Lord Bonkers' Diary: Curled up with the Wise Woman of Wing

The Library at Bonkers Hall is a place of wonder, with many volumes unknown anywhere else. And, incidentally, there really was a Wise Woman of Wing.

Tuesday

What better, on a cold winter’s day, than curling up by the Library fire with a good book? My choice today is the new Almanac from the Wise Woman of Wing; I buy it for its herb lore and racing tips.

I turn eagerly to its predictions for 2019 to see how this Brexit hoo-hah will turn out, but find that foreseeing this is beyond even her powers.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• Remembering Sir Paddy Ashplant

See Rutland in 1957

Click on the image above to view this film on the British Film Institute site.

There's no commentary, but you will see Uppingham and Oakham, Stoke Dry church, the sculptures at Exton (which was more than I could when I went there) and the turf maze at Wing.

A pivotal year: Lord Bonkers in 2017

January

The year began with Lord Bonkers being told by a Well-Behaved Orphan that "chimbleys is awkward things", praising Dutch Mulholland and promising to build

an impenetrable, physical, deep, powerful, beautiful ha-ha. It will keep out invaders and, incidentally, keep in domestic staff.

He also met the Wise Woman of Wing:

Incidentally, while we were out in the garden it started to spit, but when I suggested we go indoors she replied: "I’ll do my scrying in the rain."

March

After GCHQ warned of the danger to British political parties of Russian hacking, I had to report:

Lord Bonkers tells me he "caught two fellows with snow on their boots going through the Shuttleworths" at a remote rural committee room during the Ripon by-election of 1973.

In the same month, in an attempt at intimidation, cabinet ministers took to sitting in on House of Lords' debates on Brexit:

I wasn’t having that so I stared right back. When that didn’t work I went through my full gamut of faces: the lovesick Frisian; the angry walrus; Roy Jenkins on the lavatory ... 

I took a party of Liberal Democrat peers (you may have noticed we are not exactly short of them) off to the tearoom for a spot of training in Hard Stares and pulling the aforementioned faces (though the Jenkins is not one for novices). 

I am proud to announce that, after I had left for home, one of my pupils made a junior minister cry.

The old boy also reported that Jeremy Corbyn is a deep-cover agent:

Years ago a drunken Tory confessed to me that his party has talent spotters at prep schools. What they look for goodness only knows – a winning way with the ablative plural, perhaps, or particularly clean knees ... 

Such deep-cover agents are not unusual – I expect my readers could name a few themselves – but to the best of my knowledge Jeremy Corbyn is the first Conservative to lead the Labour Party.

Having observed Corbyn's support for Brexit since then, I am forced to conclude he is right.

April

A Ukip candidate in Glasgow said she was sexually attracted to gorillas. I was reminded of a story Lord Bonkers once told me about Twycross Zoo,

May

Reminiscing about York and March's Liberal Democrat Spring Conference, my employer mentioned Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate. ("What a scandal that was!")

He was also proud when the party's press team came to the Bonkers Home for Well-Behaved Orphans to take a photograph for one of our general election posters.

You can see it at the head of this post,

July

Despite the best efforts of the Elves of Rockingham Forest, I turned up a photograph of Bonkers Hall I took before I met Lord Bonkers.

I also found conclusive proof that Freddie and Fiona work at the New European.

Lord Bonkers himself gave the inside story on the fall of Tim Farron.

September

Lord Bonkers accompanied the Well-Behaved Orphans on their holiday at Trescothick Bay in Cornwall:

Bathing, running barefoot across the sand, burying Matron... I had a high old time of it.

He also reported a successful 'Question Time' at the village hall:

There was our own Vince ‘High-Voltage’ Cable; the Wise Woman of Wing; the High Queen of the Elves of Rockingham Forest; and the Professor of Hard Sums from the University of Rutland at Belvoir. 

I was prevailed upon to join the panel myself and, best of all, there was not a member of the Dimbleby family in sight.

In his traditional foreword to the Liberator songbook, he discussed the perils of making music beside the sea:

How well I recall an early Aldeburgh Festival! Halfway through the concert, the hall was inundated by the North Sea because of an unusually high tide. 

Having looked about myself in the way I have just recommended to you, I was able to snatch up a passing double bass and paddle my way to safety – accompanied by Benjamin Britten on the piano.

