The lost playing places of Lincolnshire

Comparative Drama, Fall-Winter, 2003 by James Stokes

Similarly, the presentation of "gatherings" (offerings collected for their own parish or for another) involved use of the church. The Sutterton account of 1523-1524 clearly states that on Ascension Day that parish held gatherings both in the town and in the church, and that these included offerings for Wigtoft. They also paid for players' candles, suggesting a religious play or processional ceremony involving players within the church. (37) Gatherings on Plough Monday are ubiquitous in Lincolnshire, as at Market Deeping which declared its accounts the same day. In 1535, Wigtoft declared a large collection gathered from its plough light. Leverton paid for ale on Plough Monday in 1611. Both Hagworthingham and Althorpe kept a wassail light within the church (the one in Hagworthingham Church kept by the young men). (38) Many Lincolnshire parishes sent their players to cry the banns of their play in other communities, as illustrated in the records of Long Sutton and Leverton. (39) One wonders whether the visiting players declared those banns in the streets or before the assembled parish in the church in conjunction with a service. Further, many payments to "the players" occurred on feast days, suggesting religious plays, some of which likely occurred in the church, the church house, or the churchyard. Clearly it was common in Lincolnshire until the late sixteenth century for parishioners to transform their churches and other religious spaces into temporary theaters from time to time.

Secular spaces, mainly streets, market squares, houses, and greens, also served as playing places. Civic and religious processional shows (often combined) necessarily used the streets as playing places. In Lincoln, the celebration of the Assumption on St. Anne's Day began before dawn with a procession by much of the city up Steep Hill to the cathedral. Similarly, parts of the processional spectacles at Baston, Boston, Gainsborough, Grimsby, and Louth (all mentioned above under churches as playing places) occurred, in part, on the street. In Stamford, the investiture of a newly elected alderman involved a most complex ceremony, with performances, in the streets and several other places. The entire oligarchy of the town repaired first to the house of the new alderman for a "short banquet,' then to the castle yard for the swearing of his oath, then to the Church of St. Mary for a sermon, back to the new alderman's house (this time led by gold and silver maces and the town's waits playing music, with students from the free school stopping him at several points to deliver orations in Greek and Latin), and finally to "a great feast" for town and country at the new alderman's house. Stamford also used the streets of the town for its ancient "bull-running" in which streets were blocked off and a bull pursued by people and dogs, with occasional stops by the crowd at alehouses, until the exhausted creature was slaughtered. St. Leonard Street was "the latter-day centre of the bull-running festivities and a popular venue for 'stop-runs, when it was blocked or 'stopped' off and a bull turned loose, often at the invitation of the publicans:' The Olive Branch Inn was"the bullards' [bull-chasers'] headquarters" During a "stop-run" in 1776, the bull entered the Half Moon Inn on nearby St. Paul's Street, causing "alarm and injury" so the running must have extended into that street as well. (40)