Last year I was contacted by someone who worked as a prisoner officer at an institution near to Lichfield. Over the years, both staff and inmates have had experiences which they attributed to the Grey Lady. Some prisoners had such a strong feeling that there was something in their cell with them at night that they would press the emergency bell in a state of panic, asking to be moved elsewhere. On some occasions, staff watching CCTV witnessed a shadowy figure moving through the gaol, tracking its journey across several screens before it disappeared. In one wing, the unmistakable sound of gates and doors being unlocked was heard on a regular basis, followed by disembodied footsteps coming up the stairs.
The presence is not just felt inside the prison but also in the grounds. On patrol one night my correspondent was so convinced that someone was walking alongside him, he attempted to strike up a conversation. There was no reply, just the sound of footsteps. He told me that those who encounter the Grey Lady always have a sense that she is not so much as haunting the prison as passing through there on her way to somewhere else. Indeed, there have been reports by dog walkers that their animals pick up on the presence of something on the footpath around the prison. Some stop, seemingly almost frozen with fear whilst others bark at something their owners can’t see.
The backstory was believed to be that the Grey Lady had drowned in a nearby lake and so I searched the newspaper archive to see if there were any reports of such a tragedy. What I found was a story from the winter of 1959 which seems as though it might fit. A young Danish woman working at a farm in the area was reported missing after going for a walk. A search party found a set of footprints in the snow leading to a lake in the grounds of a country house where her body was recovered from the icy waters. It was when I looked at a map that I felt a real shiver down my spine. Remember that people at the prison had the sense that the presence was ‘just passing through’? Well, the woman’s final journey from the farm to that frozen lake would have taken her straight through the site where HM Prison now stands.
The inquest into her death recorded a verdict of suicide with insufficient evidence. Foul play was ruled out on the basis only one set of footprints had been found and the Coroner could find no evidence to support it being an accident. It seems what really happened on that cold January day will forever be unknown and perhaps that is why the Grey Lady cannot escape from this immortal coil?
This is not the actual prison but it is an actual prison for illustration purposes
Edit: Since sharing this I have been contacted by another former prison officer who has said he too heard unexplained footsteps whilst working at this place.
Around eighteen months ago, I was contacted by someone looking for the house his grandparents lived in at Woodhouses near Burntwood for a while. What I thought was a fairly routine family history enquiry quickly developed into one of the most chilling tales I have ever been told.
I held off sharing it for sometime, mindful that current residents may prefer not to know that their home was the scene of a horrific murder in 1899 and, if the story is to be believed, a subsequent haunting. After carrying out more research however, I am happy that the house no longer stands,
My correspondent’s grandparents, let’s call them Mr and Mrs H, moved there in the 1920s as a young couple hoping to make it a family home. There was a large dark stain on the kitchen floor which they weren’t able to shift but other than that it was ideal. It was soon after they’d moved in that the noises started. At first, it was just creaks at first and then louder noises, as if someone was moving furniture around downstairs. On one occasion, Mr H got up to look for an intruder but finding no-one concluded the noises had been caused by the cat moving around.
Woodhouses Lane
One night the feline was fussing at the bedroom door to go out. Mrs H got out of bed intending to go downstairs and let it out of the back door but when she got to the landing she saw her. A woman walking up the stairs towards her, looking as solid as you or I, but covered in blood and clutching a wound on her throat.
Mrs H screamed and then passed out. When she came around she told her husband what she’d seen but he dismissed it as her imagination. However, she knew what she saw and every night afterwards she’d lie in bed hearing the steps creak, knowing it was the ‘wounded woman’ as she called her, making her way up the stairs. She was so terrified to get up at night that even when she needed the bathroom she’d stay in bed, which eventually ended up with her getting a UTI. After this she decided she couldn’t go on as she was and persuaded her husband to move house. The couple moved to St Michaels Rd in Lichfield, and when Mrs H told her new neighbours about her experience at Woodhouses she learned about the terrible events which had taken place at her former home.
A blacksmith, with a history of petty crime and brawling in the street had married a woman called Emily Wright of Leomansley. Throughout their marriage he was violent towards her and on one occasion Emily had to run from the house in just her nightdress to escape him. Eventually, she kicked him out and he stayed away for sometime. However, when he stopped paying money for their four children, Emily reported him to the authorities. One morning, as Emily and the children came downstairs, he entered the kitchen of the house at Woodhouses. Emily tried to push past him but he hit her over the head with a rock tied up in a scarf. As she lay on the floor, stunned from the blow, he picked up a carving knife and hacked at her throat. The indelible stain that Mr and Mrs H had seen when they first moved in had been Emily’s blood.
