Nottinghamshire Custom: The ‘Groaning Cheese’

by Frank E Earp

Says Ren; pray see what I got here;
It is a groaning Cheese, ’twas made
From Io’s Milk, and Faunus had
The ordering of it, ‘twould have been
Kept for Dame Juno’s Lying in,

Bernard Mandeville’s ‘Fable of the Bees’ 1705.

The ‘groaning cheese’, – sometimes referred to as ‘groaning cake’, – custom was not confined to Nottinghamshire, but was to be found throughout the Country, particularly in northern England. It is said to have originated in Anglo Saxon times but there are many references expressing its popularity throughout the medieval period. The first written reference to the custom in Nottinghamshire is much later and connects it to the County’s legendary Fair Maid of Clifton. William Sampson in his play; ‘The Vow Breaker, Or The Faire Maide of Clifton’, published in 1630, has one of his characters say; “….bring the groaning cheece, and all requisites, I must supply the fathers place, and bid god-fathers.”

As the name suggests the custom involves a cheese and its ritual consumption. On discovering a pregnancy the mother-to-be makes or commissions to be made, a large round flat cheese. This cheese is set aside to ripen throughout the pregnancy. Consumption of the cheese began on the day the mother began her labour and entered into confinement or ‘lying in’. This period was also known as the ‘groaning time’, – hence ‘groaning cheese’. Traditionally the cheese was eaten from the centre outward and continued until only a ring of rind remained or a hole had been created in the centre, which was large enough to pass the baby through. On the day of the infants naming ceremony or Christening, should there be any remaining cheese, this was distributed to the guests. The child was then passed through the hole in the cheese a prescribed number of times depending on local custom.

We find that the groaning cheese custom has all of the ‘hallmarks’ of ritual rebirth with the cheese representing the sun or moon. Of the two, it is the moon that may be symbolically represented in the custom. As everyone knows, the moon is made of cheese and most cheeses are in fact white rather than yellow. Throughout Britain, there are a number of folk customs and traditions associated with cheese. In the main, these usually involve cheese rolling in one form or other, – the most famous of these being at Cooper’s Hill in Gloustershire. There are also ‘Moonraking’ folk tales’ like those from Gotham and villages in Wiltshire. In these stories the reflection of the full moon in the village pond or other body of water is mistaken for a large cheese and an attempt to recover this free meal is made by raking it from the water.

In recent years, the groaning cheese custom has made something of a come-back, only now consumption of the cheese begins with the child’s birth. The old Saxon meaning of the word groaning has been largely forgotten or ignored.