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The Ducking Stool
A chair, a beam, a river, and a crowd.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Ducking stool inside a great priory church
- Legend from
- Recorded 1809
- Tone
- Dark history
They wheeled her through the streets in a chair on a beam, then down to the river.
In the Norman nave of Leominster Priory stands a complete ducking stool, a heavy oak chair on a long beam used to swing offenders into water. Ducking stools punished scolds, disorderly women and dishonest traders by public humiliation. Leominster's is said to be the last used in England: its most recent known use was the ducking of Jenny Pipes in 1809. The stool was once thought to be a replica, but tree-ring dating places it in the late 17th century. A mechanised ducking stool features on the town's Millennium clock.