About Us
Over 200 years of Mocking authority
No one really knows why the Mock Mayor started, but it is closely linked to Woodstock’s history. A Mock Mayor, Corporation and officers are elected with some ‘mock’ formality, and then thrown into the River Glyme, the natural boundary between the two villages.
Old and New Woodstock aren't just physically separated by the River Glyme, they were politically separated until 1886 (it was part of Wootton) with some parts of Hill Rise still separate until 1985. To cut 900 years of history short, King Henry I kicked the locals out of the forest in 1110AD to build his first deer park, and Old Woodstock started by a Mill on the Water Meadow. In 1189, Henry II started New Woodstock, so the residents stuck down in the swampy meadows may have looked with envy at the town at the top of the hill with royal associations.
In 1453, Henry VI granted the town a charter, which gave New Woodstock, a mayor, 6 aldermen, 20 councillors, a sergeant at mace and its own court. Villagers in Old Woodstock had to pay a toll, on the seven arches bridge, just to get to market. Finally, in 1776 the stunning Town Hall was built, and the earliest records of the Mock Mayor are from 1786. The first Mock Mayor was the brother of the New Woodstock Mayor, so perhaps there may have been some sibling rivalry!
The Mock Mayor is a statement of Old Woodstock’s independence and represents mockery and good natured opposition to lawful authority. More information can be found in the Woodstock gallery in The Museum of Oxfordshire.
Mock Mayors in the UK
The annual election of a mock mayor was previously a common custom and while the details vary from place to place, the broad picture is similar. As the name suggests, the point of a mock mayor is to parody the real thing, to make fun of civic pomp and ceremony and corporate complacency, or the pretensions of politicians and parliamentary candidates. Thus, regular features of the mock mayor ceremony are ridiculous rules for who can vote, the speeches before and after the election promising impossible or silly things, and grotesque clothing or regalia (a cabbage stalk as a mace was common).
The new mayor is almost always paraded on a chair carried on the shoulders of his supporters amidst noisy scenes of celebration and joy. He naturally hands out favours and punishments as he sees fit. The whole affair, could, and often did, degenerate into a loud, drunken brawl, and it is this aspect which prompted local authorities to take steps to suppress the custom, although the pride-pricking parody may have been just as strong an incentive in many cases. The sarcasm was made more pointed by the fact that the mock elections often took place at the same time as the real ones, in periods when most of the population were denied a vote.
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The most famous mock mayor celebration was the Mayor of Garratt at Wandsworth, and other places which had the custom include Newbury (Berkshire) the ‘Mayor of the City’, Bideford (Devon) ‘Mayor of Shamickshire’, Oswaldkirk (Yorkshire), and Lostwithiel (Cornwall). Two surviving examples are the Mayor of Old Woodstock, Ock Street in Abingdon and the Lord Mayor of Kilburn, and a revived version at Randwick, Gloucestershire. Other places also had analogous mock corporations and courts, such as the Court of Halgavor reported by Richard Carew's Survey of Cornwall (1602).