This used to be the smelliest place in the world. The farmer kept pigs and collected food from restaurants etc all around the area then boiled it up into rank-smelling swill, until the foot and mouth outbreak ended that practice. It must have been intolerable for the caravan park. We kept a piebald pony in the adjacent field for over a year but eventually had to change livery yards as the smell was really unbearable.
The following poem appeared in a medieval play, showing how much the tales of Gotham were woven into English folk traditions.Please forgive the implication of the last line - that in following these tales you are naught but errant fools.
THE FINAL TALE OF THE MERRY MEN OF GOTHAM
"Tell me no more of Gotham Fools,
Or of their eels in little pools,
Which they were told were drowning;
Nor of their carts drawn up on high
When King John's men were standing by,
To keep a wood from browning.
"Nor of their cheese shov'd down the hill,
Nor of their cuckoo sitting still,
While it they hedged round;
Such tales of them have long been told,
By prating boobies young and old;
In drunken circles crown'd.
"The fools are those who thither go,
To see the cuckoo-bush I trow,
The wood, the barn, the pools;
For such are seen both here and there,
And passed by without a sneer,
By all but errant fools."