Great Wishford -- Oak Apple Day

We will forgather at the Royal Oak, the pub in the village, at about mid-day and join the villagers in their procession. We will then do a couple of dances in the field at the top of the hill. (We might even say - join the rest of the villagers, since they were kind enough to describe us as "honorary villagers" a couple of years ago.

There are links to a Great Wishford web site and also to corner of the BBC's web site in the links page.

This is what Roy Dommett had to say about this affair; in a talk given in Sidmouth a few years ago.

Very close to Salisbury is Great Wishford [...]. At Wishford, they had this charter because they had an argument with Lord Pembroke about their rights to get wood and have access to the forest. So, when the Charter was put down, one of the obligations on the villagers was to go to the Cathedral to have the charter read and then to do their customary dance. From 1604, at least, they were required to do a dance at the Cathedral. Also, for many years, they used to have a procession all the way from the village to Salisbury, about six and a half miles. They were accompanied by a band and there was a reasonable amount of dancing on the way, besides stopping at the hostelries, of course, all the way along.

If you go to Wishford today, well, not exactly today, but on 29th May each year, you will see a tremendous village celebration which starts early in the morning, about 3 o'clock, by them going round making rough music about the village until each house shows a light indoors, then they go on to the next house. Then they go up to the woods to collect boughs, there's a competition for the largest hand-carried bough. They then bring the wood back and decorate the cottages. Then at nine o'clock they catch a bus into Salisbury. Bus, you notice, there's no longer walking, and a few minutes before 10 o'clock, they dance, normally outside the Cathedral, the four women, and they read the charter inside. They shout "grovely, grovely, strength and unity" at the top of their voices and leave the Cathedral. What's delightful is, that this whole thing is not mentioned in the order of activities in the Cathedral and the Cathedral staff do their best to ignore it. They go back to the village and at 12 noon a brass band sets off from town end, which is a big tree, and they do what I would call beating the bounds. They go round the lanes around the edge of the village and stop at the four corners and blow their hearts out on the trumpets and they are accompanied by the Oak Apple Club.

This is a lovely thing, the custom has nothing to do with Oak Apple day. In the sense that it's not celebrating Charles II at all. But they've transferred the custom like a lot of other people did, to Oak Apple day. Over the years they formed a society to keep it going, they called themselves the Oak Apple Club because it was on Oak Apple day, rather than it having anything to do with Charles II.

Well, they have this procession, all the club have banners and the rest of the village have fancy dress, so when you go there you see a typical carnival procession, except there's nobody watching it because all the village is actually in the procession, and it occurs in the middle of whatever day the May 29th is. Which is, as you know, mostly a midweek day, and the local villages don't bother to come for the Great Wishford shindig. They dance again in the middle of the village and they have races, a beer tent, a marquee in which the Oak Apple Club have their dinner. They then have a maypole, they've had a maypole with kids dancing round it since 1880 something or other, it's one of the longest surviving maypoles in the country for ribbon dancing.

At about half past six, they exhaust all they things you can possibly do in the village celebration, so it stops and they go for a quiet drink in a pub. Again that's another delightful thing about it, it all happens when the pubs are shut.

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