Castle Ring (Rorrington)

Of the 'Halliwell Wakes' at Rorrington (a township in the parish of Chirbury) and of others in the same district, I am able, thanks to the kindness of Sir Offley Wakeman, to give a much fuller account, gleaned from the old folk of Rorrington and its neighbourhood, who attended the wake in their youth.

It was celebrated on Ascension Day at the 'Halliwell' or Holy Well on the hill-side at Rorrington Green. 'Are you going to the Halliwells on Thursday?' one neighbour would say to another as the time drew near. The well was adorned with a bower of green boughs, rushes, and flowers, and a Maypole was set up. The people 'used to walk round the hill with fife, drum, and fiddle, dancing and frolicking as they went,' and then fell to feasting at the well-side, finishing the evening by dancing to the music of fiddles. They threw pins into the well, an offering which one old man, a blacksmith at Hope, says was supposed to bring good luck to those who made it, and to preserve them from being bewitched: and they also drank some of the water. But the pure spring-water was not the only, or the chief, material of the feast! Soon after Chirbury Wakes (St. Michael's) a barrel of ale was always brewed on Rorrington Green, which on the following Ascension Day was taken to the side of the Holy Well and there tapped. Cakes were of course eaten with the ale. They were round flat buns, from three to four inches across, sweetened, spiced, and marked with a cross. They were supposed to bring good luck if kept. Several famous makers of them are remembered, by whom they were sold to all comers, together with nuts and so forth. The wake is said to have been discontinued about 1832 or 1834, at the death of one Thomas Cleeton who used to 'brew the drink'.