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A Pub with Two Tails

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There are many reasons one might visit a pub. To sample the fare, to enjoy an ale, to meet with companions. I went to the Dog and Doublet because it’s named after a murder. Or a dog wearing a jacket. Either way, I headed to the village of Sandon in Staffordshire, in my mystery machine (which looks a lot like a Toyota Avensis) to do a bit of investigating.

The first possible explanation for the pub’s name is that a former landlord was murdered by robbers and his faithful hound found the corpse. In what sounds like a gothic horror version of Lassie, he took his master’s blood-stained doublet back to the inn and then led a search party back to the body. The second less gory story says that a travelling fair came to Sandon and its star act was a performing pooch in a little jacket. The villagers thought he was such a good boy they decided to name their pub after him. A dog in a doublet was clearly a novelty back then. Nowadays I see some canines out walking in Leomansley Woods who have better wardrobes than I do.

The current building dates to 1906, and is described as having been erected by the Earl of Harrowby on a site adjoining that of the original. The tithe map seems to show that there was an inn there back in 1838, but it was known as the Packhorse. It’s all a bit confusing, even before you’ve had a drink, but I think I understand what happened with these hostelries. There was definitely a Dog and Doublet in the village dating back to at least the mid-18th century as I’ve found a reference for it in Aris’s Birmingham Gazettee. It seems to have stood on the other side of the road, at a place now known as Sandon Lodge and/or Erdeswicke House. When Sandon Hall burned down in the summer of 1848, the Earl of Harrowby made it his temporary family home, and had the pub sign moved to the Packhorse which presumably was also renamed at this point. He didn’t relocate the resident ghost though, as a man described as wearing brown clothes and a small wig and believed to be a former landlord, was still reported to be haunting his old hostelry in the 1950s.

The gates to Sandon Hall

This information comes from Sam Berrisford, a former chairman of the Parish Council, who lived in part of Sandon Lodge. He also mentions an overgrown circular bowling green in the grounds of the old inn, which he suggested was Elizabethan. According to the listed building description, the oldest parts are 17th century and so certainly old enough that tales of parliamentarian troops draining quart pots and plunging their heads into vats of beer in the inn’s cellar prior to the Battle of Hopton Heath could be true. If so, it’s no wonder the Royalists defeated them eh? (put down your swords Roundheads, I’m just jesting. I know the outcome of the only Civil War battle to take place on Staffordshire soil isn’t that straightforward).

During its 18th century coaching inn days the hospitality of the hostelry was renowned and, in the absence of Trip Advisor, a satisfied customer is said to have scratched this verse onto one of the smoke-room windows of the old pub.

‘Most travellers to whom these roads are known
Would rather stay at Sandon than Stone
Good chaises, horses, treatment and good wines,
They always meet with at James Ballantine’s’.

Not everyone met with such a cordial welcome from Mr Ballantine however. There’s a story his daughter eloped with a young man and that when the boy broke into the inn to collect some of her belongings, Ballatine was there waiting for him. He handed his estranged son-in-law over to the law and the lad was hanged for theft. It’s said that on the night of the execution, a crowd of villagers surrounded the inn, chanting the 69th psalm and cursing James Ballantine. Possibly related to this family drama is a second verse that the Staffordshire Advertiser says was scratched into another of the inn’s windows which read, ‘Let the man that hates peace, and endeavours to trouble it, Be hung up by the neck, like this dog in the doublet’.

Whitehall, Beacon St. Once the Coach & Horses inn

Whether the story of Sandon’s star cross’d lovers is true I don’t yet know but I have found out that James Ballantine and his wife Catherine had six daughters in total. One of them was called Ann and in November 1779 she married Alderman John Fern, an eminent Wine and Brandy Merchant from Lichfield. So far, so respectable but then you learn the groom was sixty-two years old and Ann only twenty-one. I believe they’d have lived at Whitehall on Beacon Street in, another former inn with an intriguing past. Fern died in Lichfield on 16th February 1801 and his short obituary in the Whitehall Evening Post, refers to him as the ‘Father of the Corporation of that city’. Although surely he was old enough to be its Grandad…

Back to the Dog though and by December 1802, the landlord there was Mr Tomlinson who was paid a visit by a swindler, who may have been enticed by the Trip Advisor review for good horses in the window. He had, ‘very much the appearance of a gentleman aged about forty years, five feet eight or nine, dark curled hair, smooth face, smiling countenance and had on a dark mixture cloth coat, with one of his boots patched across the toe’. He arrived in a post-chaise from Cheadle and claimed to have left his horse at Leek due to the bad weather, asking for a horse for the following morning to take him to the banking house of Messrs Stevenson and Co. Inevitably, that was the last Mr Tomlinson saw of his horse and when enquiries were made at the bank in Stafford, it probably didn’t come as a shock that no such person had been there. A five guinea reward was offered by Tomlinson, along with ten pounds from ye olde neighbourhood watch scheme, the Sandon Association for Prosecuting Felons.

To the church. Let’s not split up eh gang?

And so it turns out there there are far more than two tales at the Dog and Doublet even if some of them are just shaggy dog stories. I’m not quite ready to fire up the Toyota Avensis and leave Sandon just yet though. There’s a mystery up at the church that needs solving…

Sources:

Birmingham Weekly Post 20th October 1950

Stone – The History of a Market Town, Norman A Cope

Staffordshire Advertiser 4th December 1802

Staffordshire Sentinel 18th February 1905

Staffordshire Advertiser 21st May 1864

Staffordshire Advertiser 16th November 1946

Oxford Journal 20th November 1779

Staffordshire Advertiser 10th May 1806

The Wraiths of Weston Hall

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Afternoon tea at Weston Hall is my annual festive treat and though we didn’t spot any ghosts of governments past in the form of the MP from Stone eating scones again this year, plenty of other spectres are still present here.

Scones and spooks is my idea of heaven

The Jacobean hall is said to be so haunted that when it was used by the ATS in World War Two, there’s a story that the women stationed there opted to sleep outside in tents rather than risk meeting the legendary Grey Lady. It seems a less effective strategy when you learn that the wraiths of Weston Hall are not confined within its walls. A Green Lady walks up the stones steps to the entrance, a White Lady rushes across the nearby road and disappears into a hedge during a full moon and the sounds of a ghostly carriage and horses can be heard pulling up outside on the gravel, despite the driveway having been long paved over.

