‘Except ye Lord keep ye Cittie, ye Wakeman waketh in vain’ revisited

Ten years ago today, long before we imagined we’d one day be living here, we were having a short break from our lives in France here in Ripon. And this is what we saw…

July 2012

‘Except ye Lord keep ye Cittie, ye Wakeman waketh in vain’

That’s the  verse from the Psalms, inscribed above the town hall in Ripon, where we’re spending the next few weeks to avoid the cold and rain of the south of France (no, really, they’ve got the heating on over there).  It reminds us that every evening – EVERY evening – for well over a thousand years, the Ripon Wakeman has sounded his horn to the 4 corners of the city to announce that all is well.

We had to go and check it out yesterday evening.

Promptly at 9, a smartly dressed individual in buff coloured hunting coat, tricorn hat and white gloves took his place before the obelisk on the Market Square and sounded his horn 4 times, once at each corner of the obelisk – one long mournful note each time.

Then he grinned at us, a small crowd of 20.  ”Want to hear a bit of history?’  Well, of course we did.  He made us introduce ourselves, and we found we too came from, well, about 3 corners of the world: Catalonia, Italy, Australia, even South Shields and Merton.  And here’s some of what he told us:

In 886, Alfred the Great, 37 year-old warrior king, was travelling his kingdom to defeat the Vikings and to drum up support.  Arriving at the small settlement of Ripon, he liked what he saw and granted a Royal Charter.  He lacked the wherewithal to produce an appropriate document, and so gave a horn which is still safely locked in the town hall.

‘You need to be more vigilant, there are Vikings about’. Alfred warned.  So the people appointed a wakeman to guard the settlement through hours of darkness, and he put that horn to use by sounding it at the 4 corners of the Market Cross to announce that all was well as he began his watch.  The city’s now on its 4th horn.

If you want to know more, our current Wakeman, George Pickles,  has written the whole tale for the BBC website.  It’s a good yarn.  Read it when you have a moment.

The Market Square, where the Wakeman does his job.

2022 Update: These days there’s a team of three Wakemen, and one of them is a woman. Only Lockdown – sort of – interrupted the tradition, when the nightly task was performed from the comfort of the duty-Wakeman’s garden at home, courtesy of Facebook.

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday

Author: margaret21

I'm retired and living in North Yorkshire, where I walk as often as I can, write, volunteer, and travel as often as I can.

34 thoughts on “‘Except ye Lord keep ye Cittie, ye Wakeman waketh in vain’ revisited”

  2. What a wonderful bit of history, Margaret! One that I’ve never witnessed. I like the town of Ripon but have only spent a few odd hours there over time. A mission, perhaps!

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    1. Well, with a Friend in Ripon, perhaps your next visit could be longer! Team Spain, here at the moment, are finding the rain a bit dismaying. They came to escape the heat, not to use their umbrellas…. every day.

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      1. Oh bless! I won’t really mind if I have to so long as it’s not cold. I’m still organising how to be where/when. In Nottingham the weekend 12th August 🤗💗

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    1. After living in a tiny town – population under 2,000 – in France, living again in metropolitan Harrogate at 85,000 seemed frighteningly huge. So we wanted somewhere not too far from there, but manageable and with reasonably decent public transport links. Ripon scored, and we don’t regret it.

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      1. So you used to live in Harrogate before going to France? My only knowledge of Harrogate is going to a Yes concert back in 1971 or 1972 in what was probably the city hall! I was way up in the gods. And Betty’s Tearoom of course, but I never went there.

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  4. On, brilliant…..a decade or two ago we were in Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Bavaria.
    Went on an evening tour – A city tour with Night Watchman, who recounts legends from the medieval past, fascinating

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  5. Lovely post. I hope the neighbours weren’t too disturbed in lockdown. I seem to remember that a Swedish town (possibly Lund) does something similar daily at 4 am. I know we decided not to stay there when we were holidaying in the area some years ago, not wishing to be rudely awakened!

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  8. Fascinating! I’ve visited Ripon once or twice, but not in the evening so I haven’t seen this. It’s good that the tradition managed to continue even through the lockdowns!

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