Their eldest son ran for help but by the time anyone arrived at the house, Emily was dead. In the meantime, the murderer walked towards Lichfield where he handed himself in at the police station. In custody, he tried to take his own life but failed. The following day, despite being under supervision, he lay down on his prison bed, crossed his arms over his chest, and died of ‘natural causes’, according to the inquest.
As if this story was not horrifying enough, the parish registers of Christ Church in Burntwood record entries for the burials of both on the same day. If Emily refused to rest in peace beneath the same churchyard soil as the man who took away her life, then who could blame her?
My daughter is taking me to see the Phantom of the Opera as an early birthday treat next week. Now I’m not expecting to find a subterranean lair and lake beneath the Lichfield Garrick (although there is probably a secret tunnel on the basis every other building in the city seems to have one) but I am wondering if there are any local theatres where long dead actors or audience members still linger on?
I already know of one famously spooky scene up north, involving Les Dawson and a dressing room at the Sunderland Empire in 1989. Dawson supposedly saw the spectre of Sid James, who had died on stage there thirteen years prior, wearing a shroud and reflected in the mirror behind him. The experience troubled Dawson to the extent that he refused to ever return there and would not share the words that Sid’s spook spoke to him that day. Some say James’s distinctive laugh still echoes around the theatre. Sounds like they need to get a priest in to bless this playhouse.
What did Syd Little (and others) see here?
Percy Purdy was a former manager of the Wolverhampton Grand. Mr Purdy managed the theatre from the 1920s until his retirement in 1949 at the grand old age of 80. He lived on the top floor of the building and it seems he never left. Glasses rattle in the bar, furniture rearranges itself and invisible fingers tap away on computer keyboards. In November 1984, actor Victor Spinetti saw a figure cross the room and vanish through a wall whilst he was waiting for the start of the show. Staff believe all of this activity is the work of Percy although he is not the only ghost of the Grand. There’s also a grey lady who leaves the scent of lavender behind her and the story says that she died after falling from a box down into the orchestra pit. Syd Little is said to have had a terrifying experience in the gents up in the dress circle but would not revealed what had happened to him. According to an article in the Express and Star from 2003, the most haunted spot in the theatre had a wall built across it during a refurbishment in the late 1990s, onto which a signed photo of Ken Dodd was hung. Whether this has stopped the grey lady, or whatever it was what scared Syd, from walking I do not know. (The wall I mean, not the photo of Ken).
Regular readers will know that my idea of a paranormal investigation involves delving back into the archives to see if there are any nuggets of truth to these tales. Incredibly the fatal fall into the orchestra is not fictional although the story has become somewhat twisted over the years. In December 1905, the Birmingham Post reported that a check-taker named John Smith had tumbled into the pit from a top box whilst putting the covers on the balconies after a pantomime and was proclaimed dead from a fractured skull on his arrival at the Wolverhampton General Hospital.
Up in Stoke, the Regent is not even one hundred years old but has still managed to acquire two ghosts. The building was only transformed to a theatre in 1999 having originally being opened as a cinema seventy years prior. A girl haunts the stalls and an investigation in 2004 named her as Alice Gregory. Up on the balcony, the apparition of a man has been seen surveying the auditorium. Interestingly, a former manager of the Regent Cinema was Lawrence Gregory who passed away suddenly in 1933 at the age of just 41. On the day of his funeral the cortege passed the entrance to the cinema and was saluted by staff as it passed by. Could he be the man in the balcony, still standing watch over his place of work and is there any connection between Mr Gregory and the girl?
Lichfield Garrick Panto, 2017
I mentioned the Lichfield Garrick at the start, and it is there we shall return for our finale. Opened in 2003, its modern appearance might not strike you as somewhere spooky. However, I was messaged by a former employee who wanted to know if there were any stories about the site as several of her co-workers had experience strange things. I located details of an investigation carried out by the West Midlands Ghost Club who reported poltergeist activity, shadowy figures and the presence of woman in high heels and 1950s-style clothing on some steps near the stage. I am pleased to say this bit of Lichfield theatre lore also features the apparition of a celebrity. Radio WM DJ Malcolm Boyden once had an experience in the sound booth with the door of the room being flung open and the pile of papers on the table in front of him being thrown into the air.
