There’s a little village in Staffordshire called Aston. Well, officially it’s called Aston-by-Stone as at some point they clearly got fed up of people not having a clue where it was and always having to explain ‘by Stone’, and just incorporated it into the name. Around fifty years ago, this tiny place hit the headlines of the local press on the basis that it was thought to be hiding a big secret. As a media circus descended upon the village, some may have been wistfully nostalgic for those days when no-one knew where it was.

Throughout much of its history, the Aston Hall estate had Catholic connections and since 1961, has been owned by the Birmingham Archdiocese and used as a retirement home for priests. Apart from five-a-side football, possibly, life was quiet and uneventful here until one day it was noticed that one of the trees in the grounds was in a dangerous condition. This was not just any old tree though but an ancient acacia with a legend attached. The tale told how there was treasure buried beneath its branches but that any riches at its roots would be revealed only if the tree fell down of its own accord, rather than being felled.

Understandably, it was decided that safety rather than superstition had to come first and in April 1974, the tree was cut down. A supposed conversation between one of the nuns and a former owner of the hall together with promising results from a metal detector suggested there may actually be some substance to the story and there was speculation amongst the priests that the subterranean secret may be some sort of sacred chalice. Disappointingly, when the tree was toppled, there was no holy grail or anything else in the hole. Despite this, the Sister Superior still had faith that the story still had some roots in reality and was quoted by the assembled press as saying ‘There must have been some grounds for the legend….’.

I’m with Sister O’Sullivan on this. I’ve read enough myths and legends to believe that on the (w)hole, even the most fanciful folklore does not just materialise out of thin air. For me, it’s not so much about whether spectres and secret tunnels exist but rather why the stories about them do, and why they persist. I do have theory about the treasure of Aston Hall and it relates to a bona fide discovery made here in 1838, although perhaps given the the nature of what Father Benjamin Hulme found beneath the altar of the hall’s chapel, bone fide would be a more fitting description. Inside a velvet-covered box and wrapped in silk were some of the relics of St Chad, smuggled out of Lichfield by Canon Arthur Dudley during horrible Henry’s reformation. Their three hundred year journey had taken them to the homes of a number of Catholic families in the Midlands for safekeeping, including that of Henry Hodgetts who kept them above his bed. The bones were enshrined in Birmingham’s Catholic Cathedral when it was consecrated in June 1841, in a casket designed by Pugin which he based on the Venerable Bede’s description of the original at Lichfield Cathedral. In the mid-1990s, they were examined by scientists who dated all but one of the bones to the 7th century which fits in time-wise with Chad’s death in 672. However, the presence of two left femurs amongst these means that there are the remains of three individuals here in total. It’s widely accepted that one of them is Lichfield’s patron saint but, barring some miracle, the identity of the other two will forever remain a mystery.

At this point, I think it’s worth noting that Lichfield Cathedral once held a whole host of relics. In 1345, these included some of the bones of St Lawrence, plus part of the gridiron he was martyred on, some of Mount Calvary and Golgotha, a piece of the rock standing upon which Jesus wept bitterly and wept over Jerusalem, some of the bones of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, part of the finger and cowl of St William, some of the bread of St Godric and some of the wood of the cross of St Peter. Is it possible Canon Dudley managed to lay his hands on more than just the arm and leg bones of St Chad perhaps? And were these hidden relics the source of the story that there was booty buried here at the hall? As, um, Captain Jack Sparrow once said, ‘Not all treasure’s silver and gold, mate’.

As a footnote, in the boundary wall at Aston Hall there is supposedly a cross commemorating a monk who was struck by lightning. I never managed to find it but then we all know that X never, ever marks the spot. But then neither does an ancient acacia tree apparently…

Sources:

HT to @stymistress on Twitter for inspiring the title!

https://lichfieldlore.co.uk/tag/relics/

Staffordshire Newsletter April 12th 1974

Birmingham Post 6th April 1974

Cope, N. Stone, the history of a market town

http://www.patrickcomerford.com/2020/06/how-saint-chads-relics-were-removed.html

I say this with nothing but affection but, for me, Rugeley is the creepy capital of Staffordshire. Never mind the drama of the Moorlands with its mermaids or our fancy phantoms from the Civil War here in Lichfield. If you google, ‘What is Rugeley famous for?’, the answer is a murderer. If you google, ‘What else is Rugeley famous for?’, the answer is another murder. I may return to these infamous events at some point but for now it’s one of the town’s lesser told stories I want to share as further paranormal proof of my bold claim.

