Cockerel Saved
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27/02/1759
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The constable's book of St Kyneburga's church at Castor shows a claim of 1s for the constable 'returning a warrant to prevent ye Cox being holled at on Shrove Tuesday'. This relates to him seeking to prevent a long-standing custom of throwing stones at a cockerel tied to a stake on Shrove Tuesday - something that continued in some parts of the country until the end of the eighteenth century. (Bunch, Allan and Liquorice, Mary, Parish Churches in and around Peterborough, Cambridgeshire Books, 1990)
Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press,2014.