I’m reading the memoirs of a man named William Purcell Witcutt. Like me he had connections to both Birmingham and Staffordshire, and was fascinated by folklore. Unlike me, he was an protestant vicar who converted to Catholicism before being exiled to the furthest outpost of the Diocese for the crime of commenting on the corrupt nature of many medieval priests. Yes, they sent him to Leek.
In his book, ‘Return to Reality’ there is a chapter called ‘The Valley of Phantoms’, in which he describes how, ‘Leek lay hidden in mist and woods in the middle distance, and one of the older boys tried to convince me that it was invisible from the air. Leek will never be bombed said he, and quoted with assurance the prophecy that there would come a time when, ‘there will be no safety in the land save ‘twixt Mow Cop and Morridge’.
No I can definitely see it
Witcutt was soon to find plenty more superstition in this Staffordshire Moorland town. It seemed to him that the valley and moors around it swarmed with ghosts and bogies, which people still believed in. There was the Headless Horseman, or in Leek dialect, ‘a man on an ‘oss without yed on, an awful gory sight’, and nearby was a Black Dog who guarded the graves of those who died a violent death. According to Witcutt, the Queen of the Leek demons was the Mermaid of Black Mere, who I wrote about many years ago here. A new story to me was that of ‘Ball Haye Jack’, a little grey man whose appearance in front of one of the mills was believed to bring bad luck. One curious custom Witcutt noted was that on seeing his collar, the girls and women who worked in the mills would touch the factory railings, a somewhat unsettling reaction given it seems to be linked to the superstition that touching iron would protect against the power of a sorcerer.
One of the strangest spots Witcutt writes about is the Coombes Valley, When he visited in May 1940 he found a farmer planting potatoes and as the man sowed his spuds, he shared stories of the valley. At a place nearby, the spectre of a murdered man was said to ride up and down the ridge. Once seven priests came to lay him but all but one of the gathered fathers fled. The final man standing held up a stone in the brook, dismissing the pleas of the phantom for mercy, and laid him beneath the rock. The process appears to have been unsuccessful however and so the dead man rode out once more. This next time he was laid beneath a hawthorn tree at a place known very appropriately as Spirit Hole. Even that was only sort of successful though as he still haunts the valley, although now in far less malevolent form of a bird heard singing as the night falls at the Spirit Hole. The stone which had failed to keep the ghost grounded was still there when Witcutt visited (and I believe it still is), and according to the farmer it had once been a stone of sacrifice.
No wonder the valley is full of phantoms.
Source: WITCUTT, W.P. Return to reality, Macmillan, 1955.
We are over half way through October and I don’t feel like I have indulged in anywhere near enough spookiness as I should have this year. I’m going to try and play creepy catch-up starting with the bizarre burial of Charles Blood at Church Leigh nr Uttoxeter, which took place while the village was cut off after a snowstorm in March 1909.
Once the funeral service had concluded & the mourners dispersed, the sexton, Edward Alcock, was filling in the grave of Charles Blood when he became aware of a knocking, seemingly coming from inside the coffin below him. He described it as the sound of someone rapping on an empty box and counted twenty taps in total, loud at first but gradually becoming fainter. Concerned the poor man had been buried alive, he called over to his brother Harry to fetch Samuel Hollins the undertaker. As the small group of mystified men stood together in the snowy churchyard, they received instructions from the rector in his warm bed, to raise the coffin from the cold grave and carry it into the church. It was something of a struggle due to the corpulent nature of the corpse within but eventually they managed to manoeuvre it. Once inside the chancel, the undertaker unscrewed the lid. It was immediately clear that there were no signs of life and nothing to suggest anything sinister was afoot. The only change was that the hands, originally placed on the deceased’s stomach, were now lying by his sides. A doctor’s assistant from Tean who was passing by the church yard was called in to confirm that Charles Blood was definitely dead and that he definitely had been when he was placed in the coffin.
Weirdly, when the coffin was lowered back into the earth, the tapping began again although this time Charles Blood was left to lie in peace. Well, it would have been peaceful apart from the tapping.
The undertaker’s explanation of the mystery was that the unnerving noises were caused by compressed air in the coffin. He dismissed the suggestion that it was earth falling on the wood, as the taps were too regular. The sexton had no rational explanation for the strange sounds, having buried hundreds of bodies before without incident. It seems he may have suspected a supernatural cause for the sounds as it’s reported that after the strange affair, he would walk a mile out of his way at night to avoid the churchyard. He wasn’t alone. Some of the more superstitious villagers at Church Leigh were convinced it was a sign of some impending disaster.
