A-Z of Curious Shropshire by Shipley John

Author:Shipley, John
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750983174
Publisher: The History Press

Ludlow Castle, with Dinham Bridge in the foreground.

~ Pull the Other One ~

In medieval times a fierce tug-of-war used to be held in Ludlow’s fair town. Two teams representing two different wards of the town competed against each other, struggling to tug a 36-yard-long rope with a blue knob at one end and a red knob at the other. The origin of the contest is said to date back to the Wars of the Roses, when the Yorkist town was besieged by Lancastrian King Henry VI and his forces. One group of citizens who supported the king struggled against another group who supported Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York.

The contest began when the town mayor dangled a rope from an upper window of the market hall, which had to be reached by two men and a woman from each team, standing on each other’s shoulders. After this, the serious work began in earnest, the reds trying to tug the rope into Mill Street, and thence dip it into the River Teme, while the blue team tried to tug the rope into the Bull Ring, and thence dip the rope into the River Corve. Every time one team scored a successful tug, the rope would be brought back to the Market Hall, and the contest would begin again. The game was over when one team scored twice running. Finally the rope would be sold by public auction and the money spent on beer. The event gave rise to so much fighting, and resulted in so many injuries among the crowd and competitors, that in 1851 it was supressed.

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