Stairway to heaven

Given there are so many ghosts, the house must surely have had a colourful history but details of its original owners are a little sketchy. In Henry Edward Chetwyn-Stapylton’s book on the Chetwynds of Ingestre, he suggests Weston was built by Lady Dorothy Devereux, youngest daughter of the former favourite of Elizabeth I, and William Stafford of Batherwyke, her second husband. He notes that Robert Plot says she was living there at the time he wrote his History of Staffordshire in 1686 but as she died in 1636 he must have been mistaken. Unless she’s the Grey Lady and it’s her ghost he saw…

Seems a bit scary on the outside but lovely on the inside. Just like me 😉

A later owner, Francis Lycett died there on the evening of 6th May 1792 from a fractured skull, a few days after falling down the stairs at The Falcon Inn at Stone. One of his spurs had caught on his great coat. I have read elsewhere on the internet that Francis is an ancestor of fellow Brummie (but not fellow comedian) Joe Lycett but haven’t yet been able to substantiate this.

By 1818, the hall was described as a farmhouse in a rather neglected state in the Staffordshire General and Commercial Directory. In the early twentieth century, the property was used as a pauper asylum by Staffordshire County Council to relieve overcrowding at Stafford. There were 45 female patients in August 1908 but again information is scarce. Afterwards it was allegedly sold to pay gambling debts and converted into flats. An application to convert the property to a nursing home in 1991 was abandoned and the hall stood derelict until Paul Reynolds rescued and restored the building a few years later.

The Falcon at Stone, where Francis Lycett had a fateful trip

For me it’s not so much generic stories of women in white (or grey, or green) that float my ghost ship, but something with more substance. An event in the past which may help to explains why there may be a perception of paranormal activity. When the hall was reopened as a hotel in the 1990s, staff reported tables being cleared, glasses being collected and ashtrays being emptied by an unknown entity. I can’t help but wonder if there’s a link here to the tragic events of March 1945 when a twenty five year old mess orderly in the canteen was accidentally killed when she was shot through the chest by an eighteen year old private in charge of a detachment of German POWs working at Weston Hall.

I’ll be haunting somewhere around here

Whoever it is that haunts Weston Hall, there are far worse places to spend your afterlife. In fact I love it so much that in years to come there may be reports of another female phantom who turns up at Christmas and sits by the fire stuffing herself with scones.

Sources

Paranormal Staffordhire, Anthony Poulton-Smith

Staffordshire Newsletter 4th October 1996

Stafford Post 21st March 1996

Staffordshire Sentinel 23rd July 1985

Staffordshire Newsletter 19th November 1976

Staffordshire Sentinel 6th July 1945

The Gentlemans Magazine and Historical Chronicle 1792

Faux Passal

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Whilst researching something in the Staffordshire Sentinel, another story caught my attention and it’s so strange that I just had to share it, despite it having no links to Lichfield or the local area. In fact, the tale takes us away from England altogether and to France where a series of true yet unbelievable events took place in the early twentieth century.

It was September 1929 when the first of what would be a series of peculiar letters was posted to the offices of ‘Le Matin’ newspaper in Paris. It said, ‘We have the honour of informing you that we are a powerful secret society composed of persons of the highest authority. Our purpose is to rid France of the unscrupulous crooks and swindlers who prey on their fellow men”. Well, it said that but in French obviously.

The note also stated that the notorious Marquis de Champaubert was to be the society’s first victim. Now, this is where we need a bit of backstory because the Marquis was no nobleman but a master criminal whose real name was Clément Passal. His crooked career included a fraudulent motor-car company in Nantes and a bogus perfume factory, but he was eventually caught out by a jeweller who smelled a rat when he received an invitation to meet de Champaubert at the Chateau du Prieure. In a sparkling bit of detective work, the diamond dealer noticed the Marquis had signed his name De Champaubert and deduced that someone from the upper class would never use an uppercase D to spell that part of their name. Further investigations revealed no-one had ever heard of the Marquis de Champaubert and so the jeweller gave the police a ring.

Le Petit Parisien 27th September 1924 reporting the arrest of Clément Passal

When they found out that four other jewellers had received the same invitation to take a selection of valuables to the Chateau du Prieure, they knew some sort of game was afoot. On raiding the castle, they found a crime scene in the making that would be too loopy even for an Arsène Lupin story. Five rooms had been set aside for each of the jewellers and each one had been made airtight. In the billiard room was a tank of choloroform with pipes leading from there to each of the five rooms. The plan was that the fumes would overcome the jewellers and as they lay in a state of stupor, Passal would pocket their precious stones and disappear. Thanks to the efforts of the police, Passal did not get to do it in the billiard room with the lead pipe but instead spent two years in irons at Loos Gaol.

It seemed that the secret society calling themselves the Knights of Themis did not feel that justice had been done. The next letter to be received at Le Matin revealed that following his release from prison, the ‘Marquis’ had been lured to their headquarters by Madame D’Orgeval, the only lady member of the Knights. She’d entrapped him by claiming she wanted to publish his autobiography but what awaited him was a series of twisted tortures, each one more terrifying than the last. The first horror he had faced was to be tied to a cot in his cell with an iron funnel placed in his mouth and one and a half gallons of water poured into it but the letter reported that, ‘He has the vitality of twenty men; he did not even complain. Tomorrow he has an appointment with Sam our giant orangutan. He cannot survive’.

Turns out that he could. In the next letter to arrive at the newspaper office it reported that, ‘Today, the Marquis met Sam, our orangutan. We keep this gigantic beast in a pit 14 feet deep, its sides so slippery that neither he, nor anyone else, can climb out. Sam had been starved for twenty-four hours and given a heavy club which he knew from experience how to use. The Marquis was lowered into the pit by a rope. Another man would have grovelled in fear. But not the Marquis. He bent over so that his hands touched the bottom of the pit. Then he managed to scoop up some of the dirt, stand up and hurl it into Sam’s bulging eyes’.

This apparently made the animal hysterical with agony and it dropped the club. The Marquis seized it and smashed it on the orangutan’s head, knocking it unconscious (possibly a more successful strategy than piping chloroform into a room). His next trial was to be bound into a parachute that would only open 200ft above ground and pushed out of a plane. However, he survived this deadly descent and so his captors decided to bury him 6ft underground. The letter ended with ‘Tell the whole world of our plans. Let all scoundrels know of Champaubert’s fate’.

