Tuesday 23 December 2008

The Ducking Chair at Fordwich

In ancient times the village of Fordwich was a town governed by a mayor and Jurats, they administered a very tough form of justice condemned evildoers being put to death by drowning.

Scolding wives were strapped to the ducking chair and lowered to the bottom of the river, after which they were put into a specially designed loft over the prison to dry out.

Local history produces these little gems of information that I feel duty bound to share with you all

3 comments:

  1. Michael, Winchelsea still has Jurats (non elected equivalant of Town Councillors) They pick a mayor from amongst themselves, and replace a jurat by themselves when needed. Interestingly they also levy a 'rate' on the local population. One may argue tjhat this is undemocratic, but the people of Winchelsea petitioned parliament in the early 70's to keep this system

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  2. Isn't that a picture of the Irish Iris?

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  3. Ken a bit like Ramsgate people voting to pay more for a town council.

    11.11 The photograph was taken in 1894 so it would seem unlikely.

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.