The Penny Hedge festival in Whitby takes place on Ascension Eve
Posted in Anniversary, Customs, Religion, Sinners on Thursday, 18 July 2013
This edited article about English festivals originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 340 published on 20 July 1968.
The three noble huntsmen had not had a very good day. But now, at last, their hounds had flushed out a wild boar on Eskdaleside, near Whitby.
The wounded animal, hotly pursued by the hounds, fled through the open door of Eskdaleside chapel, where a monk from Whitby Abbey was at his devotions. The kindly cleric, taking pity on the wounded creature, closed the chapel door to keep out the hunters. They, in their anger at being denied their prize, set upon the monk with their boar-staves and mortally wounded him.
The monk, on the point of death, sent for the Abbot of Whitby, who wanted to make the noblemen pay for their crime with their lives. The monk, however, forgave them, and promised that they would be spared provided they promised to observe a penance “for the safeguard of their souls”. As long as the penance was observed, the noblemen and their successors could continue to hold their lands. Refusal to observe it would mean forfeiting them.
The penance required the offenders, at sunrise on every Ascension Eve, to go to a local wood, where they would be met by an officer of the Abbot of Whitby (he would blow his horn so that he could be easily found). The officer would give each man a certain number of stakes, which had to be cut with “a knife of a penny price.” The noblemen had to carry these stakes, plus other wood, on their backs to the town of Whitby, and be there by 9 a.m.
They then had to build a stout fence of stakes and interlaced boughs on the beach. Each stake had to be exactly one yard from its neighbours, and each fence so constructed as to be capable of withstanding three tides “without removing by the force of the water”. They had to be erected in “several places”, and as they were building them, the noblemen were required to remember their cruel deed, offer repentance and resolve to do “good works” in future. Just to make sure they observed the penance, the officer of Eskdaleside attended the noblemen during their duties and at intervals blew his horn, proclaimed their crime and cried out, “Out on ye! Out on ye!”
This unusual ceremony is still observed today much as it was in the year 1159, except that the details of the crime are no longer announced, and the participants own the land which formerly belonged to the Abbot of Whitby.
The ancient horn is blown by the Bailiff to the Lady of the Manor, and his voice can be heard echoing across Whitby sands as he cries out the ancient chastisement: “Out on ye! Out on ye!”
The popular term ‘penny hedge’ is really a corruption of ‘penance hedge’.