On 2nd October a note arrived at Le Matin to inform them that it would be their last communication regarding the Marquis de Champaubert as their mission had been accomplished. Inspector Adam of the Sureté was informed and went to visit Passal’s mother. He found her in bed crying, and she passed him a letter from beneath her pillow in which he told his mother of the tortures he had endured, informed her that he had asked his captors to bury him with a photograph of her over his heart. That same morning George Durot, a friend of Passal’s, received another letter, signed by the mysterious Madame D’Orgeval who seemed to be having some misgivings about her role in the murder. ‘You can save him’, she wrote, ‘There is still time. The ventilating pipe will have brought him sufficient air. But hurry’. The letter contained details of the ditch in Verneuil Wood where Passal had been buried. Durot and another friend sped to the woods on a motorcycle to find the soon to be a murder site. They found the pipe protruding three inches from the ground and began to dig. Using pocket knives they tried to force open the lid of the coffin but without success and so headed to the nearest village. They returned to the coffin accompanied by two local gendarmes armed with axes and eventually prised open the premature tomb. It was too late though. Clement Passal had already passed away.

However, the story still doesn’t end even here! Georges Durot remembered that Passal and a man named Henri Boulogne, who had been imprisoned at Loos with him, had rented a nearby cottage. When the police searched the premises, they found Henri hiding. On a rubbish heap outside the cottage they also found a scrap of paper and a piece of wood.The wood was the same as that used to create the crude coffin and the paper matched the letters sent to Le Matin. As Boulogne confessed to the police, the whole thing had been a hoax gone horribly wrong.

The Knights of Themis were fictional and the letters had been penned by Passal. At the cottage, he’d built himself a coffin which Boulogne had then buried him in at Verneuil Wood. The pipe projecting out of the earth was intended to keep Clement alive but their not so cunning plan was flawed and Passal slowly suffocated.

Why did Passal partake in such a complex and dangerous ruse though? The answer may lie in a manuscript of memoirs found near where he was buried. There was also a packet of press articles, copies of letters sent by the non-existent Knights of Themis and a diary containing details of the crimes Passal had committed, others which he took credit for including the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 and some which I strongly suspect exist only in his imagination e.g. plans to fell the Eiffel Tower, a duel with American police and the discovery of invisible death rays. The theory is that the stunt had been contrived by the now penniless Passal to promote the memoirs of his alter ego the Marquis de Champaubert.

It seems that sometimes there is such a thing as bad publicity.

Sources

Sunday Mirror 13th November 1938

Liverpool Echo 9th October 1929

Murder Ballad

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It seems apt that on St Andrew’s Day, I have a story for you which features both a Robert Burns poem and the one time president of the Walsall Burns Club. These events took place one hundred and fifty years ago this week and I will warn you in advance that it’s a bleak early winter’s tale, with no festive cheer to be found.

On 24th November 1874, a young Billy Meikle1 arrived in Alrewas on the first train of the day from Walsall. Snow had fallen overnight and the wintery dawn was just breaking as he passed the Paul Pry Inn2 with its sign hanging from a tree opposite. There were groans coming from the inside the old village lock-up and a howling hound outside was awaiting his master’s release. Billy then continued via the George and Dragon and the Navigation Inn (now the Delhi Divan restaurant) as he headed towards Yoxall via the Kings Bromley Road to collect the accounts of customers for the drapers business he worked for.

I believe this may be the tree near to where those terrible events took place 150 years ago

When he arrived at Yoxall he found the village in a state of frenzied excitement, following the news that murder had taken place the previous day. At every house he called at he heard the story of how Mrs Kidd had been killed by a vagrant at nearby Hoar Cross because the man had demanded 3d and she had only 2d to give him. Meikle was told the murder had taken place at a large tree, the location easily identifiable as the locals had scraped away the snow to see the pool of blood beneath it. As night fell, he set out in the moonlight to find the sinister spot for himself, but as he approached the tree where the tragedy took place, he lost his nerve and ran back to Yoxall.

The Golden Cup, Yoxall where the drinks still flow although I suspect step dancing on the ceiling is a thing of the past

Unfortunately, the Golden Cup Inn where he was supposed to be staying was perhaps not the sanctuary he was hoping for. Mrs Badkins, who kept the local stationers shop, told him that the landlord had been drinking since his his wife had left him and had borrowed a gun, suggesting that staying at the Crown may be a safer option. Meikle did not heed her advice and took his chances at the Cup. On the day of the inquest on Mrs Kidds’ body, the tap room was flowing with talk of murder, both the very recent and historic. According to Meikle, things took a turn for the better when a man named Ned Dukes stood on his head on a table and sang a song about the world being upside down whilst he did a step dance on the ceiling. Personally, I’d have rather carried on talking about murders. At 10 pm time was called and the customers went home, ‘full of drink and murder’. Meikle was left alone with the landlord and his daughter and together they ate soup, bread and cheese. At several points during the supper, the landlord got up to investigate invisible things in the dark corners of the room. Eventually, bed was suggested and Billy was shown to his room which had been partitioned off from the club room. Despite thoughts of the landlord and his gun, Meikle drifted off to sleep. At 2am he heard the clock at St Peter’s chime but fell back to sleep. Soon after however, he was woken again by a terrible crash and peered from beneath his bedclothes to see the landlord stood in the room, candle in one hand, gun in the other.

Both men had thought the crash had been caused by the other firing shots but Billy assured the landlord he had no gun. The men then realised the crash they’d heard resulted from the partition between rooms falling down and both of them returned to their beds.

Billy Meikle’s sketches of a candlestick from the old Paul Pry Inn and the sinister spoon Taylor carved in Stafford Gaol

Meikle says the murderer of Mrs Kidd was arrested several weeks later. He was caught in a trap laid by the police who knew he was unable to resist singing a love song called The Thorn, based on a poem by Robert Burns. Pianists were planted in every pub in the East Staffordshire area, with instructions that they should play the song at regular intervals. The snare was a success and the murderer was arrested mid-song and later sentenced to death. Meikle says he scratched a figure of a man being hanged onto the wooden spoon he ate his final meal with along with the words ‘A bloody long drop for this kid for killing another ‘Kidd’.

