‘From Time Immemorial’: The Alnwick Shrovetide Football Match and the Continuous Remaking of Tradition 1828–1890

Abstract

There is a widespread belief in the Northumberland county town of Alnwick that its Shrovetide football match dates from ‘time immemorial’. In fact, it dates from the mid-eighteenth century. Moreover, it has changed constantly over its 260 year history, in a paradigm case of the invention, and continual reinvention, of tradition, and would almost certainly not have survived to the present had it not done so. The article uses a mass of Victorian newspaper sources to illustrate how media perceptions and evaluations of the match changed over the nineteenth century, and how, in particular, both the match itself and perceptions of it were transformed by the emergence of ‘modern’ rugby and soccer in Northumberland from the 1880s onward. The article concludes with some reflections on popular perceptions of the match in contemporary Alnwick. It suggests that those perceptions perfectly exemplify the post-modern devaluation of history through its reduction to a kind of hackneyed pastiche.

‘Depuis des temps immémoriaux’: le match de football du Carême à Alnwick et l'incessante fabrique de la tradition 1828–1890

Dans la ville d'Alnwick du comté de Northumberland existe la croyance répandue que son match de football du Carême date ‘de temps immémoriaux ‘. Cet article démontre qu'en fait, il date du milieu du dix-huitième siècle. De plus, il s'est constamment transformé pendant ses 260 ans d'histoire selon un paradigme de l'invention et la réinvention continuelle de la tradition et n'aurait probablement pas survécu jusqu'à aujourd'hui sans cela. L'article utilise pour sources un ensemble de journaux de la période victorienne pour illustrer comment la perception des médias et l'évaluation des matchs ont changé au cours du dix-neuvième siècle et comment, notamment, tant le match lui-même que les perceptions qu'il engendre ont été transformés par l'apparition du rugby ‘moderne’ et du football dans le Northumberland à partir des années 1880. L'article se termine sur quelques réflexions relatives aux perceptions populaires du match dans l'Alnwick contemporain. Il suggère que ces perceptions illustrent parfaitement la dévaluation post-moderne de l'histoire à travers sa réduction à une sorte de pastiche rebattu.

‘Desde tiempos inmemoriales’: el partido de fútbol de Shrovetide en Alnwick y la continua reelaboración de la tradición, 1828–1890

En la ciudad de Alnwick (condado de Northumberland) existe la extendida creencia de que el partido de fútbol de Shrovetide existe desde “tiempos inmemoriales”. Este artículo demuestra que, de hecho, se originó a mediados del siglo XVIII. Además, ha cambiado constantemente durante sus 260 años de historia, en un caso paradigmático de invención y continua reinvención de la tradición, y seguramente no hubiera sobrevivido hasta el presente si no hubiera sido así. El artículo utiliza una gran cantidad de documentos de la prensa victoriana para ilustrar cómo las percepciones y la valoraciones del partido por parte de los periódicos fueron cambiando a lo largo del siglo XIX, y en particular cómo el partido en sí mismo y su percepción se fueron transformando a raíz delsurgimiento del rugby y el fútbol modernos en Northumberland a partir de ladécada de 1880. El artículo se cierra con algunas reflexiones sobre las percepciones populares del partido en el Alnwick contemporáneo. Se sugiere queestas percepciones son un claro ejemplo de la devaluación postmoderna de la historia a través de su reducción a la categoría de pastiche trillado.

‘Aus uralter Zeit’: Das Alnwick Shrovetide Fußballspiel und die fortlaufende Erneuerung von Tradition 1828–1890

