In All Saints’ Church, the carved wooden lectern, possibly from the 13th century, takes the unusual form of an eagle with outspread wings. When Canon Taylor was writing Words and Places (2nd ed 1865), the sexton used solemnly to exhibit it to strangers as the original buzzard from which the town got its name. Unhappily for the story, the ‘buzzard’ added to Leighton’s name from the 13th century does not refer to the bird. It comes from Old French busard, which indeed means a buzzard, but appears to have been the name or nickname of a lord of the manor at that time. There was a well-known French family called Busard in Bedfordshore in the Middle Ages, although their nearest known property was at Knotting in the north of the county.
Like place names, old graffiti found in churches are by their nature open to interpretation by later generations. Many, perhaps most, seem to have been ways of posing the time during long services and tedious sermons, or night watches before shrines. On a pillar in All Saints’ church is one thought probably to have been a doodle made in the 15th century by someone who turn it was to guard a relic – a piece of the cloak of St. Hugh. (This is Great St. Hugh of Lincoln, c. 1140-1200.)
The incised sketch shows a man and a woman in medieval dress, and a local tradition explains it jokingly as representing Simon and Nell, supposed inventors of the first simnel cake. They are said to have quarrelled over whether to have a puddling or a pie or dinner, and, as neither would give in, first boiled it, then baked it. They christened the resulting cake (much as some people name houses) by combining their two names, Sim and Nell, hence simnel.
Simnels (their name is related to ‘semolina’ and seems to have referred to the flour they were made with) were rich fruit cakes enclosed in a pastry crust colored with saffron. Tied up in a cloth, they were indeed boiled first and then baked. The resulting crust was extremely hard – there not to eat so much as to contain and protect the cake.
Simnels probably originally had a religious significance. In the early 17th century, it was the custom in some places for young people to take simnels to their mothers on Mid-Lent or Mothering Sunday – at Bury in Lancashire they were still traditionally made for Mod-Lend Sunday in the 19th century. Elsewhere they were associated with Easier and sometimes Christmas. Now when made it is usually in connection with Easter.