It has been suggested this reflected developing strains in gender relations, but it may simply be a result of the differential survival of records. The cucking-stool appears to have still been in use as late as the mid-18th century, with Poor Robin's Almanack of 1746 observing: :Now, if one cucking-stool was for each scold, :Some towns, I fear, would not their numbers hold.
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In this use the carts were sometimes covered. The two wheels allowed the cart to be tilted to discharge its load more easily. The word is also used as a name for the cucking stool and for a type of balancing scale used in medieval times to check the weight of coins.
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The annual game of Shrove Tuesday football in front of the town hall, as shown in the Illustrated London News in 1846. The Clattern Bridge was a goal off to the left of the picture. Scolds were ducked at the bridge, using a cucking stool. Kingston was still doing this as late as 1745 when the landlady of the Queen's Head was ducked before a large crowd.
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A ballad, dating from about 1615, called "The Cucking of a Scold", illustrates the punishment inflicted to women whose behaviour made them be identified as "a Scold": :Then was the Scold herself, :In a wheelbarrow brought, :Stripped naked to the smock, :As in that case she ought: :Neats tongues about her neck :Were hung in open show; :And thus unto the cucking stool :This famous scold did go. The cucking-stool, or Stool of Repentance, has a long history, and was used by the Saxons, who called it the ' or scolding stool. It is mentioned in Domesday Book as being in use at Chester, being called ', a name which seems to confirm the first of the derivations suggested in the footnote below. Tied to this stool the woman - her head and feet bare - was publicly exposed at her door or paraded through the streets amidst the jeers of the crowd.
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The bridge still carries a full load of modern vehicle traffic. Up to the 18th century, the bridge was used as a site for the ducking of scolds with a cucking stool. The bridge also featured in the traditional game of football held in the centre of Kingston each year on Shrove Tuesday. It was the goal for one of the teams, while the nearby Kingston Bridge was the other goal.
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The term cucking-stool is known to have been in use from about 1215. It means literally "defecation chair", as its name is derived from the old verb ' and has not quite been rid of in many parts of the English speaking world as "to cack" (defecate) (akin to Dutch kakken and Latin cacāre [same meaning]; cf. Greek κακός/κακή ["bad/evil, vile, ugly, worthless"]), rather than, as popularly believed, from the word cuckold. Both seem to have become more common in the second half of the sixteenth century.
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Fye Bridge is arguably the oldest river crossing in Norwich and is the gate to the North of the City known as "Norwich Over the Water" this bridge was also the site of a cucking stool for ducking lawbreakers and undesirables. Whitefriars Bridge Named after a former Carmelite (White Friars) monastery. The remains of which can still be seen in a small section of medieval wall and archway. Foundry Bridge Near the railway station and the Yacht station on Riverside named after a foundry nearby, purported to have been built to take a railway line.
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Later legal treatises reflect the dominance of scolding as a charge levied against women. In the Commentaries on the Laws of England, Blackstone outlines the offence: Scold's bridles or branks were probably used as a punishment but no official records of their use have been found. This ascribes the shift to ducking stool to a folk etymology. Other writers disagree with this: the Domesday Book notes the use of a form of cucking stool at Chester as a , a "dung chair", whose punishment apparently involved exposing the sitter's buttocks to onlookers.
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