In Alnwick, einer Stadt der Grafschaft Northumberland, herrscht der weitverbreitete Glaube, dass das hiesige Shrovetide Fußballspiel aus `uralter Zeit' stammt. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeigt hingegen, dass dieses Spiel in Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts erstmals ausgetragen wurde. Ferner hat es sich im Zeitraum seiner 260jährigen Geschichte regelmäßig verändert. Damit stellt es einen mustergültigen Fall der Erfindung und fortwährenden Neu-Erfindung von Tradition dar – andernfalls hätte es bis zum heutigen Tag nicht überlebt. Quellen greift der Artikel auf viktorianische Zeitungen zurück. Auf dieser Grundlage wird aufgezeigt wie sich die mediale Wahrnehmung und die Beurteilung dieses Matches im Laufe des 19. Jahrhunderts änderten, und vor allem wie sich das Spiel selbst und dessen Wahrnehmung durch das Aufkommen des Rugby- und Fußballsports seit 1880 wandelten. Abschließend werden noch einige Gedanken zur populären Wahrnehmung des Spiels im heutigen Alnwick dargestellt. Diese Wahrnehmung steht absolut beispielhaft für die post-moderne Abwertung von Geschichte durch ihre Reduktion auf banale Imitation.

Keywords:

• football
• Shrovetide
• tradition
• myth
• history

Notes

1. This article relies heavily on football match reports appearing in Victorian newspapers in north-eastern England. The following abbreviations are used:

2. Referred to hereafter simply as Minute Book.

3. Northumberland Records Office, Woodhorn (NRO 3851). This single sheet of typescript is inserted at the front of the scrapbook.

4. The Alnwick Castle Archive has recently had an important accession of material relating to these events. They include letters from the third duke and his agent to the town overseers agreeing to change the location of the match, and copies of handbills which announce the change and specify the penalties for continuing the street game. Alnwick Castle: ACC 107. I am very grateful to the archivist, Christopher Hunwick, for inviting me to the archive and making this material, and some other vital papers, available to me. Ihave also taken advantage of his expertise through a number of subsequent emails.

5. I have no direct evidence for this assertion, but in the Alnwick Castle archives there is a scrapbook devoted to David Smith, Commissioner for Estates under the second and third dukes. This contains, among other things, some hand-written comments by Smith on the game as it was before 1828. These suggest that the street game itself may have terminated on the Duke's pasture, the ball having first been kicked around the town. Apropos of this, he also says that before 1828 ‘they had this diversion in the Castle Close, North of the Castle, between the South side of the River, and frequently it got into a Hole in the River, called by them Jordan's pools – but the site of it is scarcely known at present’. Alnwick Castle: DNP MS 187A/118.

6. NC, 8 Feb. 1856.

7. AM, 1 March 1856.

8. An NC match report 20 years later states that the goals were placed ‘due east and west at a distance of 734 yards’ (NC, 3 March 1876). The goals were said to be about ‘three feet wide’ in 1856. Another report in 1884, however, says that ‘the goals were placed at a distance of about half a mile from each other, each goal being about six feet between the posts’ (undated, unattributed clipping for 1884 in Minute Book – my emphasis added). With the exception of the curiously precise ‘734 yards’, we should probably treat all these numbers as observer impressions rather than exact measures. But it is clear that the size ofthe playing area has declined over time, probably with the fall in the number of participants.

9. See for example AM, 1 March 1858.

10. NC, 8 Feb. 1856.

11. This relates to something else. In many of the Alnwick match reports, and in reports of the Chester-le-Street and Sedgefield Shrovetide matches too, the phrase ‘their goal’ is always used of the goal attacked, not of the goal defended. The goal of a team or side, in fact, was to reach its goal. And thus one's goal was always in front of one, not behind. As well as being more semantically consistent, this shows, I think, how entirely devoid of any developed sense of tactics or strategy such matches usually were.

12. For a press clipping referring to a ‘hailing point at the bridge’ in an account of a Shrove Tuesday match at Howick in the Scottish borders, see ‘Handba’at Howick’ in NRO 3851. For the use of the term ‘hail’ at Hexham, south-west Northumberland, both for the goals themselves and for periods of the match, in a manner identical to the Alnwick usage (but referring to a much smaller-scale football match held as part of the Hexham Easter Sports), see HC, 19 April 1865, 28 April 1875 and 27 April 1878.