It’s an incredible story but I suspect Billy Meikle’s account of events may not be altogether accurate. What is without doubt is that at the Stafford Assizes in December 1874, Robert Taylor, a 21 year old miner from Wigan was found guilty of the wilful murder of Mary Kidd on 23rd November in the parish of Yoxall. The main witness was her neighbour Sarah Ann Hollis, an eight year old girl who had gone with her. Sarah said that as they approached the wood, they saw Taylor and had a brief conversation with him. He followed them and asked for half a crown, and Mrs Kidd replied she did not have that amount but gave him 2d. Taylor then grabbed her and cut her throat with his pen knife. The sound of approaching cart wheels scared him away and may well have saved Sarah’s life.

Was Taylor trapped by a tune though? It seems the murderer was caught in a much more orthodox manner. Newspaper reports say that after visiting the murder scene, near to the new church at Hoar Cross and on the main road from Yoxall to Sudbury, Superintendent Bowen searched for the murder all night. Eventually he overtook him on the road to Burton, followed him into a shop and, recognising him from Sarah’s description, arrested him. Taylor’s clothes were examined and his shirt sleeves, trousers and coat were found to be saturated with blood. Traces of blood and bloody hand prints matching his were also found on the gate he escaped across towards Yoxall Lodge.

When the charges were read, Taylor replied with a smile, ‘I plead guilty to all that’. It was remarked that from the time Taylor was arrested until the time he stepped onto the scaffold, Taylor appeared to treat the whole thing as a joke, displaying no remorse. He commented to someone that he had no family or friends and didn’t care what happened to him. At Stafford Gaol, he attended services in the chapel on Sundays and on Christmas Day, sitting in the same pew where William Palmer had once sat. During the service the chaplain asked the congregation to pray for Robert Taylor, now lying under the sentence of death. His final weeks were spent in a cell with a straw mattress and his only visitor was a woman from his native Wigan who suspected Taylor to be her long-missing but still loved husband. The chaplain allowed her into the cell but after taking a good look at Taylor she declared that this was not her husband and headed back up north, no doubt much relieved. Robert Taylor really was alone in this world.

Taylor was executed within the walls of Stafford Gaol on the last day of 1874, just after the clock had struck eight o’clock. The morning is reported as being clear and bitterly cold. A couple of hundred people had congregated in the road near the gaol, drawn no doubt from the same morbid curiosity which drove me to write this post. Taylor’s final words to the executioner were ‘Snap me off quick’. He did.

Notes:

1 – Billy Meikle was a fascinating character with many interests including local history, photography and sketching scenes from the world around him. As mentioned above, he was also involved in the Walsall Burns Club. You can read more about him here.

2 – The Paul Pry Hotel in Alrewas stood on what is now the A38 and was demolished when the road was widened c.1960. I have read that a former landlord used to show punters a brace of pistols which had once been the property of a highway man said to frequent the inn.

Sources:

Rugeley Times 28th December 1968

Edinburgh Evening News 11th December 1874

County Advertiser & Herald for Staffordshire and Worcestershire

Burton Chronicle 26th November 1874

Abra-cadaver

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It’s Sunday and it’s Spooky Season (or October as we used to call it) and so hey presto, I’ve written a post about unorthodox burials in this old city where magic may have been involved. I think you’ll like this. Not a lot, but you’ll like it (kids, ask your parents).

As a point of reference and, just to show I don’t just completely conjure things up, there’s a great paper by Roberta Gilchrist, which deals with the archaeology of magic in medieval burials. It outlines the norm for Christian interments at that time as being a body wrapped in a shroud and lacking a coffin, personal items and grave goods and also explains that around two percent of excavated burials are exceptional to this. Excitingly but perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that some of these intriguing inhumations have turned up in the Field of the Dead (or Lichfield as the authorities insist on calling it).

Lichfield Friary looking over to where bones were found below Bird Street

Amongst the fourteen burials found beneath what’s now the beer garden of the Brewhouse and Kitchen on Bird Street were the remains of three females, including a woman who lived in the mid-fourteenth century, described by archaeologist Mark Neal as being quite elderly and in poor health. The discovery of so many skeletons here suggests it was the location of the cemetery for Lichfield’s Fransican Friary and the presence of women raises some interesting questions about who was allowed to be buried here and what their role may have been. Most puzzling of all however was the discovery of a body found with a 2mm thick layer of charcoal beneath it. Research shows that such burials are mostly associated with people of note in the early medieval period and predate the founding of the Friary in 1230. Was this the site of a high status Saxon buried before the Franscicans arrived? It is of course possible that this funerary ritual was continued beyond the Saxon period here in Lichfield but could we be looking at a site with a history stretching back further than we thought? The history of the Grey Friars site suddenly seems very grey indeed…

The other burning question is of course, what was the significance of the charcoal? There are some intriguing possibilities ranging from the practical, where the charcoal layer was a way of absorbing bodily fluids during putrefaction, to some sort of post-humous purification ritual designed to save the soul after a life of sin and to stop the dead from returning to haunt the living. I don’t think I’ll ever look at a barbecue in quite the same way again.

Lichfield Cathedral. Pure magic.

Five further charcoal burials were found during excavations at Lichfield Cathedral, one of them inside a stone structure believed to have been part of the original Saxon church. One of those burials was that of a priest buried with something variously described as a hazel wand, rod or staff, as well as a cross of twigs, a chalice and patten and a eucharistic wafer. Yes the symbolism is strong with this one. Several theories exist regarding the presence of the wooden wand, including it being provided for protection as the priest made his final journey through the valley of the shadow of death. Perhaps the most peculiar burial here is that of a priest in an 11th century stone coffin which had an opening directly over where the mouth would be positioned. It’s been interpreted as a libation tube, where the living could make offerings of food and drink to their dead relative. It’s a pagan practice mostly associated with the Romans, and as yet, no-one has come up with a satisfying explanation for it being present in a place of Christian worship.

There are also an incredible 49 burials recorded at the Cathedral where white quartz stones have been found inside graves, and even clutched in the hands of the occupants. Again, the exact symbolism of these is unknown, but archaeologist Warwick Rodwell suggested the answer may lie in Revelation 2:17. This is a passage of the New Testament where a white stone with a new name written on it is given by Christ to his followers as symbol of forgiveness and an invitation to the afterlife. I think. It seems to make sense until you realise that people were incorporating these white pebbles into their funerary rituals long before Christianity existed. As we are on the subject of magic, can we also take a moment to appreciate that John who presents the video I’ve linked to looks like he might be an actual wizard.