At the turn of the 19th century, William Hewitt was a young man who had recently entered into the employment of a titled gentleman at Ravenhill House. Hewitt recalled how the house and its grounds were scenic in summer but that come winter, it turned into a dark and dismal place with scarcely a light to be seen. The owner would disappear for months at a time and it was during one of these absences that speculation that a spectre had been spotted in the area arose. The ghost was first seen at the top of Redbrook Lane, by a man returning from a night at his local and two nights later, another man returning home from the pub was startled when the supposed spook sprang out at him. Several more appearances of the apparition followed to the point that there was genuine sense of fear in the community with many people choosing not to venture out after dark.

One group of residents decided that they weren’t afraid of no ghost and took to patrolling the streets at night. One evening, a gang of twenty men headed to the shadowy spot where the ghost had been known to materialise but there was no sign of the shade to be seen and over the next few weeks sightings subsided. Then, one night, Mr Hewitt was returning from Rugeley town with two friends, when they caught sight of something white standing in the gateway to Ravenhill House. One of them lashed out at it with a stick and it fell to the ground with a very earthly thud. In proper Scooby Doo fashion, the friends pulled the white sheet from the now prostrate phantom but before they could reveal its identity, they noticed a considerable amount of blood on the sheet. Finding themselves in the unusual position of thinking they’d killed someone who until two minutes prior they’d believed to already be a ghost, they panicked and ran off. A few days later, Hewitt, Fred and Shaggy heard a rumour that an employee of Ravenhill House was in bed with a nasty crack on the head, having apparently caught his foot on the carpet and fallen downstairs. Yes, that’s right. The butler did it and what’s more, he would have got away with it too if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.

The irony here is that Ravenhill House did actually have a genuine ghost, as far as any ghost can be genuine. An apparition of an elderly woman dressed in blue was witnessed by residents and guests on several occasions, her main haunt being a chair in the drawing room as, like all ladies of a certain age, she enjoyed a nice sit down. The lady in blue was such a feature of the house that when Harry Thornton drew a map of the house in the 1980s, based on information supplied by Major T. Gardener, whose parents lived in the house from 1920 to 1936, she was included albeit it as the ‘Grey Lady’. Perhaps she, or possibly Major Gardener’s memory of her, had faded over time.

Sadly, Ravenhill House was demolished in 1993 with its final moments captured in a series of photographs which can be seen on the Staffordshire Past Track site here.

Sources:

Rugeley Times Archive
https://www.search.staffspasttrack.org.uk/details.aspx?ResourceID=29614&ExhibitionID=29552

My first post of 2021 was going to be about a murder in Yoxall but things are grim enough at the moment and so I thought I’d write about something nice for a change.

They say love can be found where you least expect it and under the floorboards of a house on Beacon Street surely qualifies as unexpected. In 1980, a bundle of letters between William Davis and Ann Bayley of Longdon were discovered by Mrs Sheila Paterson when she was replacing her stairs.

In one of his letters, William wrote, ‘Some people, like me now, fall into love even as a fly falls into a honey pot. What can be sweeter? Indeed, love is a pretty pleasant thing’. Then there’s a bit of drama because William complains, ‘You would not speak to me when you came from the church which gave me a great deal of grief till I came before your pretty face’. At the end of the letter he writes, ‘I hope I shall love you to my end. I hope you will take this in good heart’. In Ann’s letter to William she says, ‘ You say my company is sweet to you and yours is to others no doubt; if your pen and your heart agree I shall be glad, but if not you won’t lose your time or me mine for I keep all others at a distance for your sake and I hope you will do the same’, signing off ‘Your constant lover’.

