Scuppets & Scutchell Issue 3

The third issue of Scuppets & Scutchell is packed with fascinating articles about the village including the beginnings of the village as an Anglo-Saxon settlement; the brutal flogging of Ann Brisley near the Bonny Cravat for having an illegitimate child; the chance discovery of a 1922 time capsule at Townland Farm; how the poor of the village switched from local wood for cooking and heating to coal from collieries in the northeast of England; a history of the 135-year-old Gardening Society; the story of the influential le Clerke family who lived in the village for over five hundred years; the red and blue badges paupers claiming financial assistance from the parish in the 1600s were forced to wear as marks of shame; and how Operation Sea Lion, Hitler’s plan to invade southern England in 1940, would have put Woodchurch on the front line.

• Message in a Bottle: A Time Capsule from 1922
• Coal Comes to Woodchurch
• Ann Brisley: Whipped for Having an Illegitimate Child 
• Woodchurch and Operation Sea Lion
• Woodchurch Gentry: The de Woodchurch / le Clerke Family 
• Woodchurch Gardening Society: Past Thymes
• Poor Marks and Badges of Shame 
• Reflections on the Beginnings of Woodchurch

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