St Michael’s on Greenhill is a place of many mysteries

A seemingly more recent, but no less bemusing burial was unearthed at St Michaels on Greenhill in 1852. Two gravediggers dug up the rotten fragments of an elm coffin and found that buried with the bones inside it was a bottle filled with a liquid believed to be urine. It has the feel of folk magic to me, particularly as in 2021, a similar discovery was made at the Trinity Burial Ground in Hull. We know that witch bottles were used to protect people from harm and that examples have been found buried in the foundations of buildings. Was this something similar, designed to protect the grave from robbers perhaps, or other less earthly threats? Or was it just a final drink for the coffin’s inhabitant to enjoy on their way to wherever they were headed to next?

I make no apologies for asking so many questions and being unable to answer any of them in this post. Time and time again, through writing this blog and being part of the Lichfield Discovered team, I realise that there is still so much to be uncovered and understood about the incredible history of this city. And for me? Well, that’s magic.

Sources:
Lichfield Mercury 5th January 1990

1 Bird Street, Lichfield Report on a watching brief, Marches Archaeology Series 103, November 103

Stone, R. (1999). 1 Bird Street, Lichfield: archaeological watching brief. Cirencester: Cotswold Archaeology.

Click to access LichfieldEUSReportFinal.pdf

Charcoal Burial in Early Medieval England, James Holloway (2009)

Gilchrist, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1967-2558
(2008) Magic for the dead? The archaeology of magic in later
medieval burials. Medieval Archaeology, 52. pp. 119-159

Jonsson, Kristina. “Burial Rods and Charcoal Graves: New Light on Old Burial Practices.” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 3 (2007): 43–73. Web.

Community and Belief: the Development of Anglo-Saxon Christian Burial Practice,
AD 700-1066, Alexandra Aversa Sheldon (2018)

The Queen’s Shoes

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I’m not organised enough to do an ‘On this day in history…’ type post and so I’ve just missed the 565th anniversary of the Battle of Blore Heath. However, as I know a couple of good stories about it, here’s an ‘on this Monday just gone in history’ post instead.

The tales take place away from the blood and gore of the battlefield, a mile up the road at Mucklestone, the most westerly parish in Staffordshire. Its name may derive from the OE ‘micel’ meaning large and ‘stan’ meaning stone and it seems likely this is linked to the presence of two monoliths known as the Devil’s Ring and Finger. Satan’s stones are believed to have originally been part of a chambered tomb and the ‘ring’ stone has a porthole, apparently large enough for a person to climb through, or be passed through. Some say to do so increases fertility. Having been erroneously told that several gaps on a traumatic caving expedition were big enough to get these child-bearing hips through, I’ll stick to two kids and a small amount of dignity thank you. Talking of children, there was also a belief that passing them through the circle several times would cure them of any ailments, which seems like a strangely wholesome thing for the devil to do. Much more in keeping with the name is the local legend that the stones mysteriously appeared at the spot after a girl was murdered here.

geograph-227107-by-Mr-M-Evison (1) (1)

Queen Margaret of Anjou is said to have watched the Battle of Blore Heath from the church tower at Mucklestone. On seeing the standard of her Lancastrian commander Lord Audley fall (a cross marks the spot where he was slain), the queen knew defeat by the Yorkist army was imminent. In a fit of rage and frustration, she is said to have stamped her feet so hard that her footprints remained on the stone floor of the tower long after she fled to safety. This sounds preposterous I know but I do have a theory about this. The outline of shoes are often found carved into church roofs (I’ve yet to find a satisfactory explanation as to why) and if there was such graffiti on the church roof at St Mary’s in Mucklestone, someone may have decided that it fitted into the story very nicely. Obviously, if I’d got in touch with someone at the church to ask them if such graffiti existed to back up my theory that would have bee useful, but yeah, that thing about being organised…

Mucklestone church tower
Mucklestone church tower

The most well known element of the legend is that Margaret’s escape was aided by local blacksmith William Skelhorn who was ordered to reverse the shoes of the queen’s horse in an attempt to fool those who attempted to follow.  His reward was to be beheaded on his own anvil, which can be found in the churchyard opposite the site of the smithy. Whether the execution was carried out on the orders of the queen to ensure Skelhorn’s silence, or by her enemies, as punishment for assisting her, depends on who is telling the story.

skelhorn mucklestone anvil
A 19th century forgery by the parish clerk?

It’s not the only instance of the old horseshoes-on-backwards-to-disguise-your-tracks ruse to be found. Amongst others, Robert the Bruce supposedly did it to escape from London after being betrayed there (with tracks going in the opposite direction to Scotland, presumably). Logically and practically it seems an unlikely tactic for Queen Margaret or anyone else to use, and is crying out for someone to do a myth-busting style experiment. I’ll volunteer to dress up as the queen and get on a horse if necessary. I’d look great in a crown and I’ve been pony trekking. Twice.

The thing about myths and legends is that it’s relatively easy to bust them if you try. Once this happens, there are several different ways to go. Either ignore the evidence and keep telling it anyway because why ruin a good story with facts. Dismiss it as a lot of nonsense and as having no value whatsoever. Or sit yourself comfortably somewhere between the two positions, enjoying it as a story in its own right but also exploring where it came from and why, who told it and if any nuggets of truth are actually contained within.  The same themes and events turn up in our folklore time after time.

As with the horseshoe part of the myth, echoes of other aspects of the Mucklestone story can also be heard elsewhere. Over at Stoke Golding, in Leicestershire, local tradition has it that the villagers climbed onto the battlements of the church of St Margaret to watch the Battle of Bosworth on 22 August 1485, and later watched the Tudor King’s coronation at Crown Hill.  Did someone draw on these stories and create one to put Mucklestone on the map? Could someone like William Skelhorn, directly descended from and carrying on the same trade as his 15th century ancestor and a parish clerk in the mid-19th century have forged his family into history? Not too far-rier fetched is it?

