The Epping Hunt

Easter Monday · Epping Forest, Essex

No longer kept

Henry III confirmed to the citizens of London the right to hunt around their city, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen once rode out to hunt in state. By the 1820s the Easter Monday hunt in Epping Forest had lost its civic dignitaries and become a comic show for London holidaymakers. Hone took his account of the 1826 hunt from a mocking report in the Morning Herald.

The Epping hunt seems to have lost the lord mayor and his brethren in their corporate capacity, and the annual sport to have become a farcical show.

From Hone's Every-Day Book, vol. 2, cols. 459-460. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

Going a-pudding-pieing No longer kept KentAt Easter young people in Kent went holiday-making to public houses to eat pudding-pies, which they called going a-pudding-pieing.
The Spital Sermon Still kept LondonOn Easter Monday and Tuesday the boys of Christ's Hospital walked in procession to the Mansion House and went with the Lord Mayor, aldermen and their ladies to Christ Church, where a bishop preached the Spital Sermon and the children sang an anthem.
Riding the Black Lad No longer kept LancashireEvery Easter Monday a stuffed figure of a man was carried on horseback round the streets of Ashton-under-Lyne, while its followers begged drink at every public house and fired at it.
The Coleshill hare No longer kept WarwickshireBy an old custom at Coleshill, if the young men of the town caught a hare and brought it to the parson before ten o'clock on Easter Monday, he had to give them a calf's head, a hundred eggs and a groat for their breakfast.
The Biddenden Maids Still kept KentTwenty acres at Biddenden, called the Bread and Cheese Lands, paid for a dole at Easter; Hasted in 1790 counted six hundred cakes given to churchgoers and loaves and cheese to parishioners.
Clipping the churches No longer kept WarwickshireA Warwickshire correspondent remembered being taken as a child every Easter Monday to watch the charity-school children clip the churches of Birmingham.
Taking the shoes at Durham No longer kept County DurhamIn Durham on Easter Monday the men claimed the right to take off the women's shoes, and on Easter Tuesday the women did the same to the men.
Lifting at Easter No longer kept Cheshire, Lancashire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, WarwickshireIn Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Shropshire, men lifted the women on Easter Monday and the women lifted the men on Easter Tuesday.

The Epping Hunt

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