ST. Helen's swan pit. 101 



and the two former in the last week of January and 

 last week of December respectively. 



Strangely enough not one of our local historians 

 from Blomefield (1741) downwards makes the slightest 

 reference to St. Helen's Swan-pit, and I had almost 

 despaired of being able to give any information as to 

 its origin or past history when, on recently searching 

 for some other entry in the books of the old Corpora- 

 tion, relating to the Hospital Trust,"^ Mr. Simpson 

 discovered a minute to the effect that about May, 1793, 

 the late Mr. Thomas Ivory constructed a new swan yard, 

 and made other improvements on the premises in con- 

 sideration of the Hospital committee of the Corporation 

 having agreed to add one acre of the Hospital meadow 

 and garden ground to the premises then in his occupa- 

 tion, and now known as St. Helen's House. This entry, 

 therefore, not only marks the date of the present swan- 

 pit, but establishes the existence of a previous one, near 

 the same spot, before the Municipal Reform Act of 1835, 

 up to which date, as before stated, the management of 

 the Hospital was vested in the Corporation. 



It is also, I think, most probable that a Swannery 

 in some form or other existed in the Hospital meadows 

 even prior to the year 1547, when, on Blomefield' s 

 authority (as referred to in a previous note). King 

 Edward the VI. granted "to the Mayor, Sheriffs, and 



and on the 17th of January, in the twenty-first year of the reign of 

 Hen. VIII., the bill of fare included Swans, "2 of a dish," at a 

 cost of £2 123. each. And on the same authority, at the Shrievalty 

 dinners of the same Knight, at the Lent and Lammas Assizes, 

 though, at the former, fish in abundance but no flesh, was provided, 

 at the latter twenty-two swans were served, which, if Lammas Day 

 was then the 1st of August, must surely have been over-yeared 

 birds. 



* These books, since the appointment of the Hospital Trustees 

 in 1836, have been transferred from the Guildhall to the Board- 

 room of the Hospital. 



