The Stocks

By David V Clarke

Included in local monuments, recently discussed at Parish Council Meetings, has been the Parish Stocks which are found beside the road quite close to the Lychgate entrance to the Churchyard. Over 90 years ago they were afforded some protection by being encased in a covered and wrought iron cage, with an inscribed cast iron plate explaining what was being protected and by whom. It reads “Ye Old Parish Stocks”. “This guard was erected by the old Parishioners of the village to save this relic of the past from destruction. by the Vicar and Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Parish Council. Mr Andrew, Mr. Slade, Mr. Brown now in New Zealand, Mrs. Frank Evans and other members of the Lechmere family, including some old inhabitants of Fownhope. Nov. 9th 1909. “God Save the King”

I think we can all be very grateful that this so called `Relic of the Past’ was so wisely and carefully protected over 90 years ago by worthy people and, it seems, acting privately as I can find no mention of it in the Parish Council Records of the time. It is interesting to note in passing, three of those behind the scheme had recently emigrated to New Zealand, as this was very much a time when adventurous spirits sought opportunities in the British Dominions abroad, when prospects were not particularly good at home. We can also note the continuing presence of the Lechmere family, from whose stock was derived the Lord of the Manor for nearly three centuries with a seat at Fownhope Court and the particularly respect and locality to the throne in those days, summed up in those words “God Save the King”.

The records of the Woolhope Club also take us back to the time before the stocks were enclosed, for they tell us that in September 1877 a Mr. Mereweather visited the Parish, with other members of the Club, to demonstrate his conviction from fossils and the lie of the land, that we are settled in Fownhope beside what was once, thousands of years ago, an ancient lake. I would judge from recent flooding that many would agree it quite a plausible idea! More to the point, however, he also visited St. Mary’s.and noted “The stocks, or as Johnson explains it, a prison for legs is still seen close to the Churchyard gate”. Moreover, when this report was printed it also had a photograph of the stocks, taken by Mr. Alfred Watkins, previous to it being encased and similar to the early photograph in the Womens Institute History of the Village produced in 1955. This suggests that not only were the stocks in this position around 30 years before they were encased but, as the Church was the ancient centre of the village, this also suggests to me that this was where they had always stood. Our stocks are also particularly interesting in that, at their centre, we also find a whipping post that makes them unique as a relic within the County of Hereford, though I have discovered that, in the County of Essex, there is a very similar whipping post bearing the date 1598. Again, although whipping continued as a punishment on the Statute Book into the beginning of the last century, and until 1820 women as well as men could be punished this way, it seems that the publicly watched act of whipping at whipping Posts ended in I791 thus indicating that the age of the wood is likely to be much older than that. Moreover, it is of interest to note that in the wood of the whipping Post are embedded some 20 to thirty nails, perhaps placed there once to hold the Notice of the Charge of those sentenced to punishment, if not some other public notices. It is more difficult to ascertain, without some dating of the wood of this relic, actually how ancient it is. It seems that stocks as a means of punishment for what were deemed the more minor criminal offences were used by the demesne Leet Courts of the Country back in Norman times; but it seems that in Fownhope the first stocks came into existence in the times when the Chandos family provided the Lord of the Manor, a number of whom were also Sheriffs of Hereford. In 1376 the House of Commons made a prayer to King Edward III that there should be stocks in every demesne and it was after this that they would have been introduced here. However, this statute was repealed in the time of Henry IV and in 1623 by James I.

Stocks also seem to have been used in a variety of ways; night prowlers under suspicion for breaking the curfew; those causing a nuisance by drunkenness and brawling; for selling tobacco on a Sunday, for non-payment of fines and for holding people before sentence or after conviction. Sometimes people were held in them overnight, sometimes as a sign of total disgrace or for being a nuisance for just a few hours. The fact that the stocks we see incorporate a whipping post suggests that they were put there either in the late sixteenth Century or early seventeenth Century period when, because of the rate levied on parishioners under the Poor Law parishes with the backing of the law did not welcome Rogues and Vagabonds pleading poverty for, according to John Harrison in his Description of England 1587, “Rogues and Vagabonds were often stocked and whipped”. It is recorded somewhere that the last person placed in the stocks was a man called Winter, for drunkenness. Today most of us would agree, I think, it is good that a rather callous and physically violent mode of punishment, sometimes instigated by the more powerful on the weakest members of society is now no more than an interesting relic of the past and that many people would say is one mark of progress.

Today we still debate, and need to debate, what is unjustifiably violent in our ways of living and how we can reduce the scourge and harm of physical violence. In thinking of related steps to be taken there is one that has come to my notice that attracts me, as I work with some friends to establish a branch of the United Nations Association for the County. It is a scheme whereby a body of people adopt a minefield and raise money for its clearance among conflict impoverishes countries like Bosnia, Croatia, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Mozambique where innocent people are still maimed and killed by landmines and cannot get access to their land to re-establish their lives long after conflicts have ended. (If you are interested let me know). Perhaps then a corrugated guard of the past might become a kind of shrine for the future.