13. Garnham, ‘Patronage, Politics and the Modernization of Leisure’, 1240.

14. Uncatalogued scrapbook entitled Percy Duke of Northumberland, vol. X, Fourth Duke, Alnwick Castle.

15. Email to the author from Christopher Hunwick, Alnwick Castle archivist.

16. A report of the 1871 match in the Alnwick Journal states that the passing of the Alnwick Improvement Act in 1827 led to the moving of the match from the town streets to the duke's pasture, and that ‘It was revived in its present form at the suggestion of Algernon, Fourth Duke of Northumberland. A committee was appointed to carry it out with proper spirit, and to regulate the game by a few definite by-laws.’ See also Garnham, ‘Patronage, Politics and the Modernization of Leisure’, 1239.

17. Uncatalogued scrapbook, Percy Duke of Northumberland, vol. X, Fourth Duke, Alnwick Castle.

18. AJ clipping, Feb 1862, in Bailiffgate Exhibition on ‘Football’.

19. AM, 18 Feb. 1866.

20. An 1886 NDC match report cutting, in Minute Book, explicitly refers to the ball as ‘the oval’. But it is likely that, in keeping with everything else, the ball used in the Alnwick match changed through the nineteenth century. J. Wightman Douglas in ‘Shrovetide Football at Alnwick’ (Minute Book clipping, undated, but probably early twentieth century) quotes an AM article of 1858, stating that, at that time, the balls were of India rubber (an invention of the 1850s) but says that the earliest footballs ‘were merely cases of leather or other materials stuffed with shavings, but later they probably … consisted of a beast's bladder covered with black leather, blocked to a spherical shape, and completely sown up without caps or lace, the result being an extremely hard ball much smaller than the modern article’ (italics added). However, from the 1890s onwards, asoccer ball was introduced and was used throughout the twentieth century and up to the present time.

21. Email from Christopher Hunwick, Alnwick Castle archivist.

22. Garnham, ‘Patronage, Politics and the Modernization of Leisure’, 1241.

23. The AM report of the 1858 match, for example, simply says, en passant, and entirely without further comment, ‘The contest was between the parochial districts of St Michael's and St Paul's’.

24. NC, 3 March 1876.

25. On this see for example the reports of the Chester-le-Street match in NC, 3 March 1876, and in DCA, 13 March 1880. For the Sedgefield match, DC, 28 Feb. 1879.

26. Unattributed and undated press clipping – but probably NDC – of the 1885 match in Minute Book.

27. Undated clipping, annotated as ‘Newcastle Chronicle’ in the 1884 pages of Minute Book.

28. Undated clipping, annotated as ‘Newcastle Chronicle’ in the 1886 pages of Minute Book.

29. Minute Book, entries for 1881.

30. Minute Book, match advertising posters 1882 and 1883.

31. NG clipping, 1888, in Minute Book.

32. One could say much the same thing about reports in the NC and HC for April 1878 claiming that a traditional football match played in Hexham, as part of an Easter Sports day there, was played according to ‘the old Hexham rules’. But this is a separate – though related – story: NC, 25 April 1878 and HC, 28 April 1878.

33. Voltaire, `Essai sur l'histoire generale at sur les Moeurs et l'espirit des nations, ch. 70, 1756.

34. Elfin's column, ‘Local Gossip’, appeared in the NDC on the Monday or Tuesday of each week between the 1870s and 1890s. It provides a flow of intelligent, informed comment on many aspects of north-eastern life, including politics, economic and social conditions and cultural events. Very occasionally it also includes observations and comments on sports and recreations.

35. Unannotated, undated clipping in Minute Book entries for 1890. My own research confirms that the clipping's source is the NDC.

36. 1882 match poster in Minute Book.

37. Even in the 1880s though, this rule was still being resisted, or at least infringed. A report for 1888 has this: ‘Bob Keen, coming forward, took the leather right down to St Paul's goal. Near the goal Jimmy Kelly manipulated it, and carried it a short distance hugged tohis breast, to the centre of the goal, where it was dislodged from his arms by W.Wakinshaw, and kicked through. The Committee, however, decided to disallow the “hale”, but agreed to allow Wakinshaw five shillings for his performance.’ Undated NG clipping, 1888, in Minute Book.

38. Kitching, ‘What's in a Name?’

39. Undated 1884 clipping, annotated as ‘Newcastle Chronicle’ in Minute Book.

40. Clipping from AJ, Feb. 1862, in exhibit on ‘Football’, Bailiffgate Museum, Alnwick.