Readers, I apologise for my attempt at clickbait. It’s Chartley Moss. A place so treacherous that you aren’t allowed to enter without an expert guide.
This nature reserve eight miles to the north-east of Stafford is the largest schwingmoor in Britain. Did anyone else over the age of 45 read that in the voice of Wayne or Garth? A raft of peat floats above a 13 metre deep lake and any trees that do manage to grow are drowned before they mature creating an eerie environment of dead trunks poking out of the moss.
This strange floating forest has naturally attracted a raft of folklore. A spectral huntsman has been seen leading a pack of hounds across the site and there are rumours that a railway engine and a JCB lie sunken somewhere beneath the depths of the bog.
There is one story about two absolute local legends which is absolute fact however. On 25th February 1994, a Vickers Viscount crashed into the Moss, killing the pilot. Landing upside down and on fire, two local men saw the crash landing and made their way through the darkness to where they could hear passenger Raymond Cole crying out for help. Eventually they reached him and pulled him to safety . For their bravery, Victor Antcliff and David Gregory of Drointon were presented with the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery.
As I’ve missed the guided walk there (it was last weekend), here’s Christopher Brasher and Deputy Area Officer for The Nature Conservancy, Mr Oswald, to show us around this perilous peat bog. Two splendid chaps indeed. We’re not worthy.
Sources
The Road to Chartley, Jim Foley
Wolverhampton Express and Star – Friday 19 January 1996
After reading of archaeological discoveries in North Lichfield, I thought it a good time to review one of the city’s greatest history mysteries. A quick recap then for anyone who, unlike me, hasn’t been obsessing for over fifteen years about how ‘a considerable quantity of human bones‘ were found in the early nineteenth century in a meadow adjoining Christian Fields.
The path to Pones Mill
Many of the bones were found a few feet beneath the surface in the quirkily named ‘Toads Hole Piece’, alongside some Roman pottery, the head of a pike and several horseshoes, although skeletal fragments were scattered across a half-mile radius. Only the bones found at Pones Mill, now known as Netherstowe House, were said to have had the appearance of having been buried, but it’s possible that they may have been dug up elsewhere and ‘thrown into an excavation’ there.
Eighteenth century antiquarians linked the discoveries of the bones to the Lichfield legend, in which a thousand Christians were massacred at the start of the fourth century during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. The site of the slaughter is still known as Christian Fields and although proper historians say the story is nothing more than a myth, the legend lives on. The Martyrs Plaque, a carving of three cadavers which once adorned the facade of the Guildhall can now be found in Beacon Park and elsewhere there are other versions of our sinister city seal, including on the railway bridge near the station. These visual versions of the legend and the refusal of people like me to stop referring to the city as ‘the Field of the Dead’ even though its exact etymology is ‘the Field by the Grey Wood’have all helped to ensure that this example of Lichfield lore endures.
Welcome to the Field of the Dead folks
If we discount the dead martyrs, what other explanations are there for the cartloads of bones being found beneath the fields of Netherstowe? Here are some of the possibilities I’ve considered. Feel free to dissect and discuss as necessary.
If there was ever a graveyard to epitomise the idea of death being the great leveller, it would be St Michaels on Greenhill.
An outbreak of plague in 1593 led to the deaths of over 1,100 Lichfeldians. Later outbreaks took place during the already troubled times of the Civil War, leading to the demise of another 800 citizens. Could the bones buried at Christian Field the victims of the disease? It seems unlikely. In the parish register of St Michael’s, someone has added notes alongside the names of those buried there in summer 1593. In July, ’67 dead of plague’. In August, ’59 dead of plague’. During this particular outbreak of plague in Lichfield at least, it seems those who succumbed rest in peace at the churchyard at Greenhill rather than in a pit on the northern outskirts of the city.
Could our Christian Field corpses be the remains of Civil War soldiers then, slaughtered in a skirmish on the outside of the city as the Close was being besieged? Again, the registers of St Michael’s suggest otherwise. There are records of twenty five soldiers being buried in the churchyard between 1642 and 1645 which suggests that men killed during the conflict were also buried here at Greenhill.
For me, as alluded to above, it’s the recent archaeology that’s been carried out in the Curborough area which may hold the key to solving the mystery of Christian Fields. Sixty coins dating to between the early 2nd to 4th century have been unearthed near to the farm, along with forty brooches. More examples of mortaria, as found at Christian Fields, have turned up along with worked marble and alabaster, Samian pottery fragments and glass suggesting there was a Roman settlement or at least a villa here. A much simpler Romano – British roundhouse has also been excavated nearby, along with a granary and well alongside it. What we can be sure of then is that there was occupation of a site near Christian Fields during the reign of Diocletian but whether those living here were converts to the new religion or still worshipping the old gods is unknown.