Perhaps some folks really do carry on their roles after the final curtain has fallen?
Sources:
West Midlands Ghost Club/ Our Haunted Midlands on X
Wolverhampton Express and Star, Wednesday, 7 November 1984
Wolverhampton Express and Star, Thursday, 30 October 1997
Wolverhampton Express and Star Saturday, 26 July 2003
There are fields full of Cavaliers and Roundheads, still fighting over the fate of England. Roman soldiers marching along the roads they built. Tragic Tudor queens, often minus their heads. And you can’t move for Victorian phantoms, presumably conjured up from all of those seances they were holding. What does seem to be in short supply in this spectred isle however are the ghosts of Saxons.
If somewhere was going to be haunted by a Saxon spirit, it would be Seckington. The Saxon Chronicle states that in 755, ‘Æthelbald, king of the Mercians, was slain at Seckington and his body lies at Repton‘. The account of the assassination is minimal but accounts say he was betrayed by his own bodyguards, some suggesting that his successor, Beornred of Mercia, was behind the treachery.
The crypt at Repton
After Æthelbald’s death, Beornred seized the Mercian throne. Little is known about him and within a year, Æthelbald’s cousin Offa launched his own claim to the throne and most likely offed him in the process. By contrast, there is much to be said about Offa, but as I started on the subject of murder, let’s continue on that theme.
Penny depicting Cynethryth, Queen of Mercia. (C) The Portable Antiquities Scheme
A marriage between King Æthelberht of East Anglia and one of the daughters of Offa and Cynethryth of Mercia was arranged to take place at a palace on Sutton Walls in Herefordshire. Yet before the bridegroom could make it to the altar and pledge his hand in marriage, he was beheaded. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle attributes the deed to Offa. By the twelfth century there’s a shift in narrative and blame to Cynethryth. Was she really the wicked queen she is depicted as by chroniclers like Roger of Wendover or was it a cynical attempt to wash at least some of the blood off Offa’s hands? We know Cynethryth was powerful, her name appearing on charters and her face appearing on coins. Perhaps there’s an element of medieval misogyny involved in the tarnishing of her image? After Offa died in 796, Cynethryth took holy orders and became the abbess of a monastery at Cookham. In 2021, archaeologists found the foundations of this abbey alongside Cookham church and further excavations may even find the final resting place of this misrepresented Mercian queen.
We’ve wandered a long way from Lichfield so let’s end our journey much closer to home. In 716, King Ceolred of Mercia was buried at the Cathedral, despite the fact that he had died at a feast, ‘gibbering with demons and cursing the priests of God’. St Boniface believed him to have been possessed by a demon but I strongly suspect he was poisoned. I’d be very interested to see if his successor Æthelbald was on the guest list, bringing us a full and vicious circle back to the beginning of this post.
Black and white print of an oil panting by Margaret Dovaston depicting King Celored of Mercia smitten with madness
Sources:
The wanderings of a pen and pencil by F. P. Palmer
Muckley Corner is my least favourite place to be at 7am on a weekday morning. Thankfully I now have a few weeks off from trying to negotiate this unholy island and some time to take a look at its history.
The highway to hell c2008 Geoff Pick / Muckley Corner / CC BY-SA 2.0
I already had several questions in mind about Muckley, ranging from the pedestrian, ‘When did the corner actually become a roundabout?’ to the less prosaic, ‘Was there once an ancient burial mound here?’. However, during the course of my corner-based investigations, another question has also emerged. There is a reference to Richard Key’s Coach and Horses at Muckley Corner in the Birmingham Gazette in 1766. The reference relates to an incident when some butchers accidentally left behind a heifer after visiting Fazeley Fair. The question here is not how the heck do you forget you brought a cow to the pub and neither is it were the butchers ever reunited with their bovine? It’s actually was the Coach and Horses mentioned a predecessor of the Muckley Corner House Inn? Records held at the Staffordshire History Centre show it was called the New Inn, then Muckley House, and later Muckley Corner House and there’s a hint that a drinking establishment was in existence here in the mid- seventeenth century. Katherine Reeves, the wife of Humphrey Reeves, was to appear at the Lichfield Quarter Sessions in January 1642, and in the meantime, keep the peace towards Anne Bull of Pipehill. Humphrey is listed as a victualler which suggests he may have been an innkeeper.
