The Shrove Tuesday match held annually in Alnwick was the subject of a Northumberland Archives blog Football: A Matter of Life and Death? Folklore has it that a similar game was played in Ford between the married and unmarried men of the village in the eighteenth-century. Before the game could start, however, the men who had been married in the previous year had to ‘jump over, or wade through’ the Gaudy Loop.
The Gaudy Loop was a pit filled with water and rushes. Its connection was with marriage, and in particular newly weds, rather than football. ‘The Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend’, Volume 3 states that the tradition of the Gaudy Loop is long gone and forgotten but its custom was to demand money from newly married couples before they could leave the church. A couple marrying at Ford Church had to jump over or wade through the Gaudy Loop “or forfeit money to be expended in drinking to [their] health”.
Sometimes a ‘paten stick’ was used instead as the Gaudy Loop was not near the church (being located in a farmer’s field, and subsequently filled in for ‘being a nuisance’); on these occasions both the bride and groom would have to leap over the stick before leaving through the church doors. This may have been discouraged by the church rector. The custom of stopping a newly married couple from leaving a church until a payment was made was not uncommon. Bamburgh and Holy Island had ‘petting stones’ for the bride to be carried over before leaving the Church.