I’ve been to visit the churchyard but couldn’t see, or hear, the grave of Charles Blood. I reckon this chap knows more that he is letting on though…
It took me a while to find the wishing stone at Pye Green and it’s taken me even longer to write up what I found about the tale behind it on here. This story appeared in an old newspaper, told to the writer by a ‘greybeard’, one of the descendants of a family of Cannock Chase foresters, and I’ve taken the liberty of retelling it in my own words.
During the English Civil War, the Wishing Stone was the place where a young soldier and one of the daughters of the Cannock Chase foresters would meet. One day the soldier was called away to fight for the King at Worcester and left his lover with a promise to return. Every day that followed, she would wait at the stone for him and those passing her on the old packhorse route known as Blake St would hear her wishing for his return. Weeks passed by and one evening, when she didn’t return home, her father went looking for her. The local women suggested he try the stone and that’s where he found her, lips no longer wishing for her soldier to return but blue and still. The local women speculated whether it was the cold or a broken heart that took her in the end. When the soldier returned and asked where he could find her, ‘her body is in Cannock churchyard’ the local women replied, ‘but her soul is at the place we now call the Wishing Stone’.
Centuries later, if you stand at the stone and listen carefully, you can hear what sounds like a voice saying ‘I wish, I wish, I wish’. It might just be the wind blowing through the trees which surround the stone but the local women will tell you otherwise.
Newton Road Rail Station opened 1837. Closed 1945
Two summers ago, I went to find another wishing stone over Walsall way (yes, I really do need to work on writing stuff up sooner). It’s described as being by a stile in a field leading to Newton Road Old Station on the London and North Western Railway. Folklore says all true lovers who step on the stone will have whatever they wish for come true in twelve months and a day. According to the author of the article in the Walsall Advertiser, you would often find love sick couples loitering around the place but all I could see was cows. I think the stone is on the opposite side of the River Tame to where I was but I wasn’t willing to wade over, even for a wish. I am hoping to go back tomorrow however, as I want to find an aqueduct with a haunted patch of grass and the ruins of the priory alongside the eponymous Sand Well. Is it a wishing well though?
I love a tomb with a tale attached and the churchyard at Sandon delivered. An article in the Staffordshire Sentinel in December 1955, talks of, ‘a grave, said to be that of a highwayman who met his death at Sandon. Certainly the curious shape of a horse and rider on the gravestone would bear out this legend’. A misty winter’s morning, in the dead days of last December, provided the ideal conditions to seek it out and, as the fog swirled around our feet, we found it. Sadly, those curious shapes are now encrusted with lichen and much-weathered by the sixty-nine winters which have passed since the description in the Sentinel was published.
Six months on and I’m still trying to solve the mystery of the so-called highwayman’s headstone. A figure lays stricken on the floor, a man leaning over with his hand on their heart. Whether he’s trying to slay or save them isn’t obvious. To the right, two men stand look-out and at the back is a riderless horse. There’s a church in the carving but as it has a spire this can’t be Sandon, which does not. I’m describing it from a photo taken in 1965 ago which is in the Historic England collection. Unfortunately, their copyright rules don’t allow me to share it here for you to see yourself although I have contacted them to see if I can get permission.
The inscriptions on the tomb are as follows:
To the Memory of Ann the Wife of BRYAN WARD who departed this life March 19th 1807 Aged 65 Years
BRYAN WARD of Smallrice, Gent who departed this life February XX 1809 Aged 74
Anna Maria their daughter died September 15th 1797
Something else is written below the inscriptions for both Ann and Bryan but was illegible even on the 1965 photo.
The All Saints parish register has the entries for Mr Brian Ward’s burial on 23rd February 1809 and five year old Anna Maria Ward’s burial on 15th September 1797. Neither has a note attached to suggest there was anything unusual or untoward about their deaths. I’m sure that had there been, the Vicar of Sandon would have included something as above the entry of Anna Maria’s is a record of the burial of Michael Tams supplemented to say he was drowned in the River Trent on the 25 Evening of December.
The burial record for Anne Maria Ward on 15th September 1797
What I can’t find in the Sandon register is a record of the burial of Ann Ward in 1807. In fact, I can’t find any record of her burial at all.
I’m starting to suspect that the curious carving at Sandon might depict the death of Ann Ward in someway but if she wasn’t buried beneath it here at All Saints, then where is she? Are we going to be able to solve the mystery and rewrite the local legend of The Highwayman’s Grave?