The Lichfield Mercury report on the discovery of the letters say they were undated but thanks to a brilliant bit of detective work from Baddiley Ram (on Twitter and Instagram) we now know that they were written in the mid-eighteenth century. It also gives us an answer to the did they live happily ever after question the Mercury was unable to answer.

Reader, she married him.

The registers at St James the Great record the marriage of Ann Bayley and William Davis on 2nd April 1768. I can’t help wonder whether Ann would have touched the Bride’s Hand in the church porch at Longdon as she arrived on her wedding day.

The unsolved parts of this staircase are who hid the letters and why? And where are they now? If you do know anything more, do drop me a line.

Sources

Thanks to the person who first contacted me about this story

Lichfield Mercury 5 December 1980

Just before Christmas, I went to meet an old tree called Noddy. As I was driving over to see him, I was listening to the radio. It was safe to do this since I’d been recently been Whamageddoned when delivering a tub of Heroes. A careless wispa indeed. Slade were playing en-root, and though singing along felt a little hollow this year, given that everybody is probably not having much fun this year, I enjoyed the nominal coincidence.

I’ve been to Colton twice before. Once to show my Mum the erratic boulders that mark the four corners of the bridge over Moreton Brook and once for the slightly more rock and roll reason of a party at Ye Olde Dun Cow.

On the latter occasion, I was having a look at the memorabilia the pub had about the local area. You can find some really interesting things on display in old pubs. I even found a blog post from this amazing local history blog called Lichfield Lore printed out and framed once….Hanging on the wall of the Dun Cow I found a drawing of a massive old chimney stack but more about that later.

The Dun Cow is at the edge of the village and Noddy lives up a nearby country lane called Newlands, an old name dating back to 1339. As I started walking up there, I was almost run over by a delivery driver but he smiled and waved cheerfully and it was a novelty to interact with someone from outside my bubble. On reaching a huge puddle and contemplating how best to cross, I became aware of three men without a boat on the opposite shore. Yes, this puddle was that big. After much ado, Staffordshire’s answer to Compo, Clegg and Foggy reached my side. I decided to play the part of Batty and told them I was looking for a tree. An lo! Glad tidings of great joy they bought as they told me they’d just passed him a short ago. In fact, from this moment hence, they shall be known as the Three Wise Men of Colton.

I was originally introduced to Noddy by an absolute star who helped to fight and win a battle against HS2 to save him. The destruction of old roots for this new route is a huge tragedy and although many other battles have been lost, there is some comfort in knowing that this eight hundred year old oak has survived. Stood beside him, it’s just possible to see the chimney tops of Little Hay Manor House. The current house is relatively modern, built in the 19th century but remember the big old chimney stack I mentioned earlier? It’s all that remains of the Tudor manor house, demolished in 1846 due to the decayed state of its floors. Incredible to think that Noddy would already have been around 450 years old when it was built. According to Frederick Perrot Parker, the Rector of Colton who wrote a history of the village in 1897, on the third day of December each year, the boundaries of the manor of Little Hay were perambulated. I understand that Noddy was part of that boundary and thankfully still is.

I’m reading the rest of the Rev Parker’s history at the moment and it gives such a detailed account of the family trees of Colton gentry that I now feel I know them better than my own relatives. Mind you there are also some interesting snippets such as this intriguing sentence,

‘Hamley House, now belonging to Lord Bagot, is mentioned as Mr Webb’s new house in a vestry book of the year 1707; it has undergone considerable alteration from time to time, and there was probably an earlier dwelling on the same site; traces of an old window remain blocked up in the wall of one of the outbuildings, and the well is said to be curious‘.

I confess that I would have liked a little more about the curious well and a little less of the dry geneaology but the Rev Parker is in my good books for including a drawing of the Tudor incarnation of Little Hay Manor. Besides, it’s good to have some Spring explorations to look forward to…

Sources

http://www.coltonhistorysociety.org.uk/

Parker, F.P. (1870), Some Account of Colton and of the De Wasteney’s Family

All pubs are closed at the moment but one that’s highly unlikely to ever reopen is the Malt Shovel Hotel on Conduit St. Closed in 1971, the pub became an electrical retailer and is now ‘Fat Face’. The current building is around 142 years old and the original building is shown here on the Staffordshire Past Track site. It seems to have been demolished circa 1878 when a Samuel ‘no, not that one’ Johnson took out an advertisement in the Lichfield Mercury asking for ‘persons desirous of tendering for the pulling down of the old Malt Shovel Public House, Malthouse, Stables, and other old places and for the erection of a Wine and Spirit Vault, Club Room, Stabling’ to send their names to him.