A further name change saw it called ‘The Olde Corner House Hotel’ in its final years and I can vaguely remember the place being open when I first moved to Lichfield back in 2004 and being an Italian restaurant for a while. Thankfully we do not need to rely solely on my murky memories as my old mucka, the legendary Brownhills Bob, documented the establishment’s demise on his blog. It closed in Summer 2009 and is now residential properties and apparently the HQ of Planet Ice. I’m not quite sure what in the Torvil and Dean that’s all about.
There’s a sad story relating to how the replacement of stagecoaches by steam engines displaced some people in February 1864. John Brooks, described as a former driver of the Chester Mail until it was driven off the road, was charged by PC John Hobbs with being found in a hovel in Burntwood and resisting the police. Whilst in custody on the road, Brooks said he could not and would not walk without something to drink. Hobbs took him into a pub and bought him a pint of beer. The magistrates were reported to be sorry for the poor fellow having a good laugh at his broad tales about old times. Not sorry enough not to fine him 1s and costs however.
I’ve already mentioned a couple of cases but there is much more to be done about the links Muckley Corner has to the law because there seems to have been a police station there from the 1860s and in the 19th century century, petty sessions were held at the inn itself. There are even rumours of a lock-up to detain the miscreants of Muckley.
It’s a diversion too far for now though as I want to get back to my original questions. All I can find is out about the first though is that the island idea was first proposed in 1953 following a dreadful accident which saw thirteen people hospitalised but I can’t quite pin down the actual date when it was constructed. And as to whether there was once an ancient burial mound here? All I can present is some circumstantial evidence.
In The Midland Antiquarian edited by William Fowler Carter in 1882, it claims that, ‘In early deeds Muckley Corner is called Mucklow. It is situated on Watling Street where it is crossed by the main road from Walsall to Lichfield which was made about 150 years ago; the addition ‘Corner’ was then probably given to it. I think the derivation clearly – AS Mucel; ME mikel, mukel, mockel, great and low, a mound or tumulus – great mound. There is no tumulus to be seen, nor is there any record of one known to me, but many ancient lows have been carted away for agricultural purposes or for repairing. roads About 50 years ago Muckley Corner stood on the boundary of Cannock Chase, and the country to the south was open common’.
If etymology isn’t enough, then there are several other landmarks marked on old maps and in street names in the vicinity which give us a glimpse of an ancient landscape that is now mostly lost. I can’t prove there was a burial mound at Muckley Corner but I think I can prove there is the potential for there to have been one. The irony is you’re going to have come along and negotiate that unholy island with me so buckle up folks.
Sources
Aris’s Birmingham Gazette – Monday 03 November 1766.
Staffordshire Advertiser – Saturday 23 February 1811
After reading of archaeological discoveries in North Lichfield, I thought it a good time to review one of the city’s greatest history mysteries. A quick recap then for anyone who, unlike me, hasn’t been obsessing for over fifteen years about how ‘a considerable quantity of human bones‘ were found in the early nineteenth century in a meadow adjoining Christian Fields.
The path to Pones Mill
Many of the bones were found a few feet beneath the surface in the quirkily named ‘Toads Hole Piece’, alongside some Roman pottery, the head of a pike and several horseshoes, although skeletal fragments were scattered across a half-mile radius. Only the bones found at Pones Mill, now known as Netherstowe House, were said to have had the appearance of having been buried, but it’s possible that they may have been dug up elsewhere and ‘thrown into an excavation’ there.
Eighteenth century antiquarians linked the discoveries of the bones to the Lichfield legend, in which a thousand Christians were massacred at the start of the fourth century during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. The site of the slaughter is still known as Christian Fields and although proper historians say the story is nothing more than a myth, the legend lives on. The Martyrs Plaque, a carving of three cadavers which once adorned the facade of the Guildhall can now be found in Beacon Park and elsewhere there are other versions of our sinister city seal, including on the railway bridge near the station. These visual versions of the legend and the refusal of people like me to stop referring to the city as ‘the Field of the Dead’ even though its exact etymology is ‘the Field by the Grey Wood’have all helped to ensure that this example of Lichfield lore endures.
