MUS2026-185 - museum specimen
Tewkesbury whizzing stick bullroarer
United Kingdom - Gloucestershire - Tewkesbury - Europe
Play / practical
Whizzing stick English
Source term: Bullroarer
Whizzing stick: English folk name in the museum's local-name field, which also records 'buzzer' as an alternative name.
Thirteen holes burnt clean through its face and both edges carved into deep waves make the Tewkesbury blade the showiest of the English folk whirlers Miss Ogden of Oxford's High Street gave the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1902 — someone inked the town's name straight onto the wood. A single cord still hangs knotted through its end, and the museum keeps its plain folk name too: whizzing stick.
Wooden 'Bullroarer' with 13 holes burnt into it and deeply indented sides.
Pitt Rivers Museum 1902.51.6
- Object
- Carved wooden slat, 145 x 45 mm, with deeply indented sides, thirteen burnt holes across the face, and a single cord knotted through the suspension end; exact PRM photograph.
- Function
- Boys' toy on Haddon's England-wide account of the instrument; Gloucestershire itself is not among the counties he names.
- Map confidence
- high - OpenStreetMap Tewkesbury town anchor matching the museum provenance; not a documented use site.
- Source location
- PRM 1902.51.6
- Toy / secular survival