, George-lane, St. John-street, Frog-lane, Wade-street, value £3 13s 7d; deaths 321; per cent. 47.—Partly intersected by the Common Ditch and Common Muck-hill of the town, parallel to, but under the level of which were Frog-lane and Wade-street, while John-street was hemmed in between these and the Bishop’s Marsh.”

Statistics wise 51 per cent of Lichfield’s population died of plague in 1593-4, and 32 per cent, in 1645-6.

So, yet another miserable subject I’m sorry. I’ll try and find something a little more cheerful for next time……