Skimmington Castle, a pub in Skimmington. Skimmington is a small hamlet made up of Skimmington Cottages, Heathfield Farm and Nursery, and on the C-road, Flanchford Road, Reigate Heath Golf Club House and Course. The Skimmington Castle (the most historic building, Grade II-listed) pub is by the cottages. It arguably includes most of Reigate Heath; its buildings are however predominantly south- east of Flanchford Road.
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According to douce, skimmington is derived from skimming-ladle, used in the ceremony.
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William Hogarth's engraving "Hudibras Encounters the Skimmington" (illustration to Samuel Butler's Hudibras) So-called "Rough Music" practices in England were known by many regional or local designations. In the North the most commonly employed term was "stang riding", a stang being a long pole carried on the shoulders of two men between which an object or a person could be mounted. In the South, the term skimmington, or skimmington ride, was most commonly employed, a skimmington being a type of large wooden ladle with which an unruly wife might beat her husband. Other terms include "lewbelling", "tin-panning", "ran tanning", a "nominey" or "wooset".Banks, Stephen (2014) Informal Justice in England and Wales, 1780-1918, P. 63 Boydell Press, .
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In the winding lanes of the south-west of Reigate post town, towards the Mole Valley, are two distinct hamlets, Skimmington and Flanchford.
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This paper explores the evidence of an early social custom, Skimmington, whereby husbands who had been beaten by their wives were publicly humiliated.
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The play makes much of this image, depicting Swetnam muzzled by a group of angered women in a carnivalesque episode redolent of a skimmington.
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Like the Skimmington riders, he employs his costume and spectacle as a kind of physic, though his intentions are to minister to himself rather than the community.
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Although the term 'Western Rising' implies an organised effort across the different threatened Royal forests, there is only occasional evidence that the different communities communicated or tried to co-ordinate their activities. Nevertheless, many tactics were shared, including the use of traditional "Lady Skimmington" costume and parades to show community disapproval and organise action to break down enclosures. In arrest warrants, leaders were often identified as "alias Skimmington".
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To "ride such a person skimmington" involved exposing them or their effigy to ridicule on a cart, or on the back of a horse or donkey. Some accounts describe the participants as carrying ladles and spoons with which to beat each other, at least in the case of skimmingtons prompted by marital discord. The noisy parade passed through the neighbourhood, and served as a punishment to the offender and a warning to others to abide by community norms; Roberts suggests that the homes of other potential victims were visited in a pointed manner during a skimmington. According to one citation, a skimmington was broken up by the police in a village in Dorset as late as 1917; and incidents have been reported from the 1930s, the 1950s and perhaps even the 1970s.
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Seal, Graham, "A 'Hussitting' in Berkshire, 1930" (Folklore, vol. 98, No. 1 (1987), 91, 93. . The antiquary and lexicographer Francis Grose described a skimmington as: "Saucepans, frying-pans, poker and tongs, marrow- bones and cleavers, bulls horns, etc. beaten upon and sounded in ludicrous processions" (A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796).
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Skimmington includes eight pre-historic tumuli (bowl barrows), two in one close group,Bowl barrows on Reigate Heath: several within the golf club. It is well documented by rambling groups for its serenity, hills and woods – it lies on the Greensand Way along the due west path in the south of Reigate Park or Priory Park.
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Some of the townspeople publicly shame Henchard and Lucetta, creating effigies of them in a skimmington ride. Lucetta is so devastated by the spectacle that she collapses, has a miscarriage, and dies. The next day, Newson – who it transpires was not lost at sea – arrives at Henchard's door asking about his daughter. Henchard, who has come to value her kindness to him, is afraid of losing her companionship and tells Newson she is dead.
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Crown lands would then be granted (leased), usually to prominent courtiers, and often the same figures that had undertaken the commission surveys. Legal complaints about the imposed settlements and compensation were frequent. The disafforestations caused riots and Skimmington processions resulting in the destruction of enclosures and reoccupation of grazing lands in a number of West Country forests, including Gillingham, Braydon and Dean, known as the Western Rising. Riots also took place in Feckenham, Leicester and Malvern.
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During the Western Rising of 1628–31, which was a rebellion in south-west England against the enclosure of royal forest lands, the name "Lady Skimmington" was adopted by the leader of the protest movement. According to some sources the name was used by a number of men involved with the Western Rising, who dressed in women's clothes not only as a method of disguise, but also in order to symbolise their protest against a breach of the established order.
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Charivari, alternatively spelled shivaree or chivaree and also called skimmington (ride), was a folk custom in which a mock parade was staged through a community accompanied by a discordant mock serenade. Since the crowd aimed to make as much noise as possible by beating on pots and pans or anything that came to hand these parades are often referred to as rough music. Parades were of three types. In the first, and generally most violent form, a wrongdoer or wrongdoers might be dragged from their home or place of work and paraded by force through a community.
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The second part describes how the knight's imprisoned condition is reported by Fame to a widow Hudibras has been wooing, who then comes to see him. With a captive audience, she complains that he does not really love her and he ends up promising to flagellate himself if she frees him. Once free he regrets his promise and debates with Ralpho how to avoid his fate, with Ralpho suggesting that oath breaking is next to saintliness: Hudibras then tries to convince Ralpho of the nobility of accepting the beating in his stead but he declines the offer. They are interrupted by a skimmington, a procession where women are celebrated and men made fools.
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In this custom, someone accused of "husband-beating, scolding, sexual unfaithfulness or irregularity, and cuckoldry" were made to ride on a donkey or horse, facing the direction of the animal's tail, while the assembled crowd made much noise by beating frying pans, kettles, bull's horns, and bones. In Melbury Osmond, the Ooser was brought out into the crowd at such an occasion. Similar forms of "mob- punishment" were recorded in parts of neighbouring Devon, where the act was termed "Skimmety Riding", "Skimmington", and "Skivetton". As he deemed it too heavy to be carried or worn by an individual, the historian of folklore Peter Robson later suggested that the Ooser might originally have been mounted in a carnival procession.
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There was widespread local opposition to Winter's interference with established commoners' rights in the Forest of Dean. In 1624 it was claimed that Winter "and other Papists" were storing gunpowder and ammunition at his uncle's fortress, Raglan Castle and were plotting rebellion against King James. He obtained a 21-year lease from the Crown for forty thousand cords of wood in 1628, but had to give this up in 1634 when a forest eyre found that he had exceeded his rights. This was the first such court to have been held in the Forest for three hundred years and followed the Skimmington riots of 1631, in which the common people had protested against his enclosures.
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Skimmingtons are recorded in England in early medieval times and they are recorded in colonial America from around the 1730s. The term is particularly associated with the West Country region of England and, although the etymology is not certain, it has been suggested that it derived from the ladle used in that region for cheesemaking, which was perceived as a weapon used by a woman to beat a weak or henpecked husband. The rationale for a skimmington varied, but one major theme was disapproval of a man for weakness in his relationship with his wife. A description of the custom in 1856 cites three main targets: a man who is worsted by his wife in a quarrel; a cuckolded man who accepts his wife's adultery; and any married person who engages in licentious conduct.
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