Dinton Fete Photography Quiz

At this years Dinton fete, one of the stalls contained a quiz, where you had to guess which village in the Dinton Parish, each photograph was taken. Seen here are twelve of the twenty pictures. How many, can you guess the location of? (If you click on the picture, you'll see a larger version.) Incidentally, the winner came from New Road, Dinton.

Blue Tit

This picture was taken today in the village of Ford at an undisclosed location. It seems the blue tit seen here, set her heart on a particular warm, cosy and dry postbox in this exclusive postal code, and not even the daily disturbance of the postman arriving, could dissuade her from setting up home. According to the owner, apparently, blue tits nests in the same location every year.

Mix 96 Balloon

If you were out walking your dog, or perhaps going for an early morning jog this morning, in Upton at 7:25am, you may have found yourself looking up into the sky to see the Mix 96 balloon. What a peaceful way to see Buckinghamshire? The puff of the burner hardly registered much louder then the bird song below, (at least from the ground) as it gently passed over the houses in Upton Road.

I was looking at the various sites that advertise balloon flights in the area, and I've concluded it was likely from the company Champagne Flights I could be completely wrong, (I usually am) but I base this detective work on the following criteria;

1) Their launch site is near Hardwick, which is of course North of Upton, and according to the BBC weather page for Aylesbury there was a North North Westerly wind this morning, which presumably would have directed the balloon Southerly towards Upton.
2) On their website, it says they can travel up to 10 miles, which puts Upton easily within their travelling radius.
3) The balloons take off just before 7am, which also puts it within the right time slot as well...

Zooming in on the picture I counted a total of three people in the box, with a possible fourth on the other side of the burner, out of view. According to the Champagne flights website, with this number of people involved, (obviously excluding the pilot) this would cost £125 for each person-in case you were wondering...

Simon Mayne's Trial

I was given a fascinating leaflet about Dinton Hall this afternoon, which amongst other details contained a transcription of part of Simon Mayne's trial.

Following the restoration of the monarchy, the Royalists now had a hit list, of everyone who had contributed to Charles 1st's death. On that list was Simon Mayne, who was at the the time, the Lord of the Manor in Dinton, and who was one of many who had signed the king's death warrant. At first he had spent some time successfully hidden from his pursuers, in a secret chamber at Dinton Hall underneath some stairs leading to the attic, before eventually surrendering himself up to the authorities. Once arrested, he was then committed to the Tower of London. His trial took place at the Old Bailey on the 16th October, 1660. Simon Mayne had a poor defence, and proved very evasive when questioned by the Counsel. His plea essentially was that he was ill at the time, and that he had been reluctantly bullied and coerced into the affair by his wife. An extract of the trial follows;

"Did you sign the warrant," he was asked, "for summoning the court? And did you sign the warrant for the execution of the King?"
Mayne: "I did sit in the court."
Counsel: "Did you sign the warrant for execution?"
Mayne: "My Lord, I knew not of the King's bringing it up. I was not on the Committee."
Counsel: "We do not ask you that. Look upon the warrant and see if your hand and seal be not to it."
Mayne: "My Lord, it is my hand."
Counsel: "Then, my Lord, we have done."

The jury found Mayne guilty, and he was sentenced to death.

Grey Squirrel vs Scary Cat

This is a photograph of a grey squirrel that had just been chased up a pole by a cat in Upton this morning-just outside Homestead Close. The squirrel waited a full five minutes until it was safe enough, before running along the cable to the next pole...where it's believed he then did a dance, and stuck his tongue out at the feline predator below.

Beautiful Sky

At last, after four days of rain.....

Who really was the Dinton Hermit?

Probably, most of us have at least some understanding of who John Biggs was. Perhaps we've seen the pub sign with the image of the Dinton Hermit swinging above our heads as we headed off down Water Lane in Ford, or we've taken the trouble to look up the entry, 'Dinton Hermit' in some online encyclopedia, or maybe like me, you simply asked a villager about the curiously named house called Biggs Cave? Whatever we know of John Biggs, he is a man of fascinating character, and even today, he is still able to capture enough interest, to easily qualify for inclusion in a book such as, "Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness," which was published just a few years ago.

So where do we start? Well, in most encyclopedia's you'll get some variation on the following information: The Dinton Hermit's real name was John Biggs, and he was a clerk to Simon Mayne, who was the Lord of the Manor in Dinton at the time. Biggs was baptised on the 22nd of April, 1629 and he died in 1696. It's believed by some that Biggs was the mysterious hooded executioner of Charles 1st, and as a consequence of being so prominently involved in such regicide, he thereafter lived the rest of his life as a hermit, full of remorse and dependant entirely on the charity of villagers.

While that is interesting, and it is captivating,...certainly if accompanied by the intriguing picture of him wearing his patchwork quilt clothes, along with the unforgettable and brave fashion coupling of a twin pointed hat and a set of huge clown-like shoes, (which probably enabled him to do his party piece of leaning over at a ridiculous angle, without falling over), there is actually as you would probably expect, considerably more information available.

One source adds, "He lived in a cave, [and] had been a man of tolerable wealth, looked upon as a pretty good scholar, and of no contemptible parts." The text also includes the fact that he, "never asked for any thing but leather, which he would immediately nail to his clothes. He kept 3 bottles that hung to his girdle, viz. for strong and small beer, and milk."

The Handbook for travellers in Berks, Bucks, and Oxfordshire, published in 1860 confirms that he not only lived in a cave, but it was underground.

In Chambers Book of Days, a reference is made concerning a letter of Hearne the Oxford historian, dated February 12th, 1713, which describes the Dinton Hermit's shoes in detail. "Each of these shoes is not merely composed of patches, like a beggar's cloak, but it presents a load of such patches, layer above layer, to the amount, it is believed, of many hundreds of individual pieces." (One of the shoes is in the Ashmolean museum and the other apparently, was kept at Dinton Hall.)

The account goes on to reveal that every summer John Biggs would adjourn to the woods near Kimble. It says that he, "was little over thirty at the time of his retirement, and he lived to 1696, when he must have been sixty-seven...The man was perfectly inoffensive, and conduct so extraordinary is only to be accounted for in his case by supposing a slight aberration of the intellect, the consequence perhaps of disappointed hopes."

Other accounts reveal that Biggs however, was also, 'by relation, very lewd if he could entice women into his cave, and the people of Dinton were many times frightened by him."

But, the question is, did John Biggs actually execute Charles the 1st? You'd think so given how often it's mentioned. However, the argument that the executioner would have been given sanctuary and anonymity on one of the regicide's estates, is compelling, but not exactly convincing. In all probability the King was executed not by John Biggs, but by Richard Brandon, who was the usual executioner at the time. The Chambers Book of Days, states that when Brandon was questioned by Lord Capell about the death, Brandon confirmed that he was the real executioner. Further to that he even showed the axe that he'd used, and when questioned whether he was even afraid, he answered with the following, "They made me cut it off, and I had thirty pounds for my pains..."