You cannot spell Yarmouth-steeple right.

This is a play on the word right. Yarmouth spire is awry, or crooked, and cannot be set right, pr straight, by spelling. Some, who choose to go farther a-field for a meaning, consider the word spell as a verb signifying to conjure with spells, and make the meaning to be, You cannot, by any spell, set Yarmouth-spire straight or upright. The same saying is made use of for Chesterfield-spire in Derbyshire, which labours under the same defect.

Entry taken from Provincial Glossary, edited by Francis Grose.

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Middlesex
Strand on the Green; thirteen houses, fourteen

Norfolk
You cannot spell Yarmouth-steeple right

Northamptonshire
The Mayor of Northampton opens oysters with his dagger

Nearby

Norfolk in Nuttal Encyclopædia

Antique pictures from Norfolk