A hare for every cottage at Scopwick feast

Scopwick’s village feast fell in the week after Old Holy Rood, and on the Saturday evening before it every cottage was given a hare from the lord of the manor, Charles Chaplin of Blankney. George Oliver, the vicar, wrote in 1833 that the cottagers scrubbed and whitewashed for a week beforehand and painted soot patterns on their floors to look like carpet.