Ducking Stool Walk reopened to the public in 2021 following some repairs completed to the boardwalk which leads to the newly restored ducking stool.
This is a nice recent piece of restoration and although it’s obviously all a modern replacement from around 1986, it’s located where they think a ducking stool used to be located. The River Avon used to be faster flowing here at this point, but it has become a little silted up since the medieval period and it’s also thought that there would have been a pond here to ensure the victim got properly wet. And the victim would have likely been a female who was found guilty of gossiping or similar. They’re also known as cucking stools, although there are different opinions on the origin of that word or whether it was just a corruption of the word ducking.
A sign that used to be here, but which has now disappeared (before vanishing in some mysterious modern day heist, possibly involving a collector of obscure public information boards) said:
“The earliest documented evidence for a ducking stool in Christchurch is in the Borough Records dating from the mid-14th century. In May 1350 a property deed mentioned a ‘Schulffyngstol, another dated September 1468 calls it a ‘Shylvyngstole’.”
It is probably for the best that the ducking stool isn’t actually usable because of the lack of water, otherwise I suspects local pesky youths might soon be posting “extreme historical re-enactments” on TikTok, complete with a healthy disregard for health and safety.