Festival days in Worcester turned into drunken revelry in Claines churchyard

But only on one day of the year and that was Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost, which in 2022 is June 12 as all you church goers will know well. However, don’t rush to redline the date in your diary for this summer, because the shenanigans were related to an event long gone.

Claines Wake was supposed to have been a minor religious celebration, but somehow strayed rather a long way off the straight and narrow path of godliness and righteousness. Right into the long grass, as it were.

Travelling musicians like this old hurdy-gurdy man, pictured in south Worcestershire in 1900, were a familiar sight at wakes

Wakes were the name given to holiday festivals once celebrated in all country parishes. Established to commemorate the birthday of the saint to whom the church was dedicated, they were intended to involve a night of religious devotion (hence the word “wake”), followed by a day of mild merrymaking.

A local standing by the old lychgate in Mug drive in 1911. Photo courtesy Friends of Claines Church

However somewhere along the way wakes gradually lost all their religious significance and morphed into an excuse for rowdyism, drunkenness and immoral behaviour. And by the early 1800s, Claines Wake had become one of the worst/best, depending on your point of view. Possibly fuelled by having a pub, the Mug House, in the churchyard.

The Mug House at Claines pictured during the tenure of licensee Albert Beck, sometime between 1905 and 1911. Photo courtesy Friends of Claines Church

Indeed, according to the parish records: “The Mug House contributed to the riotous festival wakes which featured in Claines Churchyard in medieval times, which included bull and bear bating, dancing and ‘drunken roystering’.

In 1750 a number of parishioners bound themselves under a penalty of 40 shillings to attend and endeavour to halt the evil practices. The original location of the parish stocks was between the Church and the Mug House, last used in 1853 when “a cowman occupied this instrument of public disgrace for being paralytic drunk.”

A postcard of Claines Church from the early 20th century. Photo courtesy Friends of Claines Church

A local historian recorded: “Claines Wake was notorious. Extraordinary scenes were witnessed in the churchyard, where travelling showmen and vagabonds plied their professions on the graves. In fact such scenes were not uncommon at other Sunday wakes until the mid-19th century by which time they had been brought down by the wrath of zealous Sabbatarians.”

A group of fruit pickers with the crop on a Worcester farm in the early 1900s. Photo courtesy Ray Jones

Wakes often coincided with the end of fruit picking: at Hartlebury there was Cherry Wake and at Dodford it was Strawberry Wake. For Shrawley Wake a special cold cake was made – rather like Banbury cake – and after the feast there followed dancing on the village green to the music of two brothers, Blind Abel Spragg on the fiddle and his sibling on the flute.

Wakes attracted all kinds of strolling musicians and traders out to make a quick buck, but not all were rowdy. At Cropthorne, near Evesham,  CF Stratton, licensee of the New Inn, organised the local event for more than 40 years.

It featured all types of traditional sports and games between teams from the surrounding villages and was apparently “eagerly looked forward to by young and old”. Meanwhile over at Claines there were games of a different kind.