Hungerford, Berkshire: Behind all the top hats and ales, Hocktide is more than just a re-enactment of local folklore

The knobbly pollarded street trees along Hungerford’s broad rural high street are maypoled with ribbons. It’s quietish, as usual. But at intervals, a small crowd in top hats, carrying oranges, baskets and beribboned poles of yellow and blue flowers, emerges from each house and enters another in turn.

The pebbledashed frontage of two cottages conceals the two halves of a medieval cruck house, its pre-chimney beams smoke-blackened: a house that’s witnessed this ceremony each of its 575 years. Each neighbour retains grazing rights on the town’s common, due to the historical tenacity of the people here. This colourful spring pageant – coinciding with the first swift over the rooftops – is Tutti Day, the near-culmination of a fortnight’s Hocktide ceremonies, a celebration and a reaffirmation of the townspeople’s common rights.

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Former Household Cavalry officer ran epic 250-km, seven-day race across the Sahara

On the morning of his 76th birthday earlier this month, Harry Hunter emerged from a bivouac in southern Morocco to line up with more than 800 other runners in the Sahara.

But, bar the chorus of Happy Birthday they greeted him with, there was little other celebration of this milestone, which saw Hunter subsequently become the oldest Briton to complete the epic Marathon des Sables , a 250-km (155-mile), seven-day race through rolling sand dunes and rocky mountains.

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Public bodies involved including Ofsted will have costs paid for hearing at Berkshire coroner’s court

The family of the headteacher Ruth Perry, whose death after a critical Ofsted inspection will be the subject of a high-profile inquest this week, have been refused legal aid to fund their representation just days before the hearing is due to start.

While other interested parties, including Ofsted, the local council and NHS trust, will – as public bodies – have their legal costs paid out of the public purse, the headteacher’s family say they have had to resort to crowdfunding to pay their legal costs.

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