Sunset on Watery Lane
There are also field names which hint at a history which definitely has the potential to explain the presence of bones in this area. The 1851 Staffordshire tithe map records a ‘Chapel Meadow’, ‘Chapel Croft’ and perhaps most pertinently, ‘Graveyard’ in the vicinity of Watery Lane. And finally, and perhaps most remarkably at all, a single surviving Bronze Age burial has been found nearby in the form of a few fragments of cremated bone and sherds of the collared urn which once contain these ancient remains.
If burials really have been taking place in this area for not just centuries but millenia, perhaps ‘The Field of the Dead’ might be an accurate description after all…
On our second visit to Papillon Hall, we’re going to step away from the tales of the infamous cursed footwear. Instead, let’s meet the man painted as the villain of the piece and his portrait, an artwork which appears to have had the power to scare the heebie-jeebies out of anyone who gazed upon it. Disclaimer – when I included an image of it in part I I did not know this. Please read at your own risk.
David Papillon was born in 1691, and was the grandson of the man who had originally built the hall earlier that century. Most biographies depict him as a respectable and upstanding gentleman but local folklore hints that there was a darker side to the man they called ‘Old Pamp’1.
Papillon Hall, before it was rebuilt with wings in 1903
Pamp was said to be something of a sorcerer with such a mesmerising gaze that he could bewitch people to the point that they were powerless to move. His portrait also appears to have possessed the same power. Sometimes visitors to the hall would stand and stare at it for long periods of time, seemingly incapable of turning away. Even more chilling are the stories that on some nights Pamp himself would actually step out from the artwork and roam the rooms of Papillon. One servant girl reported seeing him stood at the end of her bed wearing the same clothes as he did in the painting.
When the portrait was moved to Crowhurst Park near Hastings, Pamp’s ghost went with it. Bertha Tufnell, who was letting Crowhurst from his descendant Pelham Rawsthorn Papillon, saw Pamp standing in the drawing room as if he’d just climbed out of the painting. Following this he tried to materialise on several other occasions but Bertha worked out that reciting a prayer seemed to stop him from fully forming outside of his frame. As a more permanent solution she sent a desperate letter to Pelham and he arranged for the creepy canvas to be removed to his residence in Hastings.
An intriguing article appeared in the Market Harborough Advertiser in December 1946 with the author ‘FPS’ claiming that forty years ago he’d met a man who was on his way to Papillon Hall and tried to engage him in conversation. When he mentioned the famous infamous cursed footwear and the ghost of Pamp the man became visibly uncomfortable and reluctant to chat. FPS tired to reassure him that ghost stories were nonsense but this distressed the man even more. The man clutched the author’s arm, warning him to be careful as Old Pamp could get nasty and had a tendency to appear when people were dismissive. Undaunted, FPS joked that he’d like to see him so that he could ask about a painting he had which once used to hand in Papillon Hall.
A few months after this encounter on the Theddingworth to Lubenham Road, strange things began to happen at the home of FPS. It started with the Papillon painting falling to the ground with a crash. The cord was replaced, the nails secured and it was put back up again but the painting fell down a further three times. New fasteners were added to the frame, along with two brass chains and two lengths of copper wire, all separately fastened to hooks secured in the newly re-plugged wall. A length of hempen rope was also added for extra measure and FPS felt confident the painting would now stay put. Funnily enough, it did not.
The painting was left leaning against the wall and that night, FPS and his wife heard footsteps on the stairs and a bell ringing violently somewhere in the house. In the morning, another painting was found to have fallen. Things soon escalated from ‘a bit odd’ to ‘outright terrifying’, one night when a howling was heard outside the house. As the author and his wife discussed if the sound could be made by a dog, it came nearer. As FPS recalled,
“Description fails, words cannot express the unholy thing, it was vilely evil, blood-curdling, only someone or something in hellish torment could howl like that. It came still nearer and we could track the sound as ‘It’ approached the house. A moment later it seemed even still nearer, then, to our unspeakable horror we realised the ‘thing’ was in the house”.
