Crabbing the Parson at Clent

St Kenelm’s wake, also called Crab Wake, was held on the Sunday after the fair, and within living memory the people pelted the parson with crab apples as he went into the chapel to take the service. One old clergyman, a former naval chaplain named Lee, would dine at the lone house by the church, watch his moment and walk briskly to the Saxon porch through a shower of crabs, and one man of Clent had seen two sacks of crabs, three bushels each, emptied in the church field for the purpose. The legend said a hungry parson once hid dumplings from a farm wife’s pot in his surplice sleeves, and when one fell on the clerk’s head during the service the clerk pelted him with the crabs in his pocket. The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1797 says the villagers pelted one another as well, and sticks and stakes thrown by the rougher sort probably brought the custom to an end.