Outside you can
see a ring of light-coloured stones, called the bull-ring, where
bulls, provided at the cost of the Corporation, were baited. Until
1840 our Berkshire town of Wokingham was famous for its annual
bull-baiting on St. Thomas's Day. A good man, one George Staverton,
was once gored by a bull; so he vented his rage upon the whole bovine
race, and left a charity for the providing of bulls to be baited on
the festival of this saint, the meat afterwards to be given to the
poor of the town. The meat is still distributed, but the bulls are no
longer baited. Here at Wokingham there was a picturesque old town hall
with an open undercroft, supported on pillars; but the townsfolk must
needs pull it down and erect an unsightly brick building in its stead.
It contains some interesting portraits of royal and distinguished folk
dating from the time of Charles I, but how the town became possessed
of these paintings no man knoweth.
Another of our Berkshire towns can boast of a fine town hall that has
not been pulled down like so many of its fellows. It is not so old as
some, but is in itself a memorial of some vandalism, as it occupies
the site of the old Market Cross, a thing of rare beauty, beautifully
carved and erected in Mary's reign, but ruthlessly destroyed by Waller
and his troopers during the Civil War period.
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