HISTORY OF THE DUNMOW FLITCH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 17, 20 January 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

HISTORY OF THE DUNMOW FLITCH.

Each August Bank Holiday married couples who have lived together for 'a year and a day in complete happiness, with no word of discord, go to Dunmow, Essex, in the hope of winning a flitch of bacon. The custom is .so old that its' origin is doubtful. The earliest written record of the. reward is dated 1445; this can be seen in the Cartulary of Dunmow Priory, now in the British Museum. Even then the ceremony was not in . its infancy; a hundred years earlier Chaucer writes of it.

Some historians believe that the flitch camo over with the Conqueror. This belief is based on the fact that "at the Abbey of St. Melaine, near Rennes, the old capital of Brittany, there had been hanging, for more tlmn six centuries, a side of bacon, which had been set apart for the first pair who 'for a year and a day had lived without dispute and grumbling.'"

The pilgrimage to Dunmow has a steady record through many centuries. It was Robert Fitzwalter, who in the reign of King Henry 111. rebuilt the already decayed Priory of Dunmow, and in his days the custom was in force. The Priory existed till 1535, and the household accounts of the last Prior show expenditure for flitches. After the dissolution of the monasteries the lords of the manor of Little Dunmow kept the ceremony alive.