English Town Blows Own Horn for 1,100th Year

The tradition of hornblowing in this small North Yorkshire city points out that some traditions never die. The tradition of the Ripon Hornblower has been alive and well for 1,100 years.

Ripon received its first charter in the form of a horn from King Alfred the Great of Wessex in AD 886. This year Ripon, a small market and manufacturing center of 11,000 people 216 miles north of London, has 1,100 candles on its birthday cake.

Not surprisingly, there’ll be celebrations aplenty throughout 1986.

This community in the West Riding of Yorkshire has its distinctive celebration every evening at 9. People have come from all over the world to watch and listen as the Ripon Hornblower in tunic and tricorn hat stands in turn at the four corners of the 90-foot obelisk in the market square by the Wakeman’s house, and delivers a long, low blast on the horn.

The Ripon Hornblower this year is postman and brass bandsman Alan Oliver, a man who wouldn’t trade jobs with the queen herself. Ripon expects a visit June 1 from Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Responsible for Security

Oliver’s skills replicate other men who, over a thousand years and more, have blown the horn in the tradition of the Wakeman (or mayor), whose duty it was to cause the horn to be blown. He was the man responsible for the security of the town; householders, who paid a tax of 2 pence per door, could claim from him if they were robbed.

Throughout the year, processions, exhibitions, concerts, sports competitions and many other events are being planned (for a schedule: Barrie Price, City of Ripon 1100 Festival, 34 Market Place, Ripon, North Yorkshire HG4 1BZ, England).

A torchlight procession from the cathedral on New Year’s Eve opened the 110th birthday festivities, which will end with a similar event on Dec. 31. This cathedral, agreeably uncluttered by monuments, was started in the 12th Century on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon church.

The crypt from that former church survives beneath the central tower, and contains the narrow passageway known as St. Wilfred’s Needle, naming the man who founded an early monastery there.

In medieval time, a woman’s ability to crawl through this narrow hole was a proof of her chastity.

St. Wilfrid, born in AD 634, was educated at Lindisfarne and Canterbury. After the trip to Rome, having paused there and all along the way to learn and study, St. Wilfrid was appointed abbot at Ripon, and consecrated as bishop of Ripon and Hexham in AD 669.

Vigorous Growth

St. Wilfrid made many converts and was responsible for much of the vigorous growth of Roman ecclesiastical practices in England. His feast day, Oct. 12, has been celebrated here for generations.

The focal point for Ripon’s narrow, winding streets is the market square, and there is its most intriguing building. The Wakeman’s House is a two-story, frame-timbered building with the town’s information office and a small museum.

The ghost of Hugh Ripley, the last Wakeman and first mayor, is said to keep watch to this day from the upper room of the 14th-Century building.

Nearby is the Georgian Town Hall, built as a residence, where are maintained the silver-and-velvet-encased original Ripon horn of AD 886 and another dating from 1886, when a thousand-year gala was held. “But nothing like this year will bring,” predicted affable hornblower Alan Oliver.

Despite being small, Ripon Minster has several attractions including an austere but striking West Front and beautifully carved choir stalls. One unusual feature resulted from the partial collapse in 1450 of its central tower. Some repairs were undertaken but never completed, so the tower has two rounded and two pointed arches.

In 1660 the central spire crashed through the roof and was never replaced, and soon thereafter the other two spires were removed. The result is an unusual, squat appearance.

The obelisk, which is the hornblower’s stage, was erected in 1781 by William Aislabie, one of the city’s members of Parliament, in memory of himself.

Always on Thursday

Every Thursday the square is the scene of a sort of vegetable/farmer’s/flea market combination, officially opened by a costumed Bellman at 11 a.m. That, too, is tradition: The market really starts trading (and is more fun) far earlier. But the custom, denoting the starting time of corn dealing for the day, continues.

The Ripon Prison and Police Museum has working stocks (popular with the children who visit), a man trap used for poachers, cells and other memorabilia, sketches and photographs showing the hard times endured by inmates of the past.

Nearby is the largest monastic ruin in Britain, Fountains Abbey, with Studley Royal Gardens, temples and lakes next to it; Markenfield Hall, a moated manor house; Newby Hall, with its superb Gobelins tapestries, and Norton Conyers, which Charlotte Bronte used as her model for Thornfield Hall in “Jane Eyre.”

York is just over half an hour away by car. The spa town of Harrowgate, 35 minutes by bus, has the nearest railway station.

There are plenty of accommodations in the area. Write to the Ripon address or to the British Tourist Authority, 612 S. Flower St., Los Angeles 90017, and/or the Yorkshire and Humberside Tourist Board, 312 Tadcaster Road, York YO2 2HF, England.

A lot of history, and a visit from the Ripon Hornblower, await.

Two American communities are named for the English town: one just north of Modesto in California and one in Wisconsin.