CONSTABLE ABOUT THE PARISH a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 17)

by Nicholas Rhea

  CONSTABLE

  ABOUT THE

  PARISH

  A perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors

  NICHOLAS RHEA

  Constable Nick Mystery Book 17

  Revised edition 2021

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  First published in Great Britain in 1996

  © Nicholas Rhea 1996, 2021

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Nicholas Rhea to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  ISBN: 978-1-78931-721-3

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

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  1

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  And hath determined the bounds of their habitation!

  Acts 17.26

  One Saturday morning in early summer there was a light knock on the door of my police house at Aidensfield. I opened it to find the village schoolmistress standing there. Fairly new to the area, she was clutching a briefcase which suggested her arrival was for an official purpose. In her early thirties, petite, blonde and very pretty in her white blouse and red miniskirt, Josie Preston smiled and said, ‘Mr Rhea, I have been asked to organize the beating of the Aidensfield bounds and wondered if the police ought to be involved. I am hoping to get lots of people to perambulate around the parish boundaries, like they used to do in bygone times.’

  ‘It sounds interesting, something for my diary of events,’ I said. ‘But a police presence usually depends on what’s going to happen, whether public places or public roads are going to be used and how many people turn up. Come in and tell me about your ideas.’

  I led her into my office, settled her on a chair and asked Mary to organize some coffee. Josie had joined the primary school as recently as last Easter and, after expressing a desire to contribute to village life, had very quickly been appointed clerk of the parish council; already, she was tackling her out-of-school duties with flair and gusto.

  Sipping her coffee, she told me that one of her intentions was to revive some of the old village customs, and a renewal of beating the Aidensfield bounds was one of her intentions.

  ‘This is what it entails.’ She produced a map from her briefcase and spread it across my desk, adding, ‘Members of the parish council and the villagers will walk around the parish boundaries, halting from time to time to confirm certain markers, such as the Priest Oak and the Shaff Stone. They will make sure that every point on the boundary is visited and noted. The old custom was to beat the outermost point of our boundary by bumping it with the oldest and youngest persons who were taking part in the perambulation. It seemed like a bit of fun — they were lifted up by the legs and arms, then their bottoms were bumped on the ground. Our furthest point is the site of the Six Standing Stones on Howe Rigg Moor, so we’ll rest there and have a picnic. In the other villages where the custom has continued, the bumping is done quite gently but it’s a delightful way of making sure people do remember their parish boundaries.’

  ‘After that kind of performance, I’m sure they’ll never forget!’ I laughed.

  I knew something about the custom. It still took place in various parts of the country and in other districts of Yorkshire, even though it had been abandoned at Aidensfield long ago. There were several ways of beating the bounds; lots of parishes adopted a system similar to that used in Aidensfield, lifting young men by their arms and legs and bumping their bottoms at all the strategic places along the boundary.

  In our case, we bumped at just one place — the most distant point. In some of the other rituals, away from Aidensfield, lads were held upside down so that their heads were bumped on the ground, but it was all done very gently with no hurt being caused, and the purpose was to ensure they never forget the extent of their own parish, should a dispute arise. Another quaint idea, still practised in some parishes, was for everyone to carry sticks and literally beat every boundary marker, be it a standing stone, a tree, a large boulder, building or other permanent fixture.

  The hilarity thus created was another way of imprinting an indelible memory of the boundaries in the minds of the growing generation. Some parishes conduct these ceremonies once every seven years; others do so at more frequent intervals but in each case, the purpose is to impress the precise limits of the parish in the minds of the young.

  Centuries ago, it was the custom to actually thrash the seats of the young men of the parish at the boundary markers, another way of ensuring they never forgot! In one Yorkshire parish, a boundary marker is a rock in the middle of a deep, fast flowing river and so the boundary has to be marked by the parish clerk hiring a boat and sailing out to tap the rock with a stick or else wading out in fishing boots. Streams which go underground, boundaries that pass through railway tunnels or through houses or those which are variable due to a high or low tide have given rise to some remarkable and memorable boundary-marking customs. One such custom on the North York Moors extends over two days — it is done on foot complete with picnic meals because the perambulation covers thirty hilly moorland miles. It is only done when the estate passes to a new member of the owning family who have owned it since Norman times.

  In the case of Aidensfield, it seemed that Josie proposed to persuade the entire village to turn out, especially the children and teenagers, and for the event to be given the joyful flavour of a parish picnic or happy ramble with food and drink. She wanted everyone to tour the boundaries of the parish, halt at the necessary markers to note them, and then to witness the required ceremonial bumping at the Six Standing Stones.