Sources:

http://www.bloreheath.org/mucklestone.php

Click to access draft-historic-graffiti-guidelines.pdf

Fleming, G. (1896) Horse-shoes and Horse-shoeing

http://www.search.staffspasttrack.org.uk

Staffordshire Sentinel 17th August 1908

Staffordshire Advertiser 8th November 1865

Anchors Away

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It’s the first day of Autumn today, meaning yesterday was the last day of Summer and it definitely went out with a bang. The storm seems to have subsided a little but the pounding rain continues its bleak fall and so I’m virtually visiting Streethay this afternoon. The village sits on the Roman Ryknild Street, just beyond the boundary of Lichfield City and, most appropriately given the weather, it’s a place with some watery links that I want to explore.

The Anchor Inn, had already been boarded up for two years when I took this photo in February 2017.

The new housing estates springing up around the outskirts of Lichfield are certainly controversial but one positive development at Streethay, is the arrival of Bod. I’m a big fan of the Titanic brewery bar and I do wonder whether this new influx of people would have kept Streethay’s previous pub ‘The Anchor’ afloat, if it had happened sooner. It was not to be however, and it closed in January 2015.

At Bod, I found a tiny mermaid swimming in a glass of porter….(with apologies to Eliza Carthy) Created by Louise from Under a Pewter Sky.

The building still survives and is now occupied by an Osteopathy Clinic and apartments but let’s go back in time to those days when it still served as an inn. It was clearly in existence by November 1848 when an inquest was held there on the body of Henry Crutchley, a fourteen year old lad who died after climbing onto an engine and slipping beneath the wheels of the wagons it was pulling, but was rebuilt around 1906, when the Lichfield Brewery Company was granted permission on the basis that ‘the house was in a most dilapidated condition and it was impossible to repair it’. I’ve yet to find a photo of its former form but I have found a reference in 1779 to a public house ‘known by the sign of the Queen’s Head’ which stood on the turnpike from Lichfield to Burton at Streethay and I’m wondering if this might be an earlier name. There are also mentions of a inn known as The Dog, around the same time and I’d like to sniff out where exactly that was.

The Anchor, when it was still afloat in 2009
Photo © David Rogers (cc-by-sa/2.0)

In the Lichfield Mercury in 1972 an advert for the Anchor appeared with a curious reference to the ‘Klondyke Bar’, inviting you to enjoy your drink, ‘in the pleasant atmosphere of the Gold Rush’. One of the new apartments built in the grounds of the Anchor has been named after this, with the estate agents’ details explaining it was named after the ‘large wooden drinking hut’. Now I was given many nicknames by my brother when we were growing up, and one of them was ‘Klondyke Kate’. Whilst I’d like to think it was based on American vaudeville actress who provided inspiration for Scrooge McDuck’s girlfriend, I suspect it was more likely a reference to the British female wrestler. The Anchor’s Klondyke however is clearly a reference to the gold in them thar Canadian hills in the 1890s and was decorated with old photos and posters and, erm, pheasants, in a bid to recreate a prospectors’ bar. Much more of a mystery is why a bar on the outskirts of Lichfield chose it as a theme. In May 1979, the new licensees Norma and George Wolley presumably asked themselves the same question and relaunched the annexe bar as ‘The Mainbrace’. The hut itself had originally been a first world war army hut and this brings us nicely to a really interesting period in the pub’s history.

During the Second World War, the pub was frequented by personnel from RAF Lichfield. Jean Smith, in an interview with Adam Purcell, described how she and fellow WAAFs would stop off for a half a pint there on the way back home to their quarters on the opposite side of the road. On winter nights, when it was announced that flights had been cancelled due to fog and rain, the women would get their gladrags on and head out to the inn. Soon, the sound of bikes being propped against the wall of the pub would be heard as the lads from the aerodrome arrived at The Anchor, and the grounded pilots would soon be filling the air with cigarette smoke and tunes from the piano. The full interview with Jean can be found here and it’s a fascinating read, which really captures what the atmosphere was like for those young people living their lives in Lichfield, surrounded by the ever present threat of death.

This post was actually intended to be a deep dive into the village as a whole but I’ve got a bit overboard with the history of the Anchor Pub and so we’ll have to return to Streethay and its moated manor and plunge pool, the brewery and the canal wharf, and the lost hamlet of Morughale another day because we’ve only just dipped our toe in…

Brewery Row, once home to workers from the Trent Valley Brewery

Sources

Birmingham Journal 25th November 1848

Lichfield Mercury 16th March 1906

https://www.onthemarket.com/details/8779282/

Lichfield Mercury 25th May 1979

Lichfield Mercury 7th April 1972

Adam Purcell, “Interview with Jean Smith,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed September 22, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/3488.

http://raf-lichfield.co.uk/Anchor%20Pub.htm

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol14/pp273-282

The Woman in Black

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I note from being nosey that another ghost walk materialises in Lichfield this evening. It’s inevitable that the streets of an ancient city known as the Field of the Dead are filled with stories of spectres and with groups of people who want to hear them.

My beloved great-grandad and a young me at Devils Bridge. The really scary thing here is that fringe

I’ve been interested in the spooky side of life (or should that be death?) ever since I was a small child, and I think I can pinpoint the moment my interest was piqued by the paranormal. I remember a family holiday in Wales with my Mum reading aloud from a guidebook, telling us the tale of how the Bells of Aberdyfi still ring out from the drowned kingdom of Cantre’r Gwaelod and a visit to Devil’s Bridge in Aberystrwyth that same holiday sealed the deal. Although not with Old Nick, I hope. Forty years later, I know exactly which tales float my boat, or more aptly ghost ship, and the sceptics out there will probably explode at my next sentence. My supernatural stories need substance. There has to be something tangible in a tale that makes me believe that maybe, just maybe, it might be true…

Christ Church, Lichfield.

Much closer to home but I suspect beyond the realms of any city ghost tour, let me take you to the lanes of Leomansley and the winter of 1981. The Lichfield Mercury reported that over a period of four years, an elderly woman in black had been seen sporadically by several residents in the area surrounding Christ Church. Bill Thompson described her as five foot tall, aged around seventy, wearing spectacles and a black shawl over Victorian style clothes (what else?) and swore he’d seen her walk through his hallway wall and into the coal shed. One resident, Carol Lawrence, saw her whilst camping on the fields behind her cul-de-sac, and described her as ‘gliding towards the church’. Another haunt of hers seems to be the cottage on the edge of the church yard. Someone contacted me to say that during their time there, this mysterious lady of Leomansley was seen looking out of the cottage’s window and a friend of mine who lived there in the early 2000s experienced unexplained bangs, self-unlocking doors and the smell of recently extinguished but non-existent candles. The cottage was originally built to be the residence of the school master or mistress of Christ Church school. It later became a lodge for Beacon Place, the now demolished mansion whose grounds make up much of what is now Beacon Park, and then was home to the clerk and sexton at Christ Church for at least seventy years. Will we ever work our how the story of our woman in black fits into this local history?