Welcome to the Field of the Dead folks
If we discount the dead martyrs, what other explanations are there for the cartloads of bones being found beneath the fields of Netherstowe? Here are some of the possibilities I’ve considered. Feel free to dissect and discuss as necessary.
If there was ever a graveyard to epitomise the idea of death being the great leveller, it would be St Michaels on Greenhill.
An outbreak of plague in 1593 led to the deaths of over 1,100 Lichfeldians. Later outbreaks took place during the already troubled times of the Civil War, leading to the demise of another 800 citizens. Could the bones buried at Christian Field the victims of the disease? It seems unlikely. In the parish register of St Michael’s, someone has added notes alongside the names of those buried there in summer 1593. In July, ’67 dead of plague’. In August, ’59 dead of plague’. During this particular outbreak of plague in Lichfield at least, it seems those who succumbed rest in peace at the churchyard at Greenhill rather than in a pit on the northern outskirts of the city.
Could our Christian Field corpses be the remains of Civil War soldiers then, slaughtered in a skirmish on the outside of the city as the Close was being besieged? Again, the registers of St Michael’s suggest otherwise. There are records of twenty five soldiers being buried in the churchyard between 1642 and 1645 which suggests that men killed during the conflict were also buried here at Greenhill.
For me, as alluded to above, it’s the recent archaeology that’s been carried out in the Curborough area which may hold the key to solving the mystery of Christian Fields. Sixty coins dating to between the early 2nd to 4th century have been unearthed near to the farm, along with forty brooches. More examples of mortaria, as found at Christian Fields, have turned up along with worked marble and alabaster, Samian pottery fragments and glass suggesting there was a Roman settlement or at least a villa here. A much simpler Romano – British roundhouse has also been excavated nearby, along with a granary and well alongside it. What we can be sure of then is that there was occupation of a site near Christian Fields during the reign of Diocletian but whether those living here were converts to the new religion or still worshipping the old gods is unknown.
Sunset on Watery Lane
There are also field names which hint at a history which definitely has the potential to explain the presence of bones in this area. The 1851 Staffordshire tithe map records a ‘Chapel Meadow’, ‘Chapel Croft’ and perhaps most pertinently, ‘Graveyard’ in the vicinity of Watery Lane. And finally, and perhaps most remarkably at all, a single surviving Bronze Age burial has been found nearby in the form of a few fragments of cremated bone and sherds of the collared urn which once contain these ancient remains.
If burials really have been taking place in this area for not just centuries but millenia, perhaps ‘The Field of the Dead’ might be an accurate description after all…
Here in Lichfield, Shrove Tuesday is celebrated with people dressed up as princesses, pirates or, um, slices of pizza racing along Bore Street as they flip pancakes. Visitors to the city tomorrow may see the old Price of Wales/Chameleon Bar/Feria and think its been boarded up as a precautionary measure in case the shrovetide shenanigans get out of hand but it’s actually just been left derelict for about twenty years.
A flipping disgrace
Somewhere they really do have to take such steps to protect their premises is up the A5 at Atherstone, where instead of pancake racing they play a truly hardcore game of football and have been doing so since 1199. Apparently, once the giant leather ball has been tossed into the crowds onto Long Street there are only two rules. One is that the ball must stay on Long Street. The other is that you can’t kill anyone. I told you it was hardcore (by comparison, the rules of the Lichfield Shrovetide Festivities include mandatory non-slip footwear and that at some point during the festivities the Mayor of Lichfield must be photographed in a spinning teacup on the Market Square).
Pandemonium (Lichfield style)
With this in mind, I am inclined to believe the following anecdote about the good folks of Atherstone. In February 1800, John Massey was executed for murder and his body was gibbeted at Bilstone, near the site where he committed his heinous crime. Eighteen years later, his rotting remains remained on display, and became quite the local tourist attraction for Atherstonians who would pop there for a picnic. Once they’d finished their food, they’d partake in that quaint old pastime of throwing stones at the murderer’s skeleton. Eventually, a grocer called Mr Peach knocked the skull from its boney shoulders and so the group of day-trippers took it back home to Atherstone with them. It seems Peach then presented this sinister souvenir as a gift to his local pub.
My grocer went Bilstone and all I got was this skull of a lousy murderer
I’ve read the skull was lined with silver and turned into a punchbowl. Other versions claim the cranium became a candle holder. Some say it was eventually stolen, others say it’s still kept in a secret safe in one of Atherstone’s ancient inns. If you know anything more, please give me a heads up. Finally, please do accept my apologies if I’ve put you off your pancakes.