The story of Beaudesert Hall features an incredible cast of characters. There’s Lady Florence Paget, the ‘Pocket Venus’ who eloped with her lover Henry Hastings, and married him on the very same day she was supposed to wed his best friend, Henry Chaplin. More famously, there’s Toppy aka The Dancing Marquess, and a film about the decadent 5th Marquess of Anglesey, ‘Madfabulous‘, has just been shown at Cannes. And of course, there is the first Marquess of Anglesey, who rests in peace in a crypt below Lichfield Cathedral (and no, I’m not going to make any missing leg jokes). For me though, it’s the beginning of Beaudesert and its (sort of) end that has captured my imagination most thanks to a fabulous guided walk and talk there last weekend with my friend JP.
Some of the most substantial remains still standing date back to the 15th century, when the place belonged to the Bishops of Lichfield. They christened it the ‘Beautiful Wilderness’, inspired by the surrounding countryside of Cannock Chase. The story of how it came into their possession is still unfolding and the idea that Beaudesert, first mentioned in the 13th century, may also be connected to two other nearby sites is an intriguing possibility. And how does the mysterious Nun’s Well fit into all of this?
At Cannock Wood, a hermitage was established by King Stephen c.1130, which later became a short lived Cistercian Abbey dedicated to St Mary. Tired of being taken advantage of by the local foresters, the monks begged their benefactor, Henry II, to find their somewhere they could pray in peace. He agreed and swapped the site with what then became Stoneleigh Abbey. King Henry was happy with the exchange and turned Radmore, or Red Moor, into a royal hunting lodge. Despite the site of the Abbey being marked on maps, and evidence of a moated site, WH Duignan, the Walsall solicitor and antiquarian, cast doubt on the location suggesting heaps of furnace slag had been mistaken for ancient ruins. He believed the Abbey had instead stood within the ramparts of Castle Ring, where the foundations of a small building are still visible, although this has more recently been interpretated as another medieval hunting lodge.
Beaudesert belonged to the Bishop until the Reformation when Sir William Paget was given the house by Henry VIII. Paget had risen from humble beginnings to become a key member of the king’s court, thanks to his ability rather than ancestory. Many sources speculate he was the son of a nail maker in Wednesbury but what is certain is that this self-made man managed to keep his head, both physically and politically, throughout the turbulent times of the Tudor monarchs. The property stayed in the ownership of the Pagets until the 6th Marquess of Anglesey made the difficult decision to dispose of his Staffordshire seat in. In the end, he couldn’t even give it away and so the place was sold off piecemeal.
If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know I have a fascination with what becomes of the fixtures and fittings of a lost country house and there are some tantalising trails to follow from Beaudesert. Pitman, writing for The Friends of Cannock Chase, described seeing, ‘Oak floors, decorative plaster ceilings, Jacobean overmantels, fire grates and irons of ancient dates, (and) marble bathroom equipment’, being dismantled by, ‘the bargain-maker’s men’. Many of these items were bought up by Sir Edward and Ursula Hayward and shipped down under to Carrick Hill House in Adelaide, including the Waterloo staircase, so named for the portrait of the 1st Marquess which hung above it. Oak from the Long Gallery went to Birmingham, where the City Council intended, ‘to keep it ready for use when occasion arises’. Did the Beaudesert panelling ever make it into a Brummie building? With the help of a local councillor, I’ve found a house in Armitage which was once a game larder on the estate and there are stories that more of the stonework found its way to Hanch Hall and to the collection of a man who kept curiosities in a disused rail station in Sutton Coldfield. (Yes, the temptation to go off track and delve further into this has been immense!).
According to the Staffordshire Advertiser, reporting on the sale in July 1935, buyers had 28 days to remove their new property. The demolition firm then had two years to, ‘clear the site, it being understood that he demolishes the building to the ground level and leave the site in a reasonably level and neat condition’. As we know, they never quite succeeded and thanks to the firm becoming bankrupt, some of Beaudesert Hall still survives, ready for another chapter in its long and eventful history. To uncover the full story so far, I can’t recommend enough that you book yourself onto a tour and let the experts guide you around this beautiful wilderness.
There’s a tiny chapel in Tamworth, hidden behind streets of houses. Much of its history is a mystery but there are records showing that the Spital Chapel of St James was erected by Robert Marmion of Tamworth Castle c. 1274. There was a suggestion the chapel had been built the site of an earlier structure and in July 1968 a group of girls from Perrycroft School carried out an excavation there, under the expert eye of archaeologist Jim Gould, in the hope of finding evidence of Saxon origins. What they actually found was something of a surprise.
