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.

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…

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?

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?

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.

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

As you will see on the signs heralding your crossover onto Staffordshire soil, it is officially known as the Creative County. I would say a more appropriate description is the Creepy County. Admittedly, its sinister side does reveal itself in a more subtle way than that of other counties perhaps (although we do now have a Ghost Museum in Stoke and Cannock Chase is, well, Cannock Chase). Many of its most intriguing stories take a bit of digging and on these dark winter nights, I like nothing more than taking a metaphorical spade to the archives to see what unearthly tales I can uncover. There are those who mock my endeavours and are all too quick to point out that ghosts and monsters don’t exist. Perhaps not, but tales about them certainly do and I believe it’s impossible to get a sense of a place without its stories.

There is nothing more satisfying to me than an unexpected tale of the unexpected, leaping out from the landscape and that is what happened as I was driving home from Deadman’s Green in Uttoxeter recently. Ironically, my story doesn’t relate to the necro-named place, as one might imagine but to a nearby derelict mill turned dairy I spotted down a country lane. Too much of a scaredy Kate for urban exploring but always attracted by a bit of rural decay, I pulled over to have a nose from a safe distance. There were two stone plaques embedded into the red brick, which piqued my interest immediately. One read ‘H C 1771’ and the other ‘Destroyed by Fire WV Rebuilt 1897’. However, even I, as someone who is always writing about weird stuff, wasn’t prepared for what I found out.

I’ve just realised that I’m trying to build up the suspense when I’ve already given part of the game away in the title so I’ll fast forward to the story, taking us back in time to Victorian Staffordshire.

When staying with the Vernon family at Fole, sceptic turned spiritualist Dr George Sexton was enjoying a varied and lengthy conversation with his hosts, which lasted well into the early hours of the morning. Inevitably, the talk turned to Spiritualism and specifically, a séance which members of the household had taken part in at Fole Mill on the night of 17th November 1872. The medium was a young man named Manley, an assistant at the mill owned by the Vernons, and another recent convert to Spiritualism. As the participants (William Vernon, Jane Cooper, AC Manley, Thomas Atkins and E A Vernon) gathered around the table, Manley soon claimed he was in contact with a spirit, who spoke as follows,

“This is a very funny country. My name I will tell you. I am an old miller. I like a drop of beer when here. I was killed in a mill; I was doubled up, twisted round the shaft; it was something awful. My name is S_____ C______, and the name of the place Coddington Mill, Cheshire”.

Those present hadn’t heard of Coddington, never mind its mill, and signed a declaration to this effect. The following day however, they found details of it in a directory and so Mr Vernon decided to write a letter to ‘the Proprietor’.

“Dear Sir,

Would you oblige me whether a miller used to work at your mill by the name of S_____ C_______, and if killed in the mill and how, and kindly oblige me with the date of his death?”

On 29th November 1872, Albert Lowe of Coddington Mill replied,

“Dear Sir

S______ C______ was killed at Coddington, on September 6th 1860 in the fifty-third year of his age, and was buried in Coddington Churchyard. He was killed whilst in the act of putting a strap on a pulley to drive a grindstone, his coat having got entangle between the pulley and strap.

Your truly, Albert Lowe

I’ve checked back in the newspaper archive and there was indeed a fatal accident at Coddington involving the man named, on the date given and I am absolutely convinced there is more to this mill’s tale than meets the eye. Why did the Vernon family hold a seance there in the first place, unless it was just wealthy Victorians indulging in the ultimate parlour game? Were they motivated by something more than a mere desire to be entertained on a dark winter’s night in the Staffordshire countryside? After all, they didn’t have an excellent blog written by a woman from Lichfield to amuse them. Or a Channel Five documentary on Britain’s Favourite Cheese at Christmas (starts at 6.05pm folks). If we assume that young Manley was making it all up, how did he come by the information about the accident?

Even I, here on Team Believer, concede it highly unlikely that the spirit of the poor chap from Cheshire chose to make a fifty mile trip down the A500 to have a chat with a group of Staffordshire strangers twelve years after his death. Anyway, if I was him, I’d have stayed at Coddington Mill. It looks absolutely heavenly. If anyone wants to hire me to come and carry out a paranormal investigation there, just let me know…

Sources

Wrexham and Denbighshire Weekly Advertiser September 8 1860

The Spiritualist, May 8^th 1874

To the best of my knowledge, the following is based on a true account of unexplained events at rectory in Staffordshire in the 1930s, as recorded by Harry Price in his book ‘Poltergeist over England’. I have chosen not to reveal the exact location of the rectory in my post, nor the full names of those involved, as the current inhabitants might not consider finding out their house might be haunted to be a Halloween treat.