FPS grabbed a candle and went downstairs. As he descended the house seemed filled with the sound but then came an unnatural silence. He could find nothing to account for the sound, though the dogs were cowering and staring at something invisible. Suddenly, a shriek cut through the silence, seeming to emit from the spot the dogs were staring at. They bolted from the room, with FPS not far behind them. Half-way across the hallway, the candle went out. In the darkness, the howl came again, this time from between his feet, before moving level with his head. Then he heard his wife shouting to him, ‘Quick! Quick! it’s on the stairs’, and managed to get back into the bedroom where he and his wife held the door fast until the howling ceased. He never heard it again. Perhaps David Papillon had made his point.
Incredibly, there is yet more of this mysterious story to share. There’s a line in the Market Harborough Advertiser which lends weight to the story that a skeleton was found when the hall was being renovated at the start of the twentieth century. In a review of the year 1903 it simply says ‘December 3 – a quantity of human bones were found at Papillon Hall’. Frustratingly, the newspaper archive does not appear to have digitalised the edition for December 3rd 1903 which presumably contains more details of the discovery. Elsewhere, there are suggestions that the hauntings relate to the pre-Papillon history of the site and involve a lepers’ hospital, a monk and some buried treasure. Then there are the experiences of Captain Frank Belville, who lived at the hall for a while and encountered not the terrifying presence of David Papillon but a spectral young woman, ‘silver and half-hooded’, who he chased often but never caught (why is this giving ‘Carry on Cursing’ vibes?). Oh, and there’s a magical well too.
There may be a part three to follow but I truly think there’s enough material here to turn this tale of cursed shoes and haunted paintings into a full length motion picture.
Notes
This nickname strikes me as a little strange given he moved to Acrise Park in Kent following his marriage to Mary Keyser at the age of 26.
Back home after dark and as I opened the door, I was greeted by the drip. I cursed myself for forgetting to ask around for a plumber’s number at the pub. Now I’d have to resort to the local Facebook group.
I poured myself a drink, collapsed onto the sofa and located the group online. As I went to start typing, a new post about the reservoir caught my attention. Someone had been seen walking across the dried-up bed late last night and the poster wanted everyone to know that it was FOOLISH and VERY DANGEROUS.
The following day was at least as hot and the pub was just as busy. I couldn’t blame them. If my financial circumstances were different, I’d be on the other side of the bar too. By the time I got into my car, I was utterly exhausted. I drove back to the cottage over the causeway. My headlights picked up a figure at the side of the road which I barely had time to register before it disappeared. The air in the car felt hot and clammy as Mike’s story popped back into my mind. I glanced into the rear-view mirror to see if anyone was still standing there but for a split-second I thought I caught a glimpse of someone sitting on the back seat. I put my foot down and sped home without looking behind me again. It must have been tiredness or dehydration causing me to hallucinate, I told myself. The puddle of stagnant water I found when I pulled up at home and was finally brave enough to check the back seat suggested otherwise.
I got inside and called my friend Alexis. She’d know if I was ringing rather than messaging then something was up. A sleepy voice answered.
‘Hello? You alright, bab?’
‘Um… yeah. I’m ok’.
‘But you’re ringing me. And your voice sounds weird. What’s going on?’
I hesitated for a second, just enough for her to start speculating.
‘Mate? This isn’t about that bellend again, is it? Don’t tell me you’ve contacted him?’
‘God no. It’s just that…’. I took a deep breath. I think there might be a ghost’.
There was a short silence and then a laugh.
‘A ghost? What you on about? Where? At the cottage?
‘Maybe. But mostly in my car’.
‘Oh mate, I warned you not to move to the middle of nowhere with nothing going on, didn’t I? Now you’ve lost the plot’, she joked.
‘I’m being serious!’, I protested, whilst wondering if perhaps I had. ‘I saw something in my car just, driving home from the pub. It was standing on the side of the road and then I think it was on the back seat’.
‘What was it?’
‘A person. A girl, I think. A chap at the pub said he saw something at the reservoir too, during the last drought. I think it might be the same thing’.
‘So who is it?’
‘He said her name is Kitty. Kitty Fisher.’
‘As in the nursery rhyme?’
‘No, she’s a real person. Well, she was. Before she jumped off a bridge’.
‘OK. This is mental. I’m coming over. Let me go and fire up the Mystery Machine’.
When she arrived, we hugged on the doorstep. ‘Thanks for coming’ .
‘No problem, mate. I ain’t afraid of no ghost. Wait, what’s that dripping sound?’
Over a couple of glasses of wine, we concocted a plan. We’d visit the local church in the morning and see if there was anyone there to ask about local history. When we arrived, the door was open and we found a woman decorating the church for a wedding.
