The great thing about going on a long distance walk, is that you meet new people and discover things for yourself, It gets you out of your small pond and into a different world of new experiences and stories.
One such story was encountered on The Yorkshire Wolds Way when we passed through the village of Fridaythorpe. An information board near the duck pond told of a “battle” that occurred back in the 19th Century, a local punch up that has relevance today.
The tale was, that back then, Fridaythorpe and another local village (the name of which I can’t recall) each had a well that provided each village with all their essential water. However, in one particularly hot summer, one of the other villages wells' dried up, so it was agreed that they could draw their water from Fridaythorp’s well, which appeared to have plenty of water.
As the hot summer continued, and the drought persisted, Fridaythorpe’s well started to get worryingly low. At a heated meeting the villager’s decided to withdraw the agreement with the other village in order to save the remaining water for themselves. Obviously the other village, who would be left with no water supply, weren’t very happy about this and demanded to be able to draw water as previously agreed. But the people of Fridaythorpe maintained their position and stated that the agreement was not permanent and entirely at their discretion.
Being without water is extremely serious, as you and your animals cannot live, so it’s no surprise that violence broke out and the two villages went to war and fought a pitch battle. Luckily, it rained the next day.
It’s no surprise this story isn’t widely publicised, or on the village website. It’s not a great moment in local history to be proud of. But it does illustrate a side of human nature that’s very common - when people get rich relative to others, they become less generous, not more. Why share with “others” when your doing fine, particularly when things are getting serious? Deep down, humans are tribal beings and put themselves and their clan first.
In his book Metazoa, Peter Godfrey-Smith writes, “Often in evolution, an animal will be set up in a particular way for one set of circumstances, and then may find itself in a very different setting. When this happens, you will find yourself with a way of being, a way of relating to things, that is inherited from the earlier context. This might bring advantages or problems. Things will present themselves in a particular way and particular roads will be open - or relatively open- while others are not”.
Well, in our increasingly globalised world, that is changing rapidly because of the internet, global travel/trade and man made climate change, we are finding our selves in a very different setting to that encountered by our predecessors. The roads ahead are all new.
But let’s not choose a road similar to the one taken by the villagers of Fridaythorpe, back in the 19th Century.
Update Aug 24. In his excellent book "Why War?" Richard Overy highlights that changes to the environment have historically been triggers for violence and the Fridaythorpe battle would fall in to this category. However, he makes the point that such violence is usually a local problem and highlights that today aid would normally come from unaffected areas further afield or from national Governments, so predictions of violence due to man made climate change are currently overstated.