  A photographer would accompany the perambulators to record the event for posterity. Josie explained that the total distance would be around twelve miles, most of it over fields via public rights of way or across moorland by known tracks, although there would be some stretches where public roads would be used. That is when the police would become involved — if large numbers of people were to march or perambulate along public roads, then the road safety aspect had to be considered. The likelihood of danger from passing traffic had to be recognized. Another factor for consideration was access by emergency vehicles — there was always the possibility that some aged walker might collaps
e and require emergency hospital treatment.

  But, bearing in mind all those factors, I felt sure there would be no objections from any of my senior officers and asked Josie to send me a written agenda when her plans had been finalized. She told me that a Sunday in August was the likely date. In the meantime, I would enter the details in all our official records and inform my superiors.

  ‘Is it really necessary?’ questioned Sergeant Blaketon, when I called at Ashfordly police station to tell him about the plans. ‘It seems a lot of palaver for very little reason. Surely, the parish boundaries are not in doubt these days, they’re clearly marked on local maps.’

  ‘The civil parish boundaries are on the map, sergeant, not the ecclesiastical ones.’

  ‘So which parish boundaries are they going to mark? Precisely which boundaries are we talking about?’ he put to me, and I must admit I had not thought to clarify that with Josie.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘now you’ve raised the point, I suppose there are three parishes at Aidensfield. The Anglican parish, the Catholic parish and the civil parish. Josie — Miss Preston — is clerk to the civil parish, sergeant, so I imagine she’s planning to perambulate the civil boundaries.’

  ‘Which is an unnecessary chore, like I said, because they are marked on the map,’ was his response. ‘We can see where the boundaries run. This is the 1960s remember. Such information is adequately recorded.’

  ‘But it’s a bit of fun, sergeant,’ I said. ‘A community effort. Surely the police would not wish to object to the idea?’

  ‘Who said anything about objecting, Rhea?’ I could see that his eyes were twinkling. ‘All I am asking is precisely which parish boundary is to be marked so that I can establish, in my own mind, the reason for the event. Isn’t this medieval performance done to prevent disputes? To instil in the minds of the young people the precise boundaries of their parish so that land-grabbers like Greengrass and his ilk do not usurp the freedom of individuals by fencing off open spaces, nicking common land or making false claims to the ownership of sheep grazing grounds?’

  ‘Yes, something like that.’

  ‘So if young John Willie gets bumped at the wrong place and marks the extent of a church parish boundary rather than the civil one, surely that would fuel greater arguments if a dispute did arise? He wouldn’t know whether his bump was a civil one or a heavenly one. His bruised bum could conjure up memories of the wrong place, Rhea. Taking it further, if he went to court to argue the point and got it wrong, it could cause ecclesiastical havoc and civil unrest in Aidensfield. And I’m sure none of us wants that to happen.’

  ‘I’ll have words with Josie Preston, sergeant,’ I assured him. ‘But in principle, can I take it that we have no objections to the proposed perambulation?’

  ‘We’ve no powers to prevent it, Rhea, but, of course, I have no objections provided there is due regard for the safety of everyone, especially when the walkers are on public roads,’ he said. ‘Indeed, I might even join the perambulation; it’s one way of learning a bit about the landscape which is within my jurisdiction. But do make sure your perambulators know which boundaries they are supposed to be marking.’

  I felt he had both scored a point and raised an important matter, so before returning to discuss the precise route with Josie, I did a little research of my own.

  I learned that the three Aidensfield parishes each had a different boundary. One problem was that neither of the two ecclesiastical boundaries was very precisely determined. For the purposes of the Church of England, a parish is defined as ordinarily a district committed to the charge of one incumbent and, as the vicar of Aidensfield cured souls in the neighbouring villages of Elsinby and Maddleskirk, it seemed that the present Anglican parish embraced all those villages plus an indeterminate slice of land surrounding each of them. As a consequence, that parish boundary was of considerable extent. Because there were Catholic churches in Aidensfield, Elsinby and Maddleskirk, each with their own priests, it seemed that the Catholic parishes, although more numerous, were individually smaller with each being restricted to a single village, albeit with the inclusion of some outlying farms and hamlets. On the other hand, the extent of the third Aidensfield parish — the modern civil one — was based on the parish that existed through a combination of Tudor highway legislation and the Poor Relief Act of 1601.

