On Saturday 8th February, a crowd of wassailers of all ages gathered at the community orchard at Weylands for the annual wassail ceremony. Wassailing has been practised since medieval times, especially in apple-growing regions and is designed to ‘wake up’ an orchard by ‘toasting’ the trees (tying toast on the branches), pouring cider on the roots and making lots of noise!
The event opened with town crier Martin Scott and dancing by Bounds of Selwood Morris, followed by the wassail ceremony itself, led by performers Annabelle Macfadyen and Jamie Wood, accompanied by Frome Street Bandits. Despite the cold weather, around 300 wassailers joined in the fun, made wassail crowns with Frome Families for the Future and sticks with ribbons and bells to shake and enjoyed hot mulled cider and apple juice from Dowdings. An FTC tree giveaway saw 45 apple tree saplings head to new homes.
The community orchard at Weylands was planted in 2019 and 2020 by Charly Le Marchant of WoodfortheTrees and Pavla of Hejgro, who designed and organised the tree planting under the TreeGroup with help of FROGs and Shared Earth and funds and support from FTC and Pumpkin Day in 2019 and 2020.
Mayor Andy Jones, the first to toast the trees, said:
“What a fantastic turnout for the third Weylands Wassail! Thank you to Annabelle, Charly, Jamie, the Frome Street Bandits, Bounds of Selwood, Martin Scott and deputy town crier Andrew Hardy (celebrating his anniversary as Frome’s town crier!) and everyone who came down despite the chilly weather to wake up the orchard and look forward to Spring!”
