The Elton nobody knew (the 1 June 2023 walk in pics and words)

Pictures by Tom Dolby and Tony Attwood, wild ramblings of no consequence by Tony Attwood

In 1085, William the Conqueror stated that he wanted to know what was what, and indeed what wasn’t, and so sent out his jolly band of ne’re do wells to record the details of what, who, when, why and how.  And this is a matter of great importance to me because I happen to live in a village recorded in the Domesday Book, and upon moving in I asked my new neighbours what they thought of the matter.

They said they didn’t know as they hadn’t yet received their copy, and doesn’t that just show how the Royal Mail service has declined over the years.  I had to agree.

The survey took place in 1086 which is about half past 11 in modern money, and the results….well I can honestly say that you just wouldn’t believe what people got up to in those days.

Thus we should move on, except to say that in 1086, there were three manors at Elton: good manners, Manor House (now on the Picadilly Line) and Bad Manners, a popular singing combo of the 1980s.

The annual rent paid to the lords of the manors in 1066 had been £14.25 and the rent had increased to £16.75 in 1086, which is approximately the price of a round in the local public house near which we parked.

Since the 12th century, the volume that was written up at the time has become known as the Regional Handbook of Customs and Excise (or the Domesday Book in local parlance).

Therein everyone and every organisation has its place, and one can read that Peterborough Ramblers at the time owned a 124 acre estate and 37 manors paying a rent of twopence (or tuppence to be precise) a year to the monarch.

Sadly some of our forebears in the group have been a little slow on paying our dues and we are it seems 915 years behind with the rent but fortunately, the concept of inflation had not been invented at that time and so is not included in the calculations.  Thus to cover the costs I have just sent Buckingham Palace £1.50 to bring us up to date, which I would be obliged if the committee would refund to me in due course.

Elton was listed in the Domesday Book in the Hundred of Willybrook in Northants, but that name was considered far too silly and so the name was written as Adelintune in the later editions.

In commemoration, we are required to hum the melody (“tune” geddit?) on passing through the area, which with no one else being willing to sing, I dutifully did, thus saving the rest of the committee from beheading for failure to show due respect.

The Domesday Book does not explicitly detail the population of a place but it records that there were 37 households at Elton all of which were owned by a man named John, which seems highly suspicious.   According to Wiki there is no consensus about the average size of a household at that time but the estimate is that each household contained 3.5 people.  These were indeed cruel times.

Today of course we are much more civilised and you can see a picture here of a camera taking a picture of a camera taking a picture of a camera etc.   It is indeed very typical of the area.

On the walk, we did also pass by the manors at Elton who in ancient days had to pay tax of 12 geld a furlong.  This payment still continues and is delivered annually to members of the House of Lords, of whom it has been said.

By 1086 there was already a church dedicated to Saint John and a priest at Elton who was thus named.

The manor house of Elton later belonged to the Abbot of Ramsey Abbey, who also held 23 other manors. He didn’t live in Elton and rarely visited it and his officials ran the manor for him.  Can you imagine?  An absentee landlord!

One of the great rules of this quaint land is that all walking must be done in single file and so as the pictures show we fully obliged, also undertaking the annual count of the number of blades of grass in each field, again in keeping with the ancient tradition of grassing-him-up.

As a civil parish, Elton has a pariah council which keeps notes of all the people who are not allowed to enter the lands thereabouts.

Pariah councils (sometimes misleadingly and wrongly referred to as parish councils) are elected in reverse by residents, thus in 2023 an election is held to see who was on the council for 1986.  A pariah council is responsible for providing and maintaining a variety of local services including allotments and a cemetery; grass cutting and tree planting and public floggings.

Those who are caught not paying the highly contested grass tax, are thus “grassed up” by the council as the ancient saying goes, and turned into giant mushrooms, as Tom’s picture shows.

This was apparently a family of 16 who lived in the high street between 1145 and 1159, which is to say just before lunch.

There has been much debate however about some other artefacts found in the area, of which far less is known.

These include the infamous Parish Walls, which were seemingly built to keep out visitors and walkers of all descriptions by forcing those in the area to take major diversions around them.

This particular blockade was cunningly placed between our designated walking route and ours cars but these local defences are no match for the mind of accumulated Ramblers as we immediately outgeneraled the locals through the famous 19th century “walking around it” manoeuvre.

This of course was an approach adopted by Mary Queen of Scots who is imprisoned in Fotheringhay just two miles yonder.  We went to see her but she wasn’t in.

And thus and theretofore you have the jolly trip around the locality which was attended by a record number of participants (at least a record since the time I joined the group).   And I can say this because I counted them all out and then counted them all back.

But you will ask, when shall we few meet again, and the answer I think is Sunday for the appropriately named sunday walk, and then thursday next.  I am not sure what that walk is called but you can probably make up some sort of name by the time you get there.

If you have been, thank you for reading.