Walking down the high street in February, you wouldn’t expect to come across a knight facing off against a large dragon, and yet that’s exactly what happened at Wyrd Wycombe this year. The festival revolves around the ‘Wycombe Wyrm’ – a mythical 16th-century serpentine beast.
On the hill above Hughenden there once was a manor house called Rockhalls Manor, owned by the Wellesbourne family. In its grounds was a pond – and one morning, a serving girl went out to fetch water.
Lurking below the surface was a creature of ‘uncommon size’. She described it as a wyrm, the Old English term for a snake. At first, she was afraid but threw the animal bits of bread out of pity. The wyrm grew and was spotted by locals, who feared the creature would attack their livestock. They banded together, using the girl as bait, and killed it.
If you go to Hughenden Church today, you can see carvings of knights in armour and dragons, fakes added by the Wellesbourne family to increase their local standing by playing into the legend.
Friends Mark Page and Stevyn Colgan were inspired by the wyrm legend and established Wyrd Wycombe, centring the festival around the story – with some dramatic embellishments.
Stevyn theorises that the wyrm was actually an eel that had travelled a short distance on land between water sources. Freshwater eels can grow up to five feet, so with regular feeding it would be much larger than a typical snake.
While the dragon may be mythical, the 32-foot replica is menacing enough, made from plumbing pipes rescued from skips and covered with donated fabric from around Wycombe.
Wyrd Wycombe on Sunday, 7th February promises an expanded offering of Morris dancers, live music, market stalls, street food and art exhibitions, as well as the traditional pageant of the Wycombe Wyrm.
Visit wyrdwycombe.co.uk for more information.
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