‘Hi…we’re looking for a grave?’, the woman carried on arranging orange lilies in a vase. ‘There’s a register of burials in the churchyard over there’. She nodded towards a desk near the back of the church.
‘OK thanks’, we picked it up and pored over it, scanning centuries of village life and death, looking for the name ‘Kitty Fisher’.
‘You sure that’s what she was called?’
Our discussion attracted the attention of Hyacinth Bucket, as we would later refer to her. ‘I’m actually part of the village history society. Who is it you are looking for?’
‘A young woman. Kitty Fisher?’
Hyacinth all but tutted, ‘Oh, because of the bridge at the reservoir? I’m afraid you won’t find that name in here. It’s an insult, a nickname given to a woman who steals someone else’s husband. You know, as in the nursery rhyme when she ended up with Lucy Locket’s pocket’.
I’d spent my whole life until now thinking she’d literally found a purse.
‘Not a penny was there in it. You see, the bloke was broke’, she smiled, satisfied at her own rhyme. ‘My guess is our Kitty Fisher was a gold-digger but not a particularly successful one’. Our Kitty Fisher? Her words left me feeling strangely protective of a dead woman I had no connection to beyond a fleeting encounter which I may well have imagined.
As Alexis and I exchanged glances relating to this development, she continued. ‘Anyhow, even if we did know her real name we’d still not find her here. The story is she was a suicide. She’ll be buried somewhere out there’.
She gestured in a vague direction indicating somewhere outside of the churchyard. I couldn’t help but interpret it as a nod in the direction of the reservoir but asked, ‘Out there where?’.
Hyacinth shrugged. ‘Near where she took her own life, probably. Maybe even with a stake through her heart’, the woman delivered the last part with a little more relish than I found palatable. Perhaps seeing the horrified look on our faces, she reined it in a little. ‘The church is much more understanding these days’.
‘I’m sure that would be of great comfort to her’, muttered Alexis. As we walked away it was becoming clear to both of us. It was neither a priest nor a plumber who would be able to help stop that drip.
As the sun set that evening, we loaded the car with the supplies we’d gathered. ‘Got everything?’, asked Alexis.
‘Yep. Let’s do it’.
We drove to the edge of the reservoir and parked up. The air was still stifling and it was just about light enough to pick up the outlines of the crumbling structures which had recently remerged from the mud. ‘That one is the bridge’, I indicated and we trudged over together.
We set up our makeshift shrine above the keystone and laid down a posy of wildflowers. Forget me nots, poppies and irises seemed more appropriate than the high maintenance blooms Hyacinth had been fussing over at the church. I set down the candle and the bell, allowing myself a small smile at the latter, given Mike and his friends’ conversation about the stories of one tolling beneath the reservoir’s surface.
Once set up, we paused. ‘Do you think she’s here somewhere?’, I asked.
‘I don’t know’, whispered Alexis. ‘Try speaking to her’.
‘Kitty? I’m sorry I don’t know your real name. I know that has been taken from you. We’re here to let you know that you aren’t bound to this place anymore. You don’t have to stay here’. I lit the candle.
‘Please, go in peace now’, I said softly, and rang the bell. As Alexis and I reached for each other’s hands, we felt a spot of rain. Then another. And then, finally, the heavens opened.
We returned to the cottage, soaked to the skin from the thunder storm raging above. As we walked through the door, Alexis said, ‘Listen!’. The rain was hammering on the roof but the drip had finally stopped.
Epilogue
A few days later, Alexis messaged me to say the storm had caused some sort of power surge at my old house and that my ex’s 85 inch television was no more. The temptation to gloat was strong but in the end, I actually felt a bit sorry for him. Eventually, there comes a time for all of us to move on.
Old cottages are nothing but hassle my ex had insisted, preferring a bland but energy efficient box on a new estate to anything that an estate agent could market as ‘chocolate box pretty’. I left him last year but he probably hasn’t turned away from his 85-inch television for long enough to notice yet.
How appropriate then that it was an infuriating drip in the bedroom that might just prove him right. It couldn’t be a leak, there hadn’t been any rain for ages. A bucket would have to be the temporary fix for now and at the pub later, I’d ask if anyone could recommend someone who could pop round and take a look.