The churchyard cottage

Her presence isn’t the only peculiar thing associated with the area. In the 1970s, when the houses around Christ Church were being modernised, a drainage trench was built in one of the gardens. That Friday evening, the sound of a crying child kept most of the residents awake for most of the night. When the sobs started again in the early hours of Sunday morning, Bill Thompson, a Mr Coleman and one of his sons became convinced someone had abandoned a baby and formed a search party. They scoured the gardens, the graveyard, and the grounds of Beacon Place (now the football pitches of Beacon Park) but found nothing. On Sunday night, the cries were heard again and the search resumed with the same result. On Monday, the trench was filled in and the night time noises were never heard again. Now, if I were to put on my sceptic’s cardigan, I would say the work had disturbed a den of foxes. I’ve heard their eerie screams echoing through the air on a winter’s night in Leomansley and, if I didn’t know better, I too would be convinced it was something more sinister. But, therein lies the flaw in my rational explanation. Are we to believe an entire street of residents, living in what was a rural setting back then, would not have recognised these nocturnal noises and been able to distinguish them from the cries of a distressed child?

Christ Church Gardens

I do know one thing. As summer turns to autumn and the nights draw in, when I’m walking through this part of Lichfield, I always have to wrap that sceptic’s cardigan around myself a little tighter to stop myself from shivering.

The lane leading from Leomansley to Lichfield, the original Walsall Rd

Sources

Lichfield Mercury 14th October 1881

Lichfield Mercury 28th September 1883

Lichfield Mercury 11th March 1910

Lichfield Mercury 6th January 1911

Lichfield Mercury 31st December 1981

Lichfield Mercury 24th May 1929

Battle Plans

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Armed with a bag of Werther’s Originals and a vague plan about finding the site of Boudica’s final battle against the Romans, my friend (and countrywoman) and I headed down the A5 towards Atherstone.

By Boadicea by Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107819273

Boudica’s burial place is one of Britain’s great mysteries. I thought for years that the warrior queen rested beneath a platform of Kings Cross Station but clearly I was on the wrong track. There is no trace of her there, or anywhere else for that matter, although plenty of places have been mooted as a possibility. Ever since Richard III was found under that car park, perhaps people are more comfortable putting forward their own research into such things. Even somewhere they flog burgers in Birmingham is apparently a contender for the final resting place of the scourge of the Roman Empire. If she genuinely is here, they really ought to consider changing the name to ‘Queen’s Norton’. Let’s be honest, it wouldn’t be the first time a significant piece of history has been linked to the foundations of a local fast food restaurant in the West Midlands. There are two Mummies beneath what was once another MaccyDs in Tamworth.

Despite several sites laying claim to being the scene of Boudica’s last battle, no archaeological evidence has turned up at any of them either. Claims have instead been based on descriptions of the battle ground from two Roman historians, Tacitus and Cassius Dio. It’s described as somewhere within a defile (a steep sided narrow gorge) with a wood behind it and open countryside in front of it, chosen to prevent ambushes from Boudica’s warriors. In 2004, archaeologist Jim Gould wrote an article in which he says the description of the site given by Tacitus is much too vague for positive identification. He believed it would never be identified on the ground, in the absence of an archaeological discovery.

One of the chief contenders is Mancetter, on the outskirts of Atherstone, or Manduessedum as it was known in Boudica’s time. If it is ever proved, then they ought to consider changing the name to ‘Womancetter’ but I think we are going to have to defile that thought away for now.

What we do have archaeological evidence of at Mancetter is a Roman fort, now occupied by the site of the church and manor house. As we stood nosing in at the gate of the latter, the gardener appeared and told us it dated back to the fourteenth century and had a priest hide and a secret tunnel leading to the church. Despite my enthusiasm for stories of this kind, experience tells me these architectural features often turn out to be a cupboard or a cellar. In this case however, it seems he may not have been leading us up the garden path. Well not entirely. According to the Atherstone News and Herald in June 1956, in what’s now known as the ‘Martyr’s Bedroom’, an escape route led to the roof via a sliding panel in, ahem, a cupboard

The manor was the home of the Protestant Glover brothers John, William and Robert. In 1555, the Bishop of Lichfield issued a warrant for their arrest but by the time the Mayor of Coventry arrived with men to carry out the orders two of the trio had escaped. Robert had been unable to flee as he was ill and was taken from his sick bed to Coventry and then to Lichfield where he dined at the Swan before being removed to a cell alongside a dungeon. I suspect this would have been the ‘church prison’, as described by Thomas Harwood which seems to have been underneath what’s now Number One, The Close, rather than the gaol at the Guildhall.

Robert Glover was burned at the stake in Coventry on 19th September 1555. His brother John eluded capture but died of an ague after living in the woods for some months. The Biishop’s Chancellor, Anthony Draycot was not about to let the whole business of him being a protestant lie though, informing the vicar that his body should be dug up and thrown over the churchyard wall. When the vicar pointed out that after six weeks the body stank and finding men willing to undertake the task would be tricky, Draycot instead ordered him to wait for 12 months and then throw the skeleton over the wall into the public highway. The third brother William also suffered post-death disgrace being refused a Christian burial in the town of Wem in Shropshire, his corpse instead being dragged by horses to a nearby field and buried there in unhallowed ground. Just in case a priest hole and secret tunnel haven’t given you your fill of folklore, you should know that Robert Glover’s ghost haunts the room from which he was taken.

Next door to the Glovers lived another Mancetter martyr, Joyce Lewis, who was burned at the stake in Lichfield on 18th December 1557. Despite a plaque in the Market Square recording this dark chapter of the city’s history I knew very little of her story until now. It seems Joyce fought to the death to defend her beliefs, asking the friends who visited her in prison how she might behave so, ‘her death might be more glorious to the name of God, comfortable to his people, and also most discomfortable unto the enemies of God’. The night before her execution she refused the offer of two priests to hear her confession and after fainting on route to the Market Square and being given a cup of water, she used it to drink to ‘the abolishment of papistry’. According to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, ‘a great number, specially the women of that town, did drink with her; which afterward were put to open penance in the church by the cruel papists, for drinking with her’. I believe open penance would have been some sort of public punishment.

