The festival was a great success as families gathered around to make their mark on history and join in the festivities. Everyone enjoyed making their contribution to the mosaic and the festival was a success, with lots of people learning about Cullompton’s Roman history through talks, pottery making, walks, demonstrations and crafts, hosted by Creative Cullompton. The festival celebrated not only Roman Cullompton, but the recent archeological digs at the Hill Fort. 

It was amazing to see everyone’s individual contributions come together to create a beautiful tree!

It’s not every day that you get to make your own piece of history.

Each day started with an introduction to the history of Cullompton, starting with the Romans and working through King Alfred, the emergence of the town as a trading centre and the relative affluence of medieval Cullompton. We really wanted the children to think about their connection to the town, so we set them a craft task to design their own coat of arms. This was inspired by the coats of arms we had spotted in the Walronds:

Next it was story time, and we started with Kev’s Gory Story – the Tale of Tom Austin. This was sanitised for the audience somewhat, but you can hear an unabridged version of the story of this most murderous highwayman on our podcast. We then moved on to tell the entertaining tale of the Fire of Cullompton, which became a loud and lively performance including all the children who played the various roles with great enthusiasm. We shouted directions above the clamour and spent our weekends recovering with throat medicine.

Back in the classroom it was time for the children to retell the story themselves, often with their own individual twists involving aliens or Superman. We encouraged this: the best stories have a life of their own and grow with each telling. As the sessions went on we got more innovative with this ideas and we came up with the idea of the Peg Theatre. Children took on all the roles that you might have in a real performance – we had set designers, directors, scriptwriters and costume-makers – but the actual acting was done by decorated pegs. This facilitated more enthusiastic performances, as the audience was watching the peg characters and not the children!

We thoroughly enjoyed our time at the primary schools – thank you to all the staff and especially the children who greeted us with such enthusiasm.

The thatched roof was aflame but the conflagration was small and should have been no problem for the local fire brigade, with haste one of the children, the fleetest of foot, was dispatched to gather Cullompton’s brave firefighters. Unfortunately, today was a rather special day for the men of the brigade, it was one of their teams’ birthdays and they had, as was tradition, been drinking strong cider since late morning, by this point in the early afternoon they had reached a level of intoxication that precluded them from making a successful attempt at quashing the fire. 

As the townsfolk desperately tried to direct (and sober up) the crew, the fire spread, the gusts of wind carried sparks from the initial fire into the thatch of surrounding houses – which being dry from weeks without significant rain burst almost instantly into flame, soon all of New Street was ablaze and the fire was spreading in all directions, aided by the wind, falling debris and the panicked scrabbling of two unfortunate rabbits who, with fur alight, managed to set fire to several further buildings upwind. 

Soon more than 100 properties were burning, the situation had progressed far beyond the ability of the local firefighting team to quell it (Even on a day when they weren’t so impaired by alcohol it would have been too great an undertaking) so the decision was made to send a person on a fast horse to Tiverton and then onwards to Exeter to ask their fire services for aid.  

Racing across the parched countryside the hero of the hour flew through Tiverton, rousing their firemen as they went, then went on to Exeter to so the same. 

Now Tiverton is a great deal closer to Cully than Exeter is, so you would have expected the fire crew from there to arrive quite quickly wouldn’t you? Sadly this was not the case, on the way to the emergency a wheel fell off the fire wagon. Not once. Not twice. Three times! Yes, three times the Tiverton crew had to stop and repair the wagon. This slowed them down considerably, so much so in fact that the Exeter crew actually passed them on the road. In a quite inappropriate (but entirely understandable) display the Exeter Fireman did take the opportunity to ridicule the Tiverton crew on the way past. 

Eventually all three fire brigades along with the citizenry of Cullompton managed to extinguish the fires (including, according to legend, the flames on the rabbits) although it took several hard, hot, smoky hours and not before around 140 residences had been destroyed. 

News of the incident spread and much aid was offered in light of the tragedy, Cullompton was rebuilt (with a distinct lack of thatched roofs this time) and even though the fire had been incredibly destructive only one death was recorded (and even that is a contentious point) – that of a young chimney sweep who was hit by falling masonry.  

These are apotropaic marks, also sometimes known as witches marks. They were often made simply with a compass or race knife and can be found in historic buildings from the late medieval period to around the early 19th century. In this period, belief in the power of magical symbols was strong, as was superstition and the fear of witches. They are most likely to have been carved into the building as ritual protection symbols, to keep evil out of the house. The example above is from the fireplace and presumably would have prevented evil spirits or witches from entering the home via the hearth. The marks here are circles, though many witches marks take the form of hexafoils (daisy wheels), which many of us will remember drawing as an early exercise in geometry.

There are also similar marks around one of the doorways in the house:

The Walronds, by the way, is a fantastic building – not just for its heritage and historic value, but also for its place in the community. The space is used by various artists to display their work and it feels like such a warm and friendly place. It is a place of relative calm to escape from the noisy street outside.

To find out more about apotropaic marks, see this excellent video by Historic England: