Swing Walk By John Owen Smith

The Anniversary Rioters’ Walk­  Exactly 180 years after the rioters did it a guided walk from Selborne to Headley and back again ­ distance approximately 7 miles out and 7 miles back.

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 starting at 10am

We plan to walk from Selborne to Headley, from the car park behind the Selborne Arms and finishing at the Holly Bush in Headley. Distance approx 7 miles, some of them muddy. Should arrive in time for a pub lunch.

Please contact me <http://www.johnowensmith.co.uk/riot/walk.htm> for further information.

In 1830, a mob several hundred strong attacked the workhouse in Selborne, Hampshire, turned out the occupants, burned or broke the fittings and furniture, and pulled down the roof.

The next day an even larger mob, containing most of the Selborne rioters, did the same to the workhouse at Headley, some seven miles away. The parsons in both villages were coerced into promising to reduce by half the income they took from tithes.

Less than a month later, at a special court hearing in Winchester attended by no less a person than the Duke of Wellington, nine local men were sentenced to transportation, and all but one sailed for Australia in the Spring of 1831 never to return.

According to the famed historians J.L. & Barbara Hammond, “If these riots had succeeded, the day when the Headley workhouse was thrown down would be remembered … as the day of the taking of the Bastille.”