Why Bacon?

If you hadn't noticed, and why should you, the title of this delightful web creation is "'Arf a Side of Bacon"...but why?

Well it all stems from a quaint little tradition in Dunmow which goes something like this...

The Flitch Trials

Dunmow is unique in Britain in preserving a medieval custom once prevalent in other parts of Europe but now long abandoned.

Every leap-year since the 1950s the town holds a competition for couples, with the prize of a flitch of bacon for those who convince a judge and jury that they have been happily married for a year and a day without ever having a cross word.

According to historians, monks were the first to discover that pork could be cured and preserved as bacon, which might account for the fact that the earliest local record of a couple receiving a flitch happened in 1445 when the Prior of Little Dunmow's Augustinian Monastery presented this prize to one Richard Wright and his wife.....

 

taken from "The Flitch Trials" Dunmow Broadcast & Recorder 03/02/2000

 

When I get some time I'll complete the full story (and when I have permission to reprint this article!)

 

If you would like to know more about the history of Dunmow then have a look at this site by clicking here