The Laugharne Common Walk will take place this year (2008) on the Spring Bank Holiday, Monday 26th May. This is a very important event in the Laugharne Calendar, held once every three years, when the people of the town, led by the Portreeve and the officials of the Court, retrace the town’s ancient boundaries.
People start to gather outside the Town Hall some time before 6am when the walk begins.
It is always a jolly occasion but with a serious purpose.
Most dress up in old clothes, but with watertight boots, knowing the Common Walk will take them over streams, fields, hedges & ditches and a bog, and they won’t be back for eight or nine hours.
Some will take much longer; others will drop out en route, after making a token appearance, but the younger walkers (and those who are hale & hearty), will return a few pounds lighter, covered in mud, and ready for ale.
It is all good fun, and has always been so, but it is also an ancient custom that dates back to pre-Christian times.
No-one is quite sure when the Laugharne Common Walk began, but the Minutes of the Corporation date continuously from 1711, and we know for certain that the walk has been held every three years for at least three centuries..
And although there are no surviving minute books for earlier centuries, the town just knows, in the way that towns do, that our forefathers have kept this custom alive at least since 1290, when the Corporation was given its Charter by Sir Guido de Brione, and quite probably much longer.
Its purpose is to confirm the township’s boundaries, and during the Walk there will be much talk, as there always is, about its length, with some saying between 22 and 24 miles, and others arguing that it’s the same as the Marathon, ie. 26 miles and 385 yards, the distance ran by Phidippides from the battlefield of Marathon to Sparta in 490BC.
The principle of walking around the boundaries of a town, i.e. beating the bounds, goes back to Pagan times, at least a thousand years before the Welsh language arrived in Wales from Brittany.
In those days, not just in Wales but throughout Europe, there were no maps or legal documents to define ownership of land. Instead, boundaries were periodically “walked” with key boundary points touched by the walkers, often with a willow stick, so that everyone knew where they were.
The Pagans celebrated these walks with feasting, and the Romans assimilated local customs while also worshipping their own Gods and holding festivals to honour Robigala, the god of boundaries and termini.
In Laugharne terms, we know the Romans were here through the discovery of various coin hoards and there is every reason to believe that beating the bounds continued through the Romano-British and Anglo Saxon periods to the 11th Century.
One of the curious features of our Common Walk is that some of the fieldnames & placenames that will be mentioned during the day have an Anglo Saxon origin, and according to Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary (1833) the early name for Laugharne, spelt Talycharn or Talycoran, and some say Talacharn, was Ancient British, ie. both pre-Roman and pre-Welsh.
Similarly, the custom of “hoisting” young boys who do not know the names of the key boundary stones or other physical features of a boundary also goes back to, at least, Anglo Saxon times – and those taking part in this year’s Walk will be expected to know
Spring Mead, Merry Moor, Beggars Bush, Cuckoo, Kite Rock, Knaves Lane, Mackerel Lake, Moildin Bit, Oaten Cake & Cheese, and all the others.If they don’t, it will be the Constables’ job to remind them in the traditional way – upside down & on the bottom!
It seems probable, because of the use of so many Anglo Saxon words, that our Common Walk long pre-dates the arrival of the Normans, and their feudal system of local government, whereby kings granted land to the barons, and the barons parcelled it out to knights & vassals in return for promises of military service.
Such a system was clearly operating in Laugharne, for in Norman times we had a Lord of the Manor, and our Castle and Church were both rebuilt, the castle being the fourth on its site, and the church replacing an earlier, Anglo Saxon church.
It also seems likely that when the Norman knight Sir Guido de Brione gave the town to its people in AD1290, the townspeople adapted the tradition of beating the bounds to celebrate his gift, i.e. their communal ownership of the town’s land and their freedom from feudalism.
So our triennial Common Walk has real meaning for the whole community. Anyone over the age of 12 is welcomed, and we give it a party atmosphere, with the ladies providing bread & cheese and ale at the traditional resting places, hoping that our sense of fun will encourage our young people to continue the town’s traditions in years to come.
If you want to join us on the day, please do.
Just come along to the Town Hall before 6am on Monday 26th May.
The day will begin with a special meeting of the Court Leet and Court Baron in the Town Hall, where it will be decided to commence the Common Walk – with the Portreeve leading the way down Wogan Street and three times around the Cross on The Grist, before the walkers set off for the town’s outer boundaries.
They will be joined, at different times, by the Foreman of the Jury, the Common Attorneys (who are responsible for ensuring that the Corporation Flag is flown on the Town Hall during the Walk), the four Constables (two at the front & the others at the back, responsible for closing gates and any necessary fence repairs), the Flagmen (who will carry the flag as required), the two Halberdiers (who will carry the halberds, i.e. axes on long staves), and the Mattock Men (who carry the mattocks, i.e. an ancient tool shaped like a pickaxe with an adze & a chisel that would have been used to clear the way through bushes).
And then, maybe nine hours later, the walkers will return, tired and muddy, for the formal closure of the Common Walk at the Town Hall, remembering, we hope, that this has been both a special occasion to commemorate the freedoms that our town was given by Sir Guido de Brione over seven hundred years ago, and also the much more ancient history of this unique township.
George Tremlett
9th February 2008
