Culture & tradition,  England,  History,  Postcards from the road

A postcard from Ripon: the Wakeman blows his horn

August 24, 2026 / 22 Comments

Greetings from Ripon

The Wakeman blows his horn

In my feature photo above a group of tourists is listening intently as one of Ripon’s four Wakemen explains a long-held tradition. Every night of the year a horn is blown at the four corners of the obelisk in the town’s Market Place to set the ‘watch’.

This ceremony has taken place for the last 1,100 years, without fail. It commemorates a Medieval system of keeping law and order at night. This was the responsibility of the town’s Wakeman. At 9 o’clock each evening, a horn was sounded in the Market Square and three further blows were made outside the Wakeman’s house during the night.

As the city’s website declares:

Night by night the past lives, and by so doing, reassures and strengthens our concern for the present wellbeing of this old City. ‘Except Ye Lord Keep Ye Cittie’ – the evening blasts give cause for gratitude and are a charge laid upon our integrity as upon the Wakeman of long ago.

You can read a full account of this tradition here.

By daylight you can clearly see the horn, the city’s emblem, on top of the obelisk. The nearby Town Hall carries Ripon’s civic motto, quoted in part above:

Except ye lord keep ye cittie ye wakeman waketh in vain

This is an adaptation of a line from Psalm 127: ‘unless the Lord keeps the city, the watchman waketh but in vain’.

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