According to the previous incumbent, the collective noun for mayors is a ‘magnificent’ or, more informally, a ‘chain gang.’ Yet none of the fifteen town criers assembled in Warwick over the bank holiday weekend for the biennial Town Criers Competition knew the answer. Even AI was stumped, although its suggestion, a ‘cry’ of town criers, had proved a popular suggestion among those present, or the ‘dingdong’ as one wit had proposed we refer to them.

Every year for well over a century, the Town Crier has visited Warwick School to collect donations for the mayor’s charity and announce a half-day holiday. A concession, which in a worrying example of ‘grade inflation’ has increased over the years: first to a whole day and, more recently, to an entire second week during the October half-term. 

On the occasion of his last visit back at the start of the school year, I accepted the current crier’s invitation to serve as one of the judges at this year’s competition. And so, on the Saturday of the bank holiday weekend I took my place in the judge’s booth, tasked with scoring volume and clarity, alongside those assessing accuracy (the Mayor) and diction and inflection. 

Criers from as far afield as Knaresborough and Cromer delivered two cries:  a ‘home cry,’ extolling the virtues of their hometown, and a ‘given cry’ which, it being the one hundred and twentieth anniversary of the Warwick Pageant, was on the theme of pageantry.  Armed with a decibel metre that I had hastily downloaded onto my phone the previous evening, I listened with my back to the competitors, a mandated measure intended to prevent my being swayed by their dress - judged separately by a ‘fourth ‘official’ - or the more theatrical style of members of the Loyal Company of Town Criers.  Boxing may have the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO but town crying has the Loyal Company and the Ancient and Honourable Guild!

On a glorious sunny afternoon well over a hundred members of the public gathered in The Pageant Garden to enjoy the showpiece conclusion of a wonderfully eccentric day.  A day that begun with the competitors, accompanied by members of the Court Leet (the Town Crier is also the Court Leet’s Beadle) and other officials in ceremonial dress processing from the Court House to the Lord Leycester Hospital behind ‘Guy of Warwick’ on horseback, and in full armour!

The history of town criers in Warwick dates back to mid-1500’s, when the role of the “Bell Man,” tasked with announcing royal proclamations, local by-laws, market days and public notices to the often-illiterate citizenry, was formalized by local philanthropist Thomas Oken who set aside funds for the role.  Over time, rising literacy and the printing press rendered such roles largely redundant. Today, in the age of instant communication and curated news feeds, town criers seem an anachronistic echo of a bygone era.

And yet traditions matter. They connect us to our past and our future; they foster a sense of belonging upon which community depends, something that is all too frequently lacking in modern life. So, thank you Warwick, Litchfield, Bromyard, Petersfield and all the other towns who have sought to keep this curious institution alive. 

My personal thanks go to Michael (Warwick’s Crier for the past ten years) for inviting me to judge and be part of the tradition.  Thank you also for persisting and asking a second time when an instinct, rooted in introversion, led me to say no the first and second times. 

It would have required remarkable foresight to predict that a Post Graduate Certificate in Education might one day lead to my passing judgement on the volume and clarity of a joke about Nuneaton’s ring road going straight through the centre of town. 

And yet it did.

Providing me an opportunity to witness community at its most vibrant and benefit from meeting individuals whose sense of civic responsibility leads them to volunteer their time so generously.  A powerful reminder of the value in occasionally setting aside one’s natural reticence and saying yes to the unusual and unexpected.