In a shallow grave, on the north side of the chapel, the skeleton of a middle-aged woman, aged between 40 and 50 was unearthed. Perhaps even more surprising was that the remains of two children were found laying across the woman’s pelvis. There was no trace of a shroud and the burial was on the north side of the chapel. Given that the land surrounding the chapel was not known to have been consecrated, or ever used as a burial ground, it was suggested that this may be an illicit internment of impoverished individuals.
I have different tools at my disposal to that team of teenage girls and they’ve enabled me to find several more skeletons at the Spital Chapel. In October 1914, the Tamworth Herald reported two lots of human remains were found to the south of the chapel when gas pipes were being laid. One was near the door, the other near the chancel wall and again, both were found not far from the surface. The report says they were reinterred on the spot and, unless anyone knows differently, there is nothing to suggest they aren’t still there.
Delving even further back into the newspaper archive, I found that in May 1870, an inquest was held on two skeletons found at The Spittals, a now demolished Victorian house, which once stood near the chapel. Adding to the intrigue is a letter from Edith Heath, published by the Coleshill Chronicle in 1968, recalling how she had often visited a woman called Dorothy Clarson who lived on Wiggington Rd in a house called Belbroughton, built by her father. Miss Clarson had claimed that when workmen were digging foundations for a wall of the house, the body of a man wearing chainmail had been uncovered. Apparently, the then Vicar of Tamworth was sent for to say a prayer and lay the body reverently to rest. Reading between the lines, it seems this skeletal soldier may also still lie somewhere near to the chapel.
The letter goes on to say that Belbroughton was haunted by a Grey Lady, who also walked a path which once led to a lost orchard. Whether this adds or subtracts to the reliability of Miss Clarson’s account, is something you can make your own mind up about but for me, the story that a spectre haunts the Spital Chapel site is the cherry on the cake.
The history books suggest the Spital was originally a chantry chapel, built so that prayers could be said here to save the soul of Robert Marmion of Tamworth Castle. However, there is a belief amongst Tamworth folk that the chapel was used as some sort of Pest House, or isolation hospital during times of plague which may account for the presence of burials. The dedication to St James also suggests at some point it may have been a stop-off on a pilgrimage route. Could it be that those buried here are pilgrims who never completed their journey? I’m obviously no expert but now we know that the burials unearthed in 1968 were not isolated, the theory that they were an illicit burial seems a little less convincing. Perhaps analysis of some of the skeletons, if they do still lie beneath, might be be able to tell us more about who they were, when they died and why they were laid to rest here.
Sources G C Baugh, W L Cowie, J C Dickinson, Duggan A P, A K B Evans, R H Evans, Una C Hannam, P Heath, D A Johnson, Hilda Johnstone, Ann J Kettle, J L Kirby, R Mansfield, A Saltman, ‘Hospitals: Tamworth, St James’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 3, ed. M W Greenslade, R B Pugh (London, 1970), British History Onlinehttps://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol3/pp294-296 [accessed 4 May 2025]
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
I feared from the looks on my family’s faces that my interest in the macabre may have gone too far when I happened to mention during a meal at the Old Irish Harp that an inquest on the body of a genteelly dressed woman found ‘wilfully murdered’ in a wood near Sutton Coldfield had taken place not far from where we were sat, albeit 250 years prior. I thought perhaps it was time to find a different hobby. Embroidery perhaps? A pleasant pastime for sure, but turns out that for me it’s no substitute for finding and sharing a ripping yarn. And now that we’ve established that I am beyond all redemption, I want to regale you with a post about crime and punishment on the mean streets of Staffordshire.
Back when the inquest took place it was just known as the ‘Irish Harp’.
On the evening of 26th October 1764, a little after 8 o’clock in the evening, Mr Thomas Hurdman of Alrewas was stopped by a footpad opposite St Michael’s churchyard. The Aris’s Birmingham Gazette cryptically reported the rogue was suspected to be a W_____ C_____ of Greenhill. I’m not sure why such nominal secrecy though, when they also published a description of him in the same report (not yet 20, about 5 feet 5 inches high, wide mouthed and wearing his own hair, if not altered, which was brown and short cut’). Despite being caught by one of the city’s constables, WC managed to quite literally give him the slip by sliding out of his coat, and legging it out of Lichfield in a linen frock. His freedom (and any semblance of anonymity) was short-lived however. In March the following year, newspaper reports reveal that the ID of WC was William Cobb and that he’d been sentenced by the High Steward of Lichfield, Fettiplace Nott, to be transported for his assault on Thomas Hurdman and making many violent threats of murder.