November

The old boy displayed characteristic foresight in worrying about England's prospects in Australia:

Will it prove a tour too far for Anderson and Broad, who have justly been acclaimed as the Hinge and Bracket of English pace bowling? Why has no place been found for the Blessed Liam Plunkett when one of the Overton-Window twins from Somerset has been included? 

Should Mason Crane be on the ship at all? In my day a boy of that age who bowled a googly would have been sent straight to the Headmaster, just as surely as if he had used a semicolon in an English composition.

December

Lord Bonkers feared that the theft of the Liberal Democrat candidate for Cheltenham's bicycle was an attempt to sabotage his campaign, but I feared something even more sinister was going on.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Not a member of the Dimbleby family in sight

And so another week with Lord Bonkers draws to a close. If I come across the notes from this discussion I shall certainly post them here.

Sunday

Yesterday evening we held a ‘Question Time’ at the village hall. (The building, complete with a library and billiards room, was erected by my grandfather and the front boasts a modest statue of him accepting the tribute of the grateful widows and orphans of Rutland.)

What a panel we had! There was our own Vince ‘High-Voltage’ Cable; the Wise Woman of Wing; the High Queen of the Elves of Rockingham Forest; and the Professor of Hard Sums from the University of Rutland at Belvoir.

I was prevailed upon to join the panel myself and, best of all, there was not a member of the Dimbleby family in sight. The Revd Hughes took the chair.

Enjoyable as the evening was, I feel that what happened next was the more important. I invited my fellow panellists back to the hall. There, over a snifter or two of Auld Johnston (the most prized of Highland malts), we put the world to rights and mapped a route back to power for the Liberal Democrats. I just hope someone was taking notes.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• Instead of Big Ben
• Muhammad Ali vs Tubby Anstruther
• Night-time cricket against the Elves of Rockingham Forest
• Burying Matron in the sand
• The sycamores are looking distinctly nervous
• A chilled Don Foster sherry

The lost fair and turf maze at Boughton Green

Across the road from the kissing gate that admits you to the churchyard of the ruined church of St John outside the village of Boughton is a triangle of land enclosed by three roads.

This land is the old village green of Boughton and the original village stood around it.

The Victoria County History for Northamptonshire describes it:

Boughton Green was long associated with a fair, held annually, at least since it was granted to Henry Green in 1350, on the vigil, day, and morrow of St. John the Baptist; it used to be famed for brooms and wooden-ware, and the last day was given up to wrestling and other forms of sport, but during the last years of its existence it consisted merely of a large horse and cattle-fair and lost its social character. It was abolished during the War (1914–18); the horses formerly sold at Boughton are now sent to the cattle-market at Northampton; and the green has since been enclosed.

The fair, once famous across England, is not all the green lost during the First World War.

Sacred Texts gives us the text of Mazes and Labyrinths, by W.H. Matthews from 1922. Matthews wrote:

At Boughton Green, in Northamptonshire, about half a mile from the village of Boughton and near the ruined church of St. John the Baptist, was, until recently, a turf maze of like design but having the innermost convolutions of purely spiral form (Fig. 61). It was 37 ft. in diameter and was called the "Shepherd Ring" or "Shepherd's Race." The "treading" of it was formerly a great feature of the three days' fair in June, an event dating from a charter by Edward III. in 1353. 

In a "Guide-book to Northampton" by G. N. Wetton, published in 1849, the maze is spoken of as being in a neglected condition. In a later book, however, a novel named "The Washingtons," written by the Rev. J. N. Simpkinson in 1860, occurs the following passage: "He had just been treading the 'Shepherd's Labyrinth,' a complicated spiral maze traced there upon the turf; and was boasting of his skill, how dexterously and truly he could pursue its windings without a single false step, and how with a little more practice he would wager to go through it blindfold."

Another novel, "The Last of the Climbing Boys," by George Elson, contains a reference to it, in which it is spoken of as being "An attraction which was the origin of the fair"—a statement which it would be interesting to verify if possible. 

Unfortunately, this famous relic was destroyed by some of our soldiers in training during the Great War; trenches were driven right across it, and practically all traces of it are now obliterated.

The plan of the maze on Sacred Texts is rather small, so I have borrowed the larger one here from pages published by Michael Behrend. It comes from an article by a 19th century antiquarian.

