Chambers explains the curfew bell as a town rule that everyone should cover their fires and go indoors when the bell rang, and notes that it was still rung in many English towns at eight or nine o’clock. At Ripon the hour was announced not by a bell but by a man blowing a horn, first at the market cross and then at the mayor’s door. The Ripon hornblower still sets the watch in the Market Place at nine every night.
The Ripon Horn
10 September · Market Place, Ripon, Yorkshire
Still kept
the curfew was announced at the latter hour at Ripon, in Yorkshire, by a man with a horn
From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 2, p. 333. Read the original
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