St Michael’s Lichfield is the graveyard for some who went to the gallows
Ashmoor Brook, up Cross in Hand Lane, was the scene of another robbery which went awry. In Lichfield March 1833, a notorious local character known as Crib Meacham, a name apparently derived from his success in various pugilistic encounters, was charged with robbing a Mr Lees of Stoneywell. According to Lees, Meacham was one of a gang of four who attacked him and his wife. The pair were in possession of a large sum of money but it was Mrs Lees who was holding the purse strings at the time and the thieves had allowed her to run away. She soon returned with assistance and it was the robbers turn to run, leaving a gagged Mr Lees unharmed but relieved of his relatively empty purse and hat. Meacham was arrested later that evening but as of yet, I cannot tell you anymore about him, neither the fights which earned him his nickname in the past nor the fate he earned from his part in the robbery.
Cross in Hand Lane is only just outside Lichfield but must have felt like the back of beyond travelling through here after dark
I can tell, however, tell you much more about Robert Lander aka Bradbury a cordwainer of Milford near Stafford who robbed Solomon Barnett, a wax chandler of Liverpool in March 1798. The newspaper reports at the time give not only a physical description (Lander was a stout built man, 5ft 5 inches, 25 years of age wearing a blue coat, a striped fancy coloured waistcoat, and thickest breeches, torn upon the left thigh and patched upon both the knees). It also gives his villain origin story, starting at his childhood home of Haywood near Stafford. When his Dad died, he inherited a few hundred pounds. At the age of 21 he got turned down for a job at the Board of Excise and so went to work for a gentleman in the wine and spirit trade instead. This, it seems, may have been the start of his downfall. During his employment he is said to have remained in a permanent state of intoxication, eventually absconding and taking with him a watch belonging to his master. He sold it at Stafford where he enlisted into a Regiment of Foot but ended up, somewhat ironically, in the shoe making business. This didn’t last long either and neither did his subsequent enlistment into four other regiments. His career in crime also came to an abrupt end when he was found guilty of the robbery of Solomon Barnett and sentenced to death at the Stafford Assize. When the judge prayed that the Lord would have mercy on his soul, it was reported Lander replied, ‘G__d d___n you and the gallows too. I care for neither’. I assume he said it in full but that his blasphemy was censored by the Chester Chronicle. He was executed in August 1798 and the parish register of St Mary’s Stafford records that, along with Edward Kidson, Robert Lander alias Bradbury was executed _ _ _ _ _ _ _.
These are all true crime stories, but it would’t be Lichfield Lore without a bit of folklore would it folks? You’ll be relieved to know I’m not going to go down the Turpin turnpike road but I am going to give a dishonorable mention to Tom ‘Artful’ Arnott, a highwayman who was supposedly executed, gibbeted and, eventually, buried at this crossroads in Cannock.
Although Arnott’s grave is marked on old maps there are no records of anyone of that name ever being executed. Intriguingly though, there is a record of a Thomas Arnott being buried on 1st September 1777 at St Luke’s in Cannock. Clearly a man can’t be buried in two places at once but it’s the right kind of era and area. Then there’s a Thomas Arnott mentioned in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette in October 1792 for absconding from his master’s service in Birmingham. Intriguingly, after given a description of him (35 years old, five feet five inches, marked with the Small Pox, dark lank hair, and lightly made, wearing a blue coat), it mentions that prior to his work as a stamp, press, lathe and die maker, he had been employed as a forger. Do they mean the criminal variety and if so, does this strengthen the case for him being our Tom? Just to add an extra layer of intrigue, there was yet another absconding Thomas Arnott, who was apprenticed to a Whitesmith in Worcester but ran away on 5th April 1803. He’s described as 5 feet two inches, black curled hair, wearing a blue coat with yellow buttons, a green striped cashmere waistcoat with yellow buttons and dark velveteen breeches. In that outfit, if he did become a highwayman, he’d have been a very dandy one indeed. Could any of these be the legendary Arnott? Did he even exist in the first place? All I do know is that this story is one T__B__C__________.
Arnott’s Grave. Unless it turns out to be at St Luke’s Cannock.
Sources Aris’s Birmingham Gazette 5th November 1764
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
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.
Lichfield Lore 