The Ducking Stool: Reconciliation and Re-Enactment [9min]

The middle ages were not kind when it came to punishments. There was hanging, drawing and quartering or burning at the stake for the serious offender and the stocks or the whipping post for more minor misdemeanours. The ducking stool was reserved for women who could be publicly humiliated for simply speaking their minds -- or, as it was put at the time, being a nag or a scold. One of the few ducking stools still remaining is in the 13th century Priory Church in Leominster. The congregation decided to dust it off and bring it out into the open, but not before they conducted a special service of reconciliation. Jane Gething-Lewis is taken on a guided tour by the historian Eric Turton.