The new vicar and his family arrived in the village in March 1934 and soon settled into the house. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred until September that year when a young nephew came to stay. One evening, the boy felt unwell and so bedroom doors were left open, in case he needed assistance during the night . At around 4am in the morning Mrs H, the vicar’s wife, heard the sound of someone in bedroom slippers walking along the landing. Naturally assuming it to be her nephew, she sat up in bed and waited for him to come into the room. Nobody appeared, yet the sound of the footsteps continued. As they approached the bed, the air in the room turned icily cold. Convinced she was ‘up against something she had never experienced before’, Mrs H closed her eyes and reached for a small crucifix she had nearby. As she lay clutching the cross, she sensed somebody or something lean over her and her husband and heard it sigh deeply, before she felt the presence fade away. Mrs H believed it to be a small man in trouble but that he had gone out happier than he had come in.

Nothing else of note happened until the following September, when Mrs H was awakened by three loud raps and the sound of approaching footsteps once more. The vicar recalled her trembling with fear as she woke him.

The following September the family were on holiday and so if any paranormal activity did take place, it went unwitnessed by anyone. The following year was 1937 and on 12^th September, the Rev H had his first first-hand experience, in the form of three loud thumps on the bedroom door at around 6.30am. A further strange occurrence took place around this time one evening when the couple were getting undressed for bed. The vicar had forgotten something and went to fetch it from another room, taking the candle with him. When he returned, he found his wife terrified, as the petticoat she was taking off had burst into flames as she pulled it over her head.  

On 17^th September 1938 the vicar’s wife woke and heard two loud raps, presumably having been woken by the first. She woke her husband and announced ‘It has come’. Perhaps understandably, in April 1939, the vicar and his family moved to a parish in Northamptonshire. Whether his successors experienced anything paranormal in any of the subsequent Septembers is unknown.

The story as it stands is strange enough but there is a twist in the tale to tell you. The vicar had appealed to Price for any suggestion as to what might be causing the seemingly supernatural phenomenon as he was unable to find , ‘any local event of the past which occurred in September, and which would be likely account for it’. He wondered if it was related to the removal of the base of an ancient cross from the Rectory garden back into the church yard or the loan of a chalice and patten, dug up in the parish in 1823, to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I however have found something. In 1847, a local newspaper reported that the two young sons of the village’s then vicar were travelling in a cart when the horse pulling it took fright and bolted. The wagon overturned and the wheels passed over the elder of the two boys, leaving him with such catastrophic internal injuries that he died in his bedroom at the Rectory a few days later. And the month these tragic events took place in?

September.

With huge thanks to https://x.com/BUZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Lady Godiva was one of my childhood heroes along with Gladys from Hi-di-Hi and Hazel McWitch from Rentaghost. If I hadn’t already given my age away by referencing a Simply Red song I certainly have now.

Imagine my joy then when I discovered that my OG Lady G (see, I’m still down with the kids) is practically a neighbour of mine, separated by just six miles and 950 or so years. Well, in the summer at least. Her association with Coventry, where she rode naked through the streets to persuade her husband Earl Leofric to reduce the burden of taxation on the townspeople is well documented in art, literature and, as previously mentioned, an absolute banger from Mick Hucknall. Far less well known is the fact that the Saxon power couple had a holiday home in Staffordshire.

Leofric died at his Kings Bromley estate in 1057 and was buried at St Mary’s Priory and Cathedral in Coventry. Where was the Lady laid to rest though?. According to the chronicler William of Malmesbury, Godiva was buried alongside her husband after her death ten years later but the Chronicle of Evesham Abbey claims she was laid to rest in, perhaps unsurprisingly, Evesham Abbey. Until any hard evidence turns up to the contrary I think we can also entertain the local legend that she is buried beneath the eponymous churchyard cross at All Saints, Kings Bromley. Samuel Lewis makes the claim in his 1848 book, ‘A Topographical Dictionary of England’ that,  ‘Leofric, the husband of the famous Lady Godiva, died here in 1057; and she was herself buried here’ and in Pigot’s Directory of 1842 it says, ‘The church, dedicated to All Saints, is a neat structure and contains the remains of Lady Godiva’.

Along with the question of what happened to Godiva after she died, the location of where she and Leofric lived is also a subject for speculation. A half timbered and thatched building in the village known as ‘The Bungalow’ was used as a tearooms in in the early 20th century. A brass tablet on one of its beams made the bold claim that the timber had been take from Godiva and Leofric’s residence which had stood previously on the site. In 1923, a spark from a Staffordshire County Council steamroller set fire to the thatch and the building went up in flames. Until very recently I had assumed this meant that any possible links to Lady G had been lost but someone on Facebook posted a photo of both the beam and the plaque pronouncing it to be part of the palace.

Is this just another myth to add to the legends surrounding one of history’s most compelling characters or could there really be a tangible link to her life in someone’s living room in Staffordshire?

Sources:

Rugeley Times 13th March 1976

Lichfield Mercury 3rd July 1903

Tamworth Herald 30th June 1923

Birmingham Gazette 26 June 1923