The Shrove Tuesday Football Ceremony of the Purbeck Marblers

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The Shrove Tuesday Football Ceremony of the Purbeck Marblers ceremony is a series of three events dating back many years. The events occur on the date that new apprentices are introduced to the Company of Marblers and Stonecutters of Purbeck. The initiates have to negotiate West Street in Corfe Castle from the Fox Inn pub to the Town Hall with a football and a glass of beer whilst others try to spill the beer. Arriving in the Town Hall, a closed ceremony is held for the initiates.

A photo taken in 1935 shows 22 members of the Company with their chaplain, the Rector of Corfe Castle, on Shrove Tuesday, 1935. In the background is the Fox Inn.

From Corfe marble was carted the three miles across Rempstone Heath to Ower Quay on Poole harbour, a timber wharf deserted today with a few weathered blocks of marble left from the past. The Company has survived from these old days, and though they can no longer elect two wardens and two stewards to control Purbeck, they maintain other traditions. Their annual gathering and elections are held at the Town Hall, Corfe, on Shrove Tuesday and one custom is to kick a football to Ower Quay. The ball is never touched by hand and is just trundled along. Finally, at Ower, it is kicked into the water and a pound of pepper sprinkled over it. The ancient custom preserves a memory that the once vital right-of-way was kept open by the payment of a peppercorn rent, and a section of the track is known as Peppercorn Lane. This annual tradition has survived since the marblers agreed in 1695 to pay John Collins of Ower a pound of pepper and a football, but the practice may now be falling into disuse. In 1969 only one marbler arrived at Ower in the evening of Shrove Tuesday and he brought just the pound of pepper. Ower had ceased to be a port when John Hutchins, the vicar of Wareham, was writing his county history: "Ower seems to have been formerly the chief port of the Isle of Purbeck, and it was the principal if not the only quay for the exportation of stone and marble. On this account the quarries pay on Ash-Wednesday yearly one pound of pepper and a football to the lord."

An article published in Dorset Life claimed the following...

Outrage! In 1992 a young police constable, on temporary secondment from the North of England and ignorant of the 700-year-old Shrove Tuesday custom, confiscated the football which the company of Purbeck Marblers and Stone-cutters were kicking through the streets of Corfe Castle