After the pub closed, then owners Ansells discovered a bundle of deeds and other documents in their basement which they presented to Hubert Appleyard, the curator of Lichfield Museum, along with the wooden malt shovel which hung above the bar. The earliest documents relate to Thomas Glacier who ran his butcher’s business there in 1592, possibly one of the reasons Conduit Street was known by an alternative name of ‘Butchers’ Row’ until the mid-19th century. Other records show that in 1774 it was occupied by a maltster and baker and by 1801, deeds refer to a ‘Thaynes, publican’, suggesting links to the beer trade for at least a couple of hundred years. The documents are now at Staffordshire Record Office and the shovel is part of Lichfield District Council’s collection, which I believe is currently shoved in an attic. There’s a lot more I could say about Lichfield’s lack of a museum but rather than dig myself into a hole here, I will instead be positive and say that foundations are being laid for a number of alternative ways to fill this hole in our heritage.

Looking back in the newspaper archive it’s clear that looking back in the newspaper archive has always been a thing. In 1903, a column called, ‘Lichfield a quarter century ago’ recalled an incident in which the landlord of the Malt Shovel had been injured when falling off a ladder whilst attending to some pigs in his loft. Thankfully his injuries weren’t too serious and he just needed some oinkment. It also turns out that making typos has always been a thing (and a tradition I am proud to continue) as a look back at the original article on the Malt Shovel mishap reveals it was pigeons rather than porcines in the loft which makes a lot more sense unless pigs actually do fly.

There was scandal in 1903, when the license of the pub was objected to on the basis that there was something irregular involving a privvy and there was card playing, bookmaking and ‘a good deal of female drinking’ on the premises. It was re-issued after the landlord promised that ‘he would be extra careful that nothing of that sort went on in the future’. Seems the subsequent landlady was not even slightly careful however, and under Florence Slater’s tenure in 1922, an illicit gambling venture was uncovered in police raid. Things seems to have calmed down after that as the most exciting thing that the Mercury reported about the Malt Shovel between then and its closure was that at the Lichfield, Brownhills and District Victuallers Association meeting in September 1942, ‘biscuits were the main topic under review’.

Fast forward to 1997, when the building was occupied by camcorder merchants Dixons and the Lichfield Mercury reported that the old Malt Shovel may be haunted. The store’s manager revealed, ‘There have been lots of unexplained smells and sounds but no-one has actually seen anything’, before going on to make the bold claim that he believed it could once have been used as a brothel which makes you wonder exactly what kind of strange noises he was hearing? To be honest, my money is on any unexplained sounds and smells having something to do with the pigs in the loft and the irregular privvy. Is there anybody out there who has a connection with this building that can tell us more?

Sources:

Lichfield Mercury Archive

This latest post has taken a while to write and not just because I’ve been binge watching the complete adventures of Dogtanian but because, just like my New Years Eve outfit following a week bingeing on cheese and Baileys, there’s a lot to squeeze into it.

Firstly, glad tidings of great joy I bring, the Angel Croft is at last now off the Heritage At Risk Register, thanks to the work of Friels who have been renovating the former hotel since Spring 2017. Friels are now seeking planning permission to develop the adjoining Westgate House and Cottage plus the surrounding land to create a small spa hotel, houses, apartments and a new pedestrian route which connects Beacon Park to the Cathedral Close. For more information on the proposals and to see a walkthrough of how the site might look, take a look at https://youtu.be/4fEyzXbSLV0

It seems like a good time to remind people that change has to happen and that the places where we live are not preserved in aspic, like no doubt so many things on the menu at the Angel Croft were. Actually, I’ve just had an epiphany about how best to illustrate this. Let’s take a look at how the site has changed over the last 500 years.