An hour into my shift and the heat behind the bar was almost unbearable. It made worse still by the fact I seemed to be pulling cold pints for everyone in the village but myself. The talk at the tables was speculation about hosepipe bans and barbecue plans. All standard topics for discussion every time the country had a dry spell until I heard one group of older gentlemen talking about the nearby reservoir. I’d noticed myself on the drive over the causeway that the water levels had dropped and when one of them said, ‘‘The old village will be reappearing soon’, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation.
‘Village? It was a couple of old cottages and a mill. Not bloody Brigadoon. I read some nonsense on Facebook the other day about people being able to hear the bell of a drowned church tolling below the surface. Flippin’ idiots could probably hear St Leonard’s up the road’.
‘There was that old bridge though, named after the nursery rhyme, remember?’
‘Kitty Fisher’s Bridge? That was named after a real person apparently. A local lass, threw herself in the brook they say, because she’d lost her lover. We were always warned not to swim there away from there as kids. They said she’d pull us beneath the water’.
‘I think I saw her once’, one of the men said softly, more as an admission to himself than the surrounding group. The others looked at him for a second before one of them broke the silence with a quip.
‘She’s been dead at least two hundred years, Mike. Even you weren’t around then’.
‘I think I saw her’, he repeated, bolder this time. ‘Stood on the banks of the reservoir. It was that heatwave of ‘76, and like a fool, I’d taken myself down there to fish. It weren’t much more than a puddle. I glanced up and there she was standing on the bank, about 50 foot away from me. Dripping wet, she was. I was just about to shout to her, see if she was ok and she…disappeared. One second she was there and then the next. Well, she just wasn’t’.
His monologue was once again interrupted by the joker of the pack. ‘You’ve always had that effect on women, Mike’, followed by comments from the others about needing to take more water with it. Mike laughed along with the banter but the trace of a puzzled expression still lingered on his face. It was clear, to me at least, that he had been deadly serious about what he saw that summer and it was something he had been trying to make sense of ever since.
(Note: This story is semi-fiction. It’s inspired by a real place and its folklore but a lot of it also comes from my imagination. Anyway, part II to follow soon!)
Sometimes I find a story so intriguing that I have to spread my wings a little and go beyond the Staffordshire borders. As with most myths that have been centuries in the making, there is no one singular version of events. Almost all accounts agree however that something spooky was afoot at Papillon Hall and that a pair of brocade slippers were at the heart of the haunting.
Papillon Hall, post renovation when wings were added to create a butterfly effect
In most retellings, David Papillon, grandson of the man who built the hall, is cast as the villain of the piece. People said Old Pamp, as the locals nicknamed him, supposedly had supernatural powers and may even have been in league with Old Nick himself. Prior to his marriage to Mary Keyser in 1716, he’s said to have kept a Spanish mistress at Papillon. More of a prisoner than a partner, she was kept under lock and key and only allowed out onto the roof of the hall. It seems his impending marriage to Mary may have rendered la Señorita surplus to requirements and she’s said to have met with a mysterious death in the attic room she had been confined to.
With her dying breath, the woman placed a curse upon the beautiful green brocade slippers she had worn during her lonely rooftop rambles. If they ever left the hall, its owner would meet with terrible misfortune because these boots were no longer made for walking. Old Pamp moved away to Kent and onto a successful career as a lawyer and politician. Subsequent owners who arrived at the hall were handed the deeds and advised that the cursed footwear must stay or else face the terrible consequences.
Naturally, some scoffed at the idea of shoes with supernatural powers and sent them to be exhibited at London, France and a museum in Leicester. A series of car crashes, riding accidents, robberies, dead livestock and other disasters soon persuaded them otherwise. Charles Walker who used the house as a hunting box in the 1890s heeded the warnings and kept the slippers safely stored behind a locked iron grille above a fireplace. As an extra security measure it’s said he threw the key into a pond.
According to some accounts, when the hall was renovated by Sir Edward Lutyens in 1903, a woman’s skeleton was found inside one of the attic walls. As yet, I have found only anecdotal evidence of its existence. The shoes, however, are a different story…
The hall was requisitioned during the Second World War and used as a billet for American soldiers. When they departed, it was discovered that one of the slippers had disappeared and it was assumed it had been stolen for a souvenir. Fearing the consequences, owner Rupert Belville made an appeal in the US for its return and in 1949, the Leicester Evening Mail reported that it had mysteriously reappeared. It was not enough to prevent the greatest misfortune to befall Papillon Hall in its history however and just two years later the house was demolished.
The cursed brocade slippers of Papillon Hall make a great stand-alone story but I want to take things one step further. I’ve discovered alternative accounts, intriguing inconsistencies and spin-off stories, all of which I will share in part II soon.
