IN an era of iPhones, smart watches, virtual reality headsets and other wondrous hi-tech must-haves that can be acquired as a result of a few clicks of a keyboard it is comforting to know that a small number of local customs and traditions continue to survive in the 21st Century.

Youngsters, it is reassuring to report, still collect their newly-minted pennies on the last day of term before Christmas at one Wiltshire school.

And on an allotted day of the year, another batch of fresh-faced children file neatly into their village church to accept a freshly baked dobbin.

Even more heartening, perhaps, is that every May 29 a cohort of oddly attired grown-ups invade one of the world’s greatest buildings, an hour or so south of Swindon, before hollering the phrase “Grovely, Grovely, Grovely and All Grovely.”

On any other day of the year they’d be arrested and committed. And rightly so.

Unlike, say, the maypole – once a common sight in Wiltshire villages but now only rolled out and hoisted up for rustic themed shindigs or nostalgic folklore festivals – all of the above are genuine customs with roots that trail through recent centuries and have somehow survived the ravages of time into The Age of Twitter.

You have to wonder what the Honourable William Stanley would have made of it all, having invoked a custom in Wanborough 270 years ago, knowing it was still going strong today. Pleased as punch I’d imagine.

In 1745 – the year Bonny Prince Charlie arrived for an ill-fated showdown with those bossy southern Sassenachs – the wealthy Wiltshire landowner was pondering on a legacy he could leave for those less well-to-do souls who had slogged so hard on his land and lived in the village that he probably considered his own.

The Lord of the Manor magnanimously instigated a trust fund with 50 quid – not an inconsiderable amount back then – that was raised annually from the rent of one of his meadows.

It stipulated that on a single day every year Wanborough’s poor were to collect either a piece of coal or a dobbin funded by the rent. As any dyed-in-the-wool country cove from these ‘ere parts will tell you, a dobbin is a loaf of bread.

Two local sisters later contributed £120 and over the centuries the Dobbin Day ritual has seen village youngsters queue up at 14th Century St Andrews Church to collect their still warm loaves embossed with the word ‘dobbin’.

They have a special wooden ‘loaf imprinter’ for this particular convention which itself is more than 100 years old.

Wanborough considers Dobbin Day – held as near as conveniently possible to Squire Stanley’s birthday on February 26 – “a special tradition, unique to the village and the school.”

Dishing out the dobbins, a former vicar the Rev Tony Fensome once reminded youngsters to deport themselves with a little more decorum than some of their predecessors when, during a more impoverished era, there was a manic scramble for loaves.

“They were often reprimanded for unseemly behaviour in church,” he told them. No idea what happened to the coal though!

The Reverend Charles Francis, if you’ll excuse the pun, was cut from similar cloth as William Stanley.

In the year 1800 the owner of Court Farm, Collingbourne Ducis near Marlborough decreed that all the village children should receive a pre-Christmas gift to mark St Thomas’ Day.

St Who? He has gone down as the most sceptical of the 12 Apostles – the original Doubting Thomas.

Anyway, the Feast of St Thomas used to take place on December 21 (it’s since been switched to July) which – during the days when the run-up to Christmas wasn’t a commercial overkill – marked the beginning of the festive preparations.

The Rev Francis’ gift to every young villager was a gleaming, newly-minted penny and a scrummy, newly-minted bun. The buns, presumably, taste pretty much the same today although there isn’t much you can do with a penny however shiny except drop it in the piggy bank.

What is refreshing, though, is that the tradition continues today, thanks in recent decades to the Gordon family, of Court Farm who inherited the custom from the farmhouse’s previous occupants.

On the last school day before Christmas – the nearest to December 21 – nippers from Collingbourne primary troop to Court Farmhouse where two trays loaded with coins and buns await them.

Valerie Gordon said: “It began with the Rev Francis in 1800 and has been done by whoever lives in the house.”

These days, she added, the buns cost more than the pennies. “I think it’s a lovely tradition.”

In return the children sing carols before tucking in.

Another member of the Gordon family, Bonnie, also told us: “The teachers are hard put to stop them eating their buns until after they have sung.”

Kids being kids, it is always difficult, she said, to stop them nibbling away and spluttering crumbs while they’re supposed to be singing.