I may not have found the site of Boudica’s battleground on my journey up the A5 but it did lead me to the story of Joyce Lewis’s last stand much closer to home and how her final moments were spent surrounded by the solidarity of the women of Lichfield.

Sources:

https://ancientmonuments.uk/103961-roman-camp-mancetter

http://atherstonecivicsociety.co.uk/projectrm

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/95-1307/features/1090-boudicca-celtic-roman-empire-kings-cross

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/wall-roman-site/history/

https://www.patrickcomerford.com/2020_05_16_archive.html

Martyrologia, John Sundins Stamp

London Archaeologist Spring 2004, Boudica – yet again, Jim Gould

The Wizard and the Widow’s Curse

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In certain magic circles, the story of the Wizard of Bromley Hurst is well-known. In the mid-nineteenth century, Thomas Charlesworth, a young dairy farmer living near Abbots Bromley, argued with his widowed mother over his choice of wife, who also happened to be his cousin. Old Mrs Charlesworth, who was probably younger than me at the time, apparently left the farm muttering he would never do any good and his cheeses would all tumble to pieces. In the months that followed, Thomas did indeed have trouble making cheese from the milk his herd produced, ‘a process which had up to that time been successfully performed’. The fact this coincided with the departure of his mother was surely not coincidence and Thomas leapt to the obvious conclusion. That his mum had been better than him at making cheese? Absolutely not. Young Farmer Charlesworth decided that his cheese-kettle and all of his cows had been cursed.

Cused cows? Pull the udder one

Local toll-gate keeper Sammons recommended he seek the help of a man named Tunnicliff who ran ‘The Royal Oak’ beerhouse four miles away at the somewhat appropriately named ‘Buttermilk Hill’. Many men and women who ran such establishments also had a side-hustle. Indeed, my own great-great grandfather ran a pub in Cirencester alongside a blacksmiths shop. Tunnicliff’s supplementary business though was black magic. The wizard agreed that the woes Thomas had recently incurred were due to the ‘Widow’s Curse’ and that he could take the spell a-whey. All he needed was a piece of Thomas’s wife’s dress and the names of all his cows. Oh and £7. His magic act is reported to have been making crosses over the doors with witch hazel twigs and waving his hands over the horses. It seems no-one at that point thought to ask exactly how bewitched horses affected the cheese-making process and Tunnicliff left the house, no doubt rubbing those same hands together at the thought of how easily he’d make his money that afternoon. So easily it seems that Tunnicliff decided to put in a nightshift.

The Charlesworths had an ‘awful night’. Outside in the yard came the sounds of loud yelling, groans and noises of various kinds. Thomas bravely asked someone else to look out to check if there were any animals under the windows but there was nothing to be seen. The following day, he went back to see a tired-looking Tunnicliff and told him about the sleepless night they’d experienced over a beer. Tunnicliff agreed to call in to see what he could do but back home at Bromley Hurst, Thomas experienced shooting pains in his chest, numbness of his limbs and shivering. Whilst these symptoms subsided around dinnertime, he decided to stay in bed an extra hour the following day. Tunnicliff turned up before he woke and took Thomas up a breakfast of ham, bread and coffee. Within half an hour, he was stricken with symptoms similar to those he’d suffered the previous day. Tunnicliff announced he was appointing himself the couple’s defender against the dark arts and would be sleeping in their room. Now comfortably settled in the Charlesworth’s home, he really decided to go big.

To explain Thomas’ ongoing suffering, Tunnicliff ‘revealed’ he was engaged in a battle with ‘Old Bull’ aka the wizard of Yeaverly place, and claimed that ‘a fresh secret has been communicated to me by the power which I possess, and I now tell you that everything you possess is bewitched. You will have to give me further sums of money to remove this betwitchment’. As well as carrying out his wizarding work, Tunnicliff was also taken on as a servant. Shortly after Elizabeth, their baby girl and her nursemaid all began experiencing the same symptoms as Thomas and tragically, it’s reported that the infant died of convulsions in the Autumn of 1856.

Things came to a climax on 11th February the following year, a night during which servants witnessed the family dog run through the house chased by a phantom hound, seemingly made of fire and Thomas Charlesworth was so seriously ill he lost conciousness and was believed to be close to death. Whether it was the terrified servants’ ultimatum that if Tunnicliff stayed they’d leave, or Elizabeth Charlesworth’s discovery that his all expenses paid trip to Derby to battle yet another wizard was entirely fictitious, the penny finally seemed to drop that Tunnicliff was more of a conman than a conjurer and was milking them dry. He was dismissed on the 17th February 1857 and when Thomas was miraculously cured of his supposedly supernatural symptoms shortly afterwards, he reported Tunnicliff to the authorities.

In a trial at Stafford, Tunnicliff’s defence was that Charlesworth was a drunk, as was his father before him. The case for the prosecution however was that the Charlesworths had been poisoned with white bryony root, also known as ‘the Devil’s Turnip’, found at Tunnicliff’s house. In the end, the judge ruled that the Wicked Wizard of the East (Staffordshire) was guilty of obtaining money on false pretences and he was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment with hard labour. Reading over the details of the case, I find it hard to believe he was found guilty only of deception and not of the murder of baby Elizabeth and attempted murder of her parents.

The Coach and Horses, Abbots Bromley

As if this story isn’t already strange enough there is just one more thing to throw into the mix of this heady potion. During the trial, Thomas told how Tunnicliff had been to Rake End to see his uncle/father-in-law William Charlesworth, to caution him to be careful or else come to harm. On 23rd May 1857, William Charlesworth’s body was found on the turnpike road to Lichfield. An inquest was held at the Coach and Horses, the last place he’d been seen alive, leading to the arrest of two men for his murder. Charles Brown was transported to Western Australia but George Jackson was hanged at Stafford. Dreadful is the mysterious power of fate.

Sources

Uttoxeter New Era 13 October 1875

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/273146076

Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal 7.11.1857

Staffordshire Advertiser 7th March 1857

Staffordshire Advertiser 15 August 1857