Sources
Daily News (London) – Saturday 09 July 1949
Leicester Evening Mail – Wednesday 06 July 1949
Leicester Chronicle – Saturday 23 October 1948
Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail – Friday 27 December 1946
Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail – Friday 06 December 1946
Manchester Evening News – Thursday 17 November 1938
‘Needs a bit of work eh?’, a cheerful voice said from behind me. I turned to see a man with a dog.
‘Just a bit!’, I replied in a similar tone, disguising the fact he’d startled me. ‘Does anyone live here?‘.
The man chuckled in that way that makes you feel you’ve just asked a question you should already know the answer to. ‘Been empty for years. I’ve lived here since the seventies and I’ve never known anyone living there’.
The most obvious thing to say next was ‘Why?’, and so I did. The man shrugged. ‘No idea. Perhaps they’re waiting for it to fall down so they can build on the land?’.
I kept my next question to myself. Why would you need to wait for a house you own to rot away? Unless it was one of those historic houses that there were rules about knocking down, but this one didn’t look anything special. Just a red brick rectangle with a door in the middle and a pair of windows either side. A bit like the sort of house I might have drawn at primary school. Except my version would have had flowers in the garden and smoke coming out of the chimney and it had been a long time since this one had either.
‘Tell you something though,’ the man said suddenly. ‘She don’t like it’. He nodded towards the spaniel at his feet.
‘She doesn’t like the house?’, I asked, checking I had grasped the right end of the stick.
‘No, her ball ended up in the garden once and she wouldn’t go in to fetch it. Just stood at the gate, shaking’. A puzzled look must have flashed across my face, as he added, ‘Must have been foxes’.
Looking back, I’m not sure which of us he was trying to convince more. To cut through the awkward silence that followed, I checked my phone. Despite having nowhere to go and nothing to do, I smiled, ‘Well, I’d best be off. Nice to meet you both’.
‘Righto’, he replied and we headed off in opposite directions.
Later, the idea of taking some photos of the place occurred to me and so the next day I made my way back there. As I reached the cottage, a tennis ball sat on my side of the gate.
‘Daisy’s ball. The foxes must have been playing with it’, I thought, although now there was no-one to convince but myself. Pleased with my pictures of the peeling paint and ivy-clad brickwork, and the menacing ‘Not for sale or rent. Keep out’ sign, I headed home. As I uploaded them to Instagram, I saw the light reflected in the windows in a way that made it seem someone might be standing there and wondered if anyone would comment on it.
The following day, the man with the dog passed me in the nearby woods. ‘Did you get the photos you wanted?’ he enquired. ‘I saw you both up there yesterday when I was on my walk with Daisy. Thanks for getting her ball back’. His words only registered after they’d walked on. Both of us? Maybe someone had followed me up there. It wasn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere and someone could easily have worked out where the creepy old cottage I’d shared on my Instagram account was. Could do without the local teenagers adopting it as their new drinking den though.
Feeling some sort of responsibility for the place, I walked over to see if there was any evidence they’d discovered it. From the gate I could see that despite the overgrown tangle of a garden someone had managed to get the door open. I was ok with kids being kids but wanted to let them know their presence there had not gone unnoticed. I picked my way through the wilderness and shouted ‘Hello?. I thought I heard some movement from inside. ‘I think you better come out of there, it’s probably not even safe’. I couldn’t be sure but I thought I heard a giggle. I pushed the door open wider. ‘Come on now’.
More shuffling sounds from upstairs. I put on my adultiest voice. ‘You need to leave NOW’. A gust of wind howled down the stairs, slamming the door shut in my face. ‘Ok fine’, I thought, retracing my steps through the garden. ‘Serves them right if the foxes eat them’. Thinking I heard a tap from a window, I turned, fully expecting to see a bunch of kids gesturing through the glass but there was no-one.
Later that week, the bluebells in the woods were in full bloom. I bumped into the man again, but this time he was without a dog. Something had spooked her, he told me, and she’d run off. That was yesterday and he hadn’t seen her since. I promised to keep an eye open for her but couldn’t shake off a sickening feeling that I already knew where she was.