The Angel Croft was built at the end of 18th century for a wine merchant called George Addams and was converted to a hotel in 1931. Some of the features from the time this was a house have been uncovered during the recent renovations, including a fragment of wallpaper which an expert has declared to be one of the oldest examples in the country.

Other discoveries include smoking ephemera, a collection of bottles, drawings, old newspapers and most interestingly of all, for me at least, a mismatched pair of boots. When I was shown a photo of the latter, I had one of those moments that thrills my sole. ‘Were these found under floorboards?’, I asked. ‘Yes they were!’ came the reply. I can’t be sure but I suspect they didn’t come to be there by accident. The Northampton Museum and Art Gallery keeps an index which has at least 2,000 examples of concealed shoes or boots being discovered up chimneys, in rooves or indeed, below floors (ironically, Lichfield no longer has a museum and keeps its entire collection hidden in an attic). The exact reason for this isn’t known but it’s thought to be a folk magic ritual designed to protect a property and its occupants from malevolent forces. I had thought it was the first example of this apotropaic custom to be uncovered in Lichfield but there is at least one other recorded discovery in the city. A 16th century house in Lichfield (not sure where. Yet.) had a shoe hidden up the chimney along with a chisel and a bunch of flowers (not sure why. Yet). There are also examples of more sinister discoveries concealed in the city’s walls and foundations (not sure if I’m ready to share these. Yet).

The Angel Croft was built on the site of an inn known as the Talbot. We know the pub dates back to at least 16th century Lichfield thanks to The Bawdy Courts of Lichfield blog, a fantastic Staffordshire Archives and Heritage project sharing quirky and scandalous stories emerging from the church court case papers of the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Lichfield and Coventry. By coincidence, at the start of December, I’d been asked if I knew where Christopher and Ann Hill’s house, also known as the Sign of the Talbott, was in Elizabethan Lichfield, as it was where Tamworth woman Grace Spooner called Ellen Allen ‘a whore, an arrant whore and a common strumpytt and whore and not worthie to be talked of’ leading to a defamation case. You can read the post about the case here. A later incarnation of the Talbot stood at the corner of Bore Street and Bird St and is mentioned in various books about Lichfield pubs including John Shaw’s classic Old Pubs of Lichfield and Neil Coley’s more recent Lichfield Pubs. Intriguingly, records now held at Stafford Record Office show that at some point the Beacon Street Talbot was known as the Three Crowns. Of course, this too had a later incarnation and The Three Crowns on Breadmarket St is famous for being frequented by Dr Johnson, as marked by a plaque on the early 18th century building.

The Angel Croft takes its name from another inn, the Angel, which stood to the south of the site and was in existence since at least 1498, when it was listed as the prebend of Freeford’s property. Harwood’s history of Lichfield describes it as being in what was known as Cardon’s Lane, later Guard Lane. It seems it was destroyed during the Civil War but again the name was resurrected when The Angel opened on Market Street in the 18th century, where it still remains, despite a spell in the wilderness as Samuels.

The third inn in our holy trinity is the Lamb, a baa owned by the Vicars Choral in 1592 where Westgate Cottage now stands. Presumably the former was demolished to make way for the latter as the Lamb shows up on Snape’s 1781 map of Lichfield and the listed building entry for Westgate Cottage describes it as being built in the 18th century. The adjoining Westgate House, was built on the site of another ancient building known as Pool Hall, again thought to have been destroyed by fire during the civil war and later rebuilt, before being replaced by the current Georgian building.

Time never stands still and neither should it (although it once seemed like it did waiting to be served in a pub which shall remain nameless). We’ve gone back five hundred years but I could take you back further still to where a Roman goblet or Neolithic tools were found (and perhaps next year I will). The past should shape us but not limit us and I think this bit of Lichfield deserves something more imaginative than a resurfaced car park (I always get back to car parks these days somehow). Development for me is about constructively building on the foundations of what’s gone before and adding the next layer. Making sure you incorporate an old shoe in there somewhere of course. Chisel optional.

Sources:

Lichfield: Manors and other estates’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, ed. M W Greenslade (London, 1990)

A – Z of Lichfield, Jono Oates (2019)