Aldbourne, Wiltshire, England - Beating the Bounds, 2011

This annual walk of just over 18 miles which 'beats' the boundary of the parish is an ancient custom, is said to date back 400 years, to a time before detailed maps were available. So the original purpose was to share knowledge of the parish lands and boundaries. It took place on Ascension Day or during Rogation Week in early May. The Aldbourne boundary walk was rediscovered in the mid sixties by Commander Davies, Dr. Trevor Tiplady and Anthony Brown. They traced the old boundary stones and after about three years established the route. The Commander then asked others to join him on this annual walk and so re-established the Aldbourne Beating the Bounds. This continued until 1983 when the Parish Council were asked to take over the organisation of the walk. A small committee was therefore set up to ensure the walk was continued. Donald Barnes and Brian Buckler have arranged the walk for 30 years - and Donald has led the walk throughout. This was the last walk to be arranged and led by this team. More than 50 people of all ages set out at 8am on Monday May 2nd, many others joined the walk after lunch and everyone arrived back at the war memorial on The Green at around 4.30.

From next year David Parmiter and Paul Goodge will take the reins.

If you are wondering about the scenes in which children are being 'bumped' on a large stone, this is because certain stones, trees or other marker points around a parish boundary used to be beaten by literally bumping a boy (often a choirboy) against the mark. The boy would be suspended upside down and his head gently tapped against the stone or he would be taken by the feet and hands and swung against a tree. Nobody knows why or how the tradition originated. One explanation is that the bumping of choir boys - at one time all the local children would have been involved - was 'to help them remember'. However, this is likely to be a late attempt to explain what was almost certainly pagan in origin. Similar ceremonies were found in Greece and Rome. In the latter representations of Janus, the god of entrances whose two-heads enable him to watch in all directions, were sometimes set up as boundary markers. The evidence that it was once also practised in China suggests it may actually derive from an extremely archaic spring fertility rite and that the bumping ceremonies may even be the relics of child sacrifice. The use of willow wands in some places may also be significant as the willow was a sacred tree of the Druids. The connection between boundaries and child sacrifice, in some ways, parallels the antique custom of burying the body of a sacrificed child in the foundations of a new building. Whatever its origins it is certainly another pagan tradition taken over by the Christian church. In 470 AD there was a serious earthquake in plague-ridden Vienna, and the bishop ordered litanies to be said in solemn procession through the fields on Ascension Day. In 511 AD this custom was extended to the whole of Gaul and was apparently adopted officially in England in the early eighth century.

We certainly live and learn!

Thanks to Brian Buckler, Jo Hutchings, The Aldbourne Net and http://www.strangebritain.co.uk for much of these notes. See www.aldbourne.net for more information about Aldbourne. Several scenes from the TV series 'Band of Brothers' were shot in and around Aldbourne.

All shots taken with a Nokia 6700 mobile phone.

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[haza4611]

very good