The cottage door was ajar again. ‘Daisy?’, I tentatively called from the doorway. A slight whimper came from inside in reply. Then, something rolled down the stairs. Daisy’s ball. ‘Daisy come here! Good girl!,’. More whimpering. I’m not a huge animal lover but the sound was so pitiful I couldn’t just leave her in there. I stepped inside the cottage for the first time. Any curiosity I’d felt about the place had evaporated and there was nothing here that I wanted to see. I tiptoed up the stairs to avoid treading on the handfuls of fresh bluebells scattered on the steps. Trampling on them brings bad luck I’d been told as a child, and didn’t faeries use them as a lure to trap humans too?
From the landing, I could see Daisy in the corner of one of the bedrooms and stepped inside. Her tail wagged weakly and she started to make her way over. The she stopped dead in her tracks and seemed to stare at something behind me. A soft thud caused me to turn around to see Daisy’s ball slowly rolling towards her. I scooped her into my arms and sprinted for the stairs. Back on the landing, one of the floorboards in the bedroom behind me creaked and the dog whimpered again. I didn’t take my time on going back down the stairs.
Daisy’s owner was waiting outside. As I passed the trembling spaniel over to him, his look turned from relief to concern. ‘Where’s the other girl gone? She was right behind you’.
‘There was no-one else. Perhaps it was a trick of the light?’, was the answer I gave to reassure him as I looked up to the window.
‘She’s still in there. She always will be’, was the answer I kept to myself.
Footnote: I’ve been toying with the idea of writing more place based fiction for a while. I decided just to be brave and do it…
Here in Lichfield, Shrove Tuesday is celebrated with people dressed up as princesses, pirates or, um, slices of pizza racing along Bore Street as they flip pancakes. Visitors to the city tomorrow may see the old Price of Wales/Chameleon Bar/Feria and think its been boarded up as a precautionary measure in case the shrovetide shenanigans get out of hand but it’s actually just been left derelict for about twenty years.
A flipping disgrace
Somewhere they really do have to take such steps to protect their premises is up the A5 at Atherstone, where instead of pancake racing they play a truly hardcore game of football and have been doing so since 1199. Apparently, once the giant leather ball has been tossed into the crowds onto Long Street there are only two rules. One is that the ball must stay on Long Street. The other is that you can’t kill anyone. I told you it was hardcore (by comparison, the rules of the Lichfield Shrovetide Festivities include mandatory non-slip footwear and that at some point during the festivities the Mayor of Lichfield must be photographed in a spinning teacup on the Market Square).
Pandemonium (Lichfield style)
With this in mind, I am inclined to believe the following anecdote about the good folks of Atherstone. In February 1800, John Massey was executed for murder and his body was gibbeted at Bilstone, near the site where he committed his heinous crime. Eighteen years later, his rotting remains remained on display, and became quite the local tourist attraction for Atherstonians who would pop there for a picnic. Once they’d finished their food, they’d partake in that quaint old pastime of throwing stones at the murderer’s skeleton. Eventually, a grocer called Mr Peach knocked the skull from its boney shoulders and so the group of day-trippers took it back home to Atherstone with them. It seems Peach then presented this sinister souvenir as a gift to his local pub.
My grocer went Bilstone and all I got was this skull of a lousy murderer
I’ve read the skull was lined with silver and turned into a punchbowl. Other versions claim the cranium became a candle holder. Some say it was eventually stolen, others say it’s still kept in a secret safe in one of Atherstone’s ancient inns. If you know anything more, please give me a heads up. Finally, please do accept my apologies if I’ve put you off your pancakes.
We all love a bit of gothic fiction but I’ve often said that the strangest stories are those which are real. If you need further convincing, in April 1950, the following line appeared in an article in the Wolverhampton Express and Star. ‘The Rev. J.W.M. Finny, vicar of Shifnal, uses a human skull as a tobacco jar’.
Jaggery / The Old Vicarage, Church Street, Shifnal / CC BY-SA 2.0
The skull was apparently gifted to Finny’s father, a medical practitioner in Manchester, who was called to a hospital to attend to an American sailor fatally injured in a brawl at Salford Docks. On his death bed, he bequeathed his body to the School of Anatomy. His skull however was given as a gift to the doctor who had attended him in his final hours on the condition that it was to be used as a tobacco jar. A huge incentive to give up smoking right there on the spot surely? But no, the medic accepted the seaman’s skull and used it in the way the former owner had wished. And that’s not even the strangest part of this story,,,
A young RAF man on leave stayed at the Vicarage in what was known as the ‘Pink Room’ but was found at 7.30am as white as a sheet, dressed and ready to leave. ‘Never’, he said, ‘could I spend another night in this room’. He revealed he’d not had a wink of sleep thanks to a series of raps, bangs and rattling, and perhaps worst of all, the sense that someone, or something was in the room with him.
