On 15th May, Christian Aid organised a traditional 'Beating the Bounds' walk around the historic boundary of Coleshill.
About 30 intrepid villagers and their friends set off from the Water Tower at 11.30am, of whom about 15 arrived back at the Water Tower nearly four hours later. The animation below from Google Earth shows the progress of their walk as recorded by a GPS receiver. The animation is speeded up 20 times so the circuit completes in about 10 minutes.
So whether or not you participated in the walk, please sit back and enjoy the action replay. It's almost as good as the real thing!
Beating the Bounds Photo Gallery
Rogation Day
Rogation Day was traditionally on 25th April or, if this was at Easter, the following Tuesday. There were in addition three minor rogation days on the three days leading up to Ascension Day (this year 2nd June). Rogation derives from the Latin "rogare: to ask" and the day itself was an opportunity to ask God and the Saints for blessing on the Parish and its lands.
The Church took the festival over from earlier pagan rites, used for similar purposes, and indeed pagan elements remained in medieval English Christianity. The processions and the associated "beating of the bounds" were an opportunity to whip (with switches of willow) devils and evil spirits out of the Parish. For this reason and also the frequent invocation of the Saints which formed an important part of the festival, Rogation processions were frowned upon during and after the Reformation, though they were still permitted for secular reasons (i.e. establishing and confirming boundaries).
To remind ourselves of the importance attached to the occasion 500 years ago, however, the following extract from Eamon Duffy's "The Stripping of the Altars" sets the scene:
Late medieval Rogationtide processions, with handbells, banners and the parish cross, were designed to drive out of the community the evil spirits who created divisions between neighbours and sickness in man and beast. They were also designed to bring good weather and blessing and fertility to the fields....The sense of unity on such occasions was very strong. Processions from neighbouring parishes which happened to converge might come to blows, in part because they believed that the rival procession was driving its demons over the boundary into their parish. Those who absented themselves from such processions...were seen as bad neighbours. George Herbert, writing in 1630, exactly captured this dimension: "Particularly [the country parson] loves procession, and maintains it, because there are contained therein 4 manifest advantages: first, a blessing of God for the fruits of the field; secondly, justice in the preservation of bounds; thirdly, charity and loving walking and neighbourly accompanying one another, with reconciling of differences at that time, if there be any; fourthly, mercy in releeving the poor by a >liberall distribution and largesse, which at that time is or ought to be used. Wherefore he exacts of all to bee present at the perambulation and those that withdraw and sever themselves from it he mislikes, and reproves as uncharitable and unneighbourly."There we are then! What more encouragement do we need to join in this year's procession and beating of the bounds.