4thly. That no person be allowed to put up or use a stall or booth on the ground, without the previous sanction of Mr. Spackman, of Bridgecombe Farm, [the occupier,] who is hereby authorized to make terms with any person wishing to put up a stall or booth.
Then came a Scouring on Whit-Monday, May 15, 1780, and of the doings on that occasion, there is the following notice in the “Reading Mercury” of May 22, 1780:--
“The ceremony of scowering and cleansing that noble monument of Saxon antiquity, the White Horse, was celebrated on Whit-Monday, with great joyous festivity. Besides the customary diversions of horseracing, foot-races, &c. many uncommon rural diversions and feats of activity were exhibited to a greater number of spectators than ever assembled on any former occasion. Upwards of thirty thousand persons were present, and amongst them most of the nobility and gentry of this and the neighbouring counties; and the whole was concluded without any material accident. The origin of this remarkable piece of antiquity is variously related; but most authors describe it as a monument to perpetuate some signal victory, gained near the spot, by some of our most ancient Saxon princes. The space occupied by this figure is more than an acre of ground.”
I also managed to get a list of the games, which is just the same as the one of 1776, except that in addition there was “a jingling-match by eleven blindfolded men, and one unmasked and hung with bells, for a pair of buckskin breeches.”
The Parson found an old man, William Townsend by name, a carpenter at Woolstone, whose father, one Warman Townsend, had run down the manger after the fore-wheel of a wagon, and won the cheese at this Scouring. He told us the story as his father had told it to him, how that “eleven on ’em started, and amongst ’em a sweep chimley and a millurd; and the millurd tripped up the sweep chimley and made the zoot flee a good ’un;” and how “the wheel ran pretty nigh down to the springs that time,” which last statement the Parson seemed to think couldn’t be true. But old Townsend knew nothing about the other sports.
Then the next Scouring was held in 1785, and the Parson found several old men who could remember it when they were very little. The one who was most communicative was old William Ayres of Uffington, a very dry old gentleman, about eighty-four years old:--