Other weird occurrences included the front door knocking when there was no-one there and lights in the study being switched on when the room was apparently empty. The housekeeper had several experiences, including being disturbed in the passages (ooh er matron) and the impression of something brushing past her. Back in the Pink Room, people reported having trouble opening the door as if something was blocking the doorway on the other side. Something like a body…
The Rev Finny referred to his ghostly guest as Freddie and there was a suggestion that the skull was responsible for the strange occurrences at the Rectory. Yet, the paranormal activity in the building apparently began long before the poor American sailor came to rest his head there. Indeed, the son of the man who was Vicar of Shifnal in 1891 told Finny that similar activities had been reported there in the 19th century with the poltergeist popping across the field to the Jerningham Arms from time to time. It seems that even ghosts want to go out out sometimes.
Richard Law / The Jerningham Apartments / CC BY-SA 2.0
Guests at the now closed inn reported being grasped by unseen hands and flung out of their beds. Footsteps and other noises were heard from empty rooms. In August 1950, Frank Ferriday the landlord told how the ghost had learned a new trick. A few empty glasses had been left in the sink and were later to be found filled to the brim with beer, even though the beer pumps had been switched off. Apparently, a sticky substance was found on the handles and I think it best we just note this unsettling development and continue without further comment.
The Ferriday family had named the ghost Oswald but by 1965, landlord Trevor McNeill believed the phantom punter was actually a nun after a waitress claimed to have seen a black-cloaked figure in one of the upstairs corridors. Her supernatural presence at the pub was supposedly at its strongest on New Year’s Eve and so McNeill held his own candlelit hootenanny down in the cellar near to the blocked up doorway. Fans of folklore bingo will of course be delighted to learn that this was believed to lead to a secret passage where the nun had been killed. However, what this supernatural sister was doing down a supposed secret tunnel in Shifnal in the first place is as much of a mystery as why someone would give away their own skull to be turned into a tobacco jar.
Disappointingly in May 1950, the Council for Psychical Research declined to send an investigator to Shifnal on the basis that, ‘everything is quiet there these days’. I assume it still is? Both the vicarage and the inn are privately owned properties these days and so hopefully Freddie/Oswald/the beer serving Sister are behaving themselves.
Sources:
Wolverhampton Express and Star – Wednesday 26 April 1950
Birmingham Daily Gazette – Friday 05 May 1950
Crewe Chronicle – Saturday 13 May 1950
Birmingham Daily Gazette – Wednesday 09 August 1950
If ever there was an instance of picking on the wrong person, it was at Fenton Toll Gate on a January morning in 1834. Mr Dawes, a surgeon from Stoke on Trent, was walking back home from Lane End, later to become known as Longton, when he passed three men. One of them raised their arm and struck him in the face, knocking him to the ground. As Mr Dawes lay stunned, the man began to rifle through his pockets whilst the two others assisted with this daylight robbery. As the surgeon regained his senses, he started to shout, ‘Murder!’ but one of the thieving trio place his hand across his mouth to silence him.
I think this might be the site of the Fenton Toll Gate (taken from Google maps). I also think the Sixth Form College the sign here points to was the first purpose built sixth form college in the UK which is nothing to do with this story but is a great bit of Staffordshire history,
Dawes saw an opportunity to defend himself and managed to bite down on the man’s forefinger. The more he struggled, the harder Dawes held on. Eventually, the failed footpad managed to escape but left part of his finger in the jaws of Dawes.
Lane Delph, where the Evans Bros. came to the end of the road. Think we need to continue on our journey to the intriguing sounding Warming Castle however
When another Stokie surgeon called Mr Chadwick heard of the attempted robbery, he tipped off the police that he has just attended to a collier who was missing the end of his index finger and pointed them in the direction of the Evans brothers of Lane Delph. Apprehended at the their residence, the missing finger (carefully preserved by Dawes in a bottle of spirits) was found to be a match for Charles Evans’ manual wound and they were arrested. Out of shear desperation at the trial, he claimed he had cut it off when carving mutton in a public house but, despite their denial of any wrongdoing, the Evans brothers were nailed and sentenced to 14 years transportation. Who needs fingerprints when you have the actual finger?
What became of their accomplice and perhaps more interestingly, the incriminating index finger, remains a mystery. Is this body of evidence still preserved in a bottle of spirits somewhere on a shelf in Stoke?
Lichfield Lore 