Wellington Folk and Custom Society staged its annual Blaize & Brigit Night at the Cottage Inn.

Wellington’s only Freeman, Richard Fox, swore in Bishop Blaize, Mike Fenn, and Saint Brigit, Elizabeth Kirkpatrick, for 2022.

The custom was first noted by Ealing Dean in 1889 among the wool-combers and other wool workers in Wellington.

Dean said the workers would leave the Fox Bros factories for the annual event with the Bishop Blaize (patron saint of wool-combers) they had chosen and go on a pilgrimage to a pub or cottage in town, where they acted out the ceremony.

Saint Brigit is patroness of healers, spinners, poets and smithcrafts.

After this year’s ceremony, celebrations continued with music and dance in the Cottage Inn pub car park with the Enigma Border Morris team, and in the bar with traditional folk musicians and singers.

The custom marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring in the old folk calendar.PHOTO: Alain Lockyer