If you want to see a similar maze today, go to Wing in Rutland.

So that ends my visit to Boughton. A ruined church, follies and much else - not bad for an area I had always assumed to be Northampton suburbia.

Steam through Wing Tunnel, Rutland

A nice little clip of a steam working through Rutland's Wing Tunnel between Corby and Manton Junction.

That's Wing as in the Wise Woman of Wing and the turf maze, of course.

Artdejardin sculpture garden, Wing

After seeing Wing maze and having lunch at the King's Arms, I visited Artdejardin. The leaflet I picked up there describes it thus:

Artdejardin is the strikingly beautiful garden based in the the picturesque Rutland village of Wing. There are over six beautiful acres of garden, woodland and meadow ... incorporating breathtaking sculptures that reflect and heighten natures finest creations.

The six acres are split between garden, meadow and woodland. Half the fun of the place is the excitement of seeing what is around the next corner, but the garden's website has a list of the artists whose work is on display.

The only disappointment is that you cannot get a cup of tea there. But it seems they do teas in the village hall on Sundays, and Wing Hall, with its cafe and farm shop, is only just outside the village.

The turf maze at Wing

The maze at Wing is one of eight remaining turf labyrinths in England. It stands at the side of a minor road just outside the village. I love the way you can come across such rarities and find them well tended but hardly signposted.

As to how old it is... Britain's Historic Sites says it "may be well over 2500 years old", the Stone Circles site says it is Medieval, while the interpretation board beside the maze makes much of the Viking derivation of the village's name.

Anyway, we know Shakespeare was familiar with turf labyrinths, even if he knew them in decline:

"The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud
and the quaint mazes in the wanton green
for lack of tread are undistinguishable."

Certainly, the Genuki page for Wing says:

By the 19th century the maze seems to have lost some of its magic, for the Leicester and Rutland Directory of 1846 talks of: "An ancient Maze, in which the rustics run at the parish feast".

In search of the Wise Woman of Wing

Today I have been to Wing in Rutland. The Genuki website about the village tells a remarkable story:

However, one woman in the early 19th century became famous as the 'Wise Woman of Wing'. Amelia Woodcock was a herbalist, and her medicines were sold around the district by a man riding on a donkey as well as from her cottage. Her house no longer exists but 'City Yard' is a reminder of the time when gentry and city folk visited the wise woman. She died about 1850 but her remedies were still for sale in Boots the chemist in Uppingham right up until the 1950s.

The story is expanded in an 1876 issue of Notes and Queries (partial PDF here; scrappy but full text here):

Although she continued to live in her humble cottage at Wing, she was visited daily by persons who - as I am told - "came in their own carriages"; and I am further informed, on good authority, that medical men also came to consult her.

Her patients were taken in regular turn, without distinction of rank ; and they were so numerous that, as she was unable to .see them all on the day that they came to her, many persons were obliged to take lodgings in the village or neighbourhood until the Wise Woman could see them.

And Genuki suggests that "City Yard" in the village is "a reminder of the time when gentry and city folk visited the wise woman". (As far as I can see from the map, City Yard runs behind the King's Arms - last time I visited the village there was a second pub called the Cuckoo but that has now gone - so the footpath sign in the far right of the photo is pointing you that way.)

But I wonder about the story, and not just because my experience is that popular etymology of this sort always turns out to be wrong. It is no surprise to find a post on a family history board from someone who has been trying to research it and come up with very little.

But I have found one indication online that there may be something to the story. A jocular letter to the British Medical Journal from 1853, written by an anonymous doctor, tells of his unsuccessful attempts to gain relief for problems he was experiencing with his hearing:

I must say, from my own experience, that I can excuse anybody for going to various quacks, when "the faculty" have failed to give relief. The desire for cure is so strong in the human breast, that, if I did not believe the "wise woman of Wing" to be a sorceress, I could imagine myself becoming her patient.

So a contemporary writer assumed that his readers would all of heard of the Wise Woman of Wing without further explanation. Maybe there is something in the story after all?

Interestingly, I find that Lord Bonkers took Colin Powell to see the lady as recently as 2002. He may have been confused about the date or his companion's identity, but his observation that she was "Terribly Wise" betrays his characteristic shrewdness.