  Before 1927, a civil parish was an area for which a separate poor rate was, or could be made, or where a separate overseer was appointed. In very general extent, a poor law parish covered the same ground and boasted the same boundaries as the corresponding Church of England ecclesiastical parish but by 1921 permanent changes were occurring. The Church of England’s parishes were reducing in number while growing larger in size and, at the same time, various Acts of Parliament were determining areas which were linked for local government purposes to the changes of county and district boundaries. The effect of this was gradually to separate the civil parishes from the Church of England’s ecclesiastical parish boundaries, and this was confirmed by the Rating and Valuation Act of 1925. That Act specified that on 1 April 1927, the old system of rating based on the poor rate levied by parishes would be abolished.

  In this way, the ecclesiastical and civil parishes were finally and officially separated although, in practice, in rural areas this had occurred as early as 1894. By the time I returned to Josie, I was sure that the parish boundaries she wished to celebrate were those of the civil parish, even if they were marked on the map. I realized that even if the exercise had no legal effect, it would provide a wonderful opportunity for a happy community gathering.

  When I tried to clarify the matter with her, she smiled and said, ‘PC Rhea, in this village I am aware of the various religious affinities of the people, and of their civic pride. So I did a little research of my own. Before the Reformation, the parish church was Catholic as you know, and it had its own parish boundaries. It was during that time that the beating of the Aidensfield bounds began. I haven’t a precise date but it was sometime in the Middle Ages. After the Reformation, when our parish church was taken over by the state to accommodate the new faith, the Church of England in other words, the parish boundaries did not change. And now, if you check on a map of that time, you’ll see that those early ecclesiastical boundaries are exactly the same as those of the present civil parish.’

  ‘So we shall be perambulating three parish boundaries at one and the same time!’ I realized. ‘And all in exactly the same place?’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled at me. ‘That’s why I think it is important for us to revive this old custom. I believe Aidensfield is unique in this – I have not found any other parish with such historic boundaries, boundaries that have survived when others have been subjected to lots of change and, in fact, the Anglican boundary has changed. The point I am making is that the present civil boundary marks the precise extent of the earlier ecclesiastical boundaries which were embraced by the old and new faiths.’

  Having established that, I noted that the perambulation was planned for Saturday, 20 August commencing at 10.30 a.m. from the war memorial on the green. Josie and the parish council produced some attractive posters and advertisements in the local Gazette in the weeks prior to the event, and although it occurred in the midst of the school holidays, many families promised a day’s outing to their children. I was scheduled to be on duty in Aidensfield that day, to accompany the procession around the boundaries with due regard for the safety of everyone. A rest period was scheduled from 1 p.m. until 2 p.m. at which time it was estimated the perambulators would reach the Six Standing Stones.

  Those stones were the most prominent of the boundary markers and stood on the moors high above the village. The perambulators would remain for their picnic lunch and that is where the bumping ceremony would take place.

  There was a steep, unmade track leading up to the Six Standing Stones and it was made clear that if anyone cared to join the perambulators at that point for the picnic and to witness the bumping ceremony, they
would be welcome. The unsurfaced track to the Six Standing Stones was passable for motor vehicles, but only just! It was recognized that, because of the hilly and sometimes rough terrain, the elderly and infirm of Aidensfield would not be able to complete the walk but by having lifts to the Six Standing Stones they would be able to participate in the event and revive their own flagging memories.

  The perambulation seemed to be well organized, so Mary, with my own little family, said she would drive up to the Six Standing Stones for the picnic and would take something for me to eat. It was too far to walk for the youngest of our four children.

  The morning of the perambulation was bright, sunny and warm. It was a lovely August day, so typical of the best of an English summer with not a cloud in the sky, and yet the temperature high upon those moors could be quite chilly. In preparation, I went to the war memorial just after ten o’clock. I was in full uniform, albeit wearing a pair of stout walking boots, and was pleased to see that lots of families were gathering. Most of them seemed well equipped for the trek — they were village people who knew the quick-changing mood of the loftier moorland heights and they sported knapsacks full of food and drink. Mums and dads had brought along their children and very soon the gathering grew into a cheerful and noisy group of young people.

  Josie was passing among them, counting heads and making sure that any children without their parents were suitably prepared for the long walk. And then, as the church clock ticked away the minutes, Claude Jeremiah Greengrass arrived in an ice-cream van. Alfred, his scruffy lurcher dog, was sitting in the passenger seat and the moment the van stopped, it was surrounded by eager youngsters. Claude lost no time opening his vehicle to dispense cooling cones and wafers to the gathering. I wandered across and bought a cone.