I occasionally go to a pub called the Skimmington Castle, and by coincidence Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Day today was skimmington. The word skimmington has several different spellings, depending on region, including skimelton, skimitin, skiverton and others, according to Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary. The basic definition in this dictionary is "a ceremony practised on unpopular persons", and then the dictionary goes on to give several examples. A skimmington usually takes the form of a procession through the village, where effigies of the people being censured or ridiculed are carried. The procession is accompanied by much banging of pans and kettles and other loud, discordant noise. The ceremony ends in the burning of the effigies.
As for why these people were 'unpopular', usually it related to unfaithful spouses or, as one of the citations in the OED puts it, "henpecked husbands and shrewish wives". The origins of the word skimmington are unclear, but the word is believed to be related to a skimming ladle, which the aforementioned 'shrewish wives' used to beat their husbands.