The plan was to spend the day foraging for folklore in the villages to the west of Stafford but we accidentally ended up at Acton Trussell and then found out that archaeologists had accidentally found a Roman villa underneath the local church.
In the 1970s, a local archaeology group started to wonder why the church of St James was built someway outside the village. Clearly the two women we asked for directions to the church who after asking, ‘What church?’ then sent us in entirely the wrong direction, thought it should have been nearer to the village too. The obvious assumption was that the centre of Acton Trussell has shifted over the years but when fieldwalking between the church and village produced just a scattering of late medieval pottery, this seemed unlikely. What did start showing up however was evidence that there had been Roman activity at the site. Several sherds of pottery and two coins from the 3rd century posed a new question. What were the Romans doing here?
To the south of the St James, the field-walkers found fragments of roof tiles, suggesting the source of the Roman remains was somewhere near the churchyard. and then an excavation which began in May 1984 revealed that the church of St James and its graveyard actually stood upon the site of a Romano-British villa. Was this just a coincidence or could there be some sort of deliberate continuity here?
It’s not unknown for Roman sites to have been converted to Christianity. I was at Wroxeter in the summer and read that part of the Roman complex at Viriconium may have been adapted for use as an early church. It’s not watertight but the availability of a cold plunge pool in the frigadarium and bodies found nearby hint that the baths may have been used for those two Christian bookends of baptism and burial.
Wroxeter Roman City
This brings me back down the A5, and makes me wonder about Wall, where there are clues that Letocetum may have been home to an early Christian community. Again, evidence is mostly circumstantial but the most convincing argument comes in the form of a long lost bronze bowl with a Chi-Ro symbol on it. It was discovered in a grave in 1922 along with 30 coins dating to the 4th century and one of the 1st century and exhibited by Mr F Jackson at Wroxeter at a meeting of the Birmingham Archaeological Society. Afterwards it disappeared. and is now probably in a private collection but it belongs in a museum (yes, I have been watching Indiana Jones over the Christmas holiday). Thankfully, the other physical evidence that Christians once worshipped at Wall is in a museum. Well, in the Birmingham Museum Collection Centre anyway. Amidst stones carved with heads and horns, believed to have come from a Romano-British shrine local to Letocetum and rebuilt into the walls at Wall, was a stone carved with a cross.
Archaeologist Jim Gould suggests stylistically the cross most likely belongs to the period of the 6th to 9th century, which would tie it into the time-frame of the tantalising verse that is, ‘The Death Song of Cynddylan’ which recalls three battles fought by Prince Cynddylan of Powys. One of these was at a place called ‘Caer Luitcoed’, which translates to ‘the fortified grey wood’ or, as everyone now calls, Lichfield. Here’s a translation of the relevant part of the poem:
Before Lichfield they caused gore beneath the ravens and fierce attack Lime-white shields were shattered before the sons of Cynddylan. I shall lament until I would be in the land of my resting place for the slaying of Cynddylan, famed among chieftains. Grandeur in battle, extensive spoils Moriel bore off before Lichfield 1500 cattle from the front of battle, 80 stallions and equal harness. The chief bishop wretched in his four-cornered house The book clutching monks did not protect those who fell in the battle before the splendid warrior.
The relevance to a possible early Christian community in the area are those book-grasping monks and the bishop in his four cornered house. According to Jim Gould, written evidence can also be found in Eddius Stephanus’ Life of Bishop Wilfrid which suggests that there was some sort of church and monastery in the area before St Chad set up alongside the spring at Stowe. Wulfhere, King of Mercia between 657 and 674, gave lands to Bishop Wilfred to found monasteries at existing holy places deserted by British Christians.
It wouldn’t be a complete leap of faith to imagine this could have included Lichfield, would it?
The Archaeology of Roman Letocetum (Wall, Staffordshire), Implications of the proposed West Midlands Northern Relief Road, Draft for Consultation, County Planning and Development Department Staffordshire County Council
Gould, J 1993. ‘Lichfield before St Chad’, in Medieval Archaeology and Architecture at Lichfield (ed J Maddison), Brit Archaeol Assoc Conference Trans 13, 1–10, Leeds: Maney Publishing
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.
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
