Tag Archives: Staffordshire

The Path through the Prison

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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.

The Blakemere Maid Revisited

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I used to love writing things as verse when I was younger and I thought I’d give it a go again. because these days there is a lot to be said for people doing things because they love doing them. I’m also getting bored of seeing and hearing the same stories rehashed (and don’t even get me started on them being accompanied by some hellish AI generated artwork) so why not try something a bit different?

This then is a return to the wild north of the county and its infamous inland mermaid and a return to a writing style I really enjoy. I hope you enjoy it too (tip: its better if you read it aloud. Which also has the benefit of those around you wondering what on earth you are up to).

As all too often, this tale begins,
With a man and a woman he’s trying to win
Yet when she declines and turns him down,
He declares her a witch who deserves to drown.
But as quickly discovered by Josh Linnet,
Revenge is a dish that’s best served wet.

Though Linnet lied when he called her a witch
He would soon find out that karma’s a bitch.
For as she sank down into the pool’s depths,
She cursed him with her dying breaths
And in the nights which followed, Linnet heard
Nothing but those avenging words

Until mad with guilt and lack of sleep
He summoned her spirit up from the deep
And fell down upon his knees to plead
Her forgiveness for his wicked deed

From beneath the mere the maid appeared
And cupped his face and wiped his tears
But as he sobbed, he saw her grin
And her nails dug deep into his skin
Then at his face he felt her claw,
Until Linnet could cry no more

They found his body by the mere
Face torn to shreds, eyes wide with fear
But it would not end with his blood spilt.
Others must now pay for his guilt.
And so for centuries the siren’s call
Has lured her victims to this pool

Where hands would take them by surprise
And drag them down to where she lies
Who knows how many have paid the price?
All I have to offer you is advice
Please keep to the road, whatever you hear,
And beware of the curse of the maid of Blake Mere

The Indelible Stain

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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?

The Final Curtain

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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

Birmingham Daily Post Saturday, 30 December 1905

The Era, Saturday, 6 January 1906

Staffordshire Sentinel, Sunday, 21 March 2004

Staffordshire Sentinel Saturday, 15 July 1933

Mercian Murders

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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

https://www.suttonwalls.co.uk/fact-pages

Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England, Annie Whitehead

The Seance in Stafford

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In the autumn of 1933, ghost hunter Elliott O’Donnell wrote to the Rector of Stafford asking if he could be connected to any houses in or near the county town where paranormal activity had been reported in the hope he could spend Halloween night at one of them. After discounting Weston Hall, a decision which would literally come back to haunt him, and an unnamed place near Penkridge, he was put in touch with the residents of property at Rickerscote on the outskirts of Stafford.

Accompanying him was author and army officer, Wilfred Byford-Jones who recorded the adventure in his book ‘Midland Leaves’. He describes the house as, ‘a pleasing old structure with nothing eerie about it’. However, the mistress of the hall revealed that she, along with her husband and several friends, had seen the spirit of an old woman dressed in black in the sitting room and out on the lawns on several occasions. As luck would have it, they were holding a seance that very evening to try and connect with this shady lady.

After dinner, the two men returned to Rickerscote to find four people sat around a large log fire in the sitting room. O’Donnell joined the circle but the Quaestor preferred to observe only and settled himself in a dark corner. To begin, the participants placed their fingers on the table and chanted the words to hymns. In the hour that followed, the group sat in silence as the wind howled in the chimney and the rain lashed against the windows, the tension punctuated by the ticking of an old grandfather clock.

Quaestor began to feel sleepy until an ear-piercing scream came from one of the male guests. He began to gibber and sway with the mistress of the house joining in moments later. Neither said anything that made any sense. The woman then began to whimper for several minutes. As she fell back into her chair a hiss came from her husband.

‘There she is’. He seemed to stare at something before continuing. ‘It is the old lady I have seen before in this room and on the lawn’.

