Flitch of bacon custom far as Saxon times. Historian Hélène Adeline Guerber associates the origins of the flitch of bacon ceremony with the Yule feast of Norse tradition in which boar meat is eaten in honour of the god Freyr. The manor of Whichnoure (now Wychnor Hall) near Lichfield, Staffordshire was granted to Sir Philip de Somerville in the 10th year of the reign of Edward III (1336) from the Earl of Lancaster for a small fee but also on condition that he kept ready "arrayed at all times of the year but Lent, one bacon-flyke hanging in his hall at Whichnoure, to be
Flitch of bacon custom by John and Susan Gilder. The couple had given due notice of their claim and were accompanied by a large crowd of onlookers. However, the lord of the manor had ordered that the ceremony should not take place, and the gates of the Priory were nailed shut to prevent it. By 1809 the tradition was definitely abolished. A further attempt to claim the flitch was made in 1832 by Josiah Vine, a retired cheesemaker, who travelled with his wife from Reading to make his claim. He too was refused a trial by a very unsympathetic Steward of Little Dunmow. "John