Two other guests also claimed they could see her. Quaestor followed their gaze but could see nothing, ghost or otherwise. Even when someone suggested that the spirit was stood near to him, tending to a bird in a cage, he could see nothing. Nor could he feel the pocket of cold air the others claimed to.

The seance continued until midnight struck on the old grandfather clock. Those gathered revealed the uninvited guest had a name. Miss L____ E_____ J______, a former resident who had loved the house and hoped the person she passed it onto in her will would live there. This wish was not fulfilled and presumably was the reason her presence remained. The two visitors left around 12.30am and the following morning, O’Donnell recorded his own version of events.

“A sudden feeling came over me that there was a presence of some kind just behind a lady on my right. I asked her if she was concious of it. She said, ‘Yes I know it is there. It is a lady in black. She came in through the closed window, crossed the floor to the door, then came to me’.

Quaestor’s own account differs somewhat. “I can only say that I am baffled, having seen nothing and heard nothing that could not be explained by natural phenomena.”

Acton Trussell, the final resting place of Miss L___ E___ J____

I suspect the events at the house on that Halloween night were down to mass hysteria rather than a haunting. However, after much reflection, I’ve decided not to share the precise location of the house just in case its former resident really did return to her Rickerscote home and the current residents would rather not know about it.

I myself shall be returning to the subplot involving Weston Hall another day. It’s one of my favourite haunted houses in all of Staffordshire but I’m much more likely to indulge in scones instead of a seance when sat around the fireplace here.

Weston Hall

Sources:

Midland Leaves, Quaestor aka Wilfred

Staffordshire Advertiser, Saturday, 9 June 1917

The Ruins of Bellamour

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Perhaps it’s the feeling in the air that autumn is about to arrive, but I’m in the mood for a good old gothic ghost story (although frankly, when aren’t I?). When writing about haunted houses I am often faced with a dilemma between the desire to share a really good story and the guilt that the people living there may not share the same enthusiasm.

The ruins of Bellamour Old Hall. Built by Herbert Aston in 1638
(c) Staffordshire County Council

Fortunately, in this instance, I have no qualms, as the location for today’s tale was demolished in the 1960s. Well, sort of. Part of Bellamour Old Hall in Colton still stands as ruins, rumoured to be cursed after attempts to raze it to the ground were met with a series of accidents and mishaps. The hex on the house was said to have been placed by former owner Lady Mary Blount, who later built a new Bellamour Hall alongside it for her son. The journal of a Miss Mary Bagot of Blithfield mentions that a stash of treasure was supposedly hidden somewhere amongst the stones of the old house. Are these two legends linked in some way?

Bellamour New Hall c.1830. The old house can be seen just behind.

The new Bellamour Hall is also no more. It was taken down in the 1920s and sold off piecemeal. When the two halls were still standing, the old one seems to have been used as a residence for senior servants on the estate. George Morrall, head gardener, lived there with his family in the late 19th century. Later, his son Harry succeeded him in the role and spoke to a local newspaper about the spooky side of his former home.

Harry Morrall explained that his twin sister Charlotte was born at the Old Hall. Presumably, as her twin brother, he must have been born there too, and a check in the Colton parish registers confirms that in July 1882, both Harry and Charlotte Morrall were born at Bellamour. It was on the evening of 15th September 1905 that Miss Morrall woke to see what she described as someone in flowing black robes with a beautiful face beckoning to her. Exactly a year later she saw the same thing and between visitations she sometimes heard footsteps walking the floorboards of the old hall.

Although he never witnessed the apparition himself, Mr Morrall did hear the phantom pacing the corridors. On one occasion, he saw the door latch to his room lift up as if someone was about to enter but, when he shouted, the presumed paranormal intruder changed its mind and left. The twins found out from another member of the Bagot family that a man had supposedly been murdered there in 1698, his widow becoming a nun.

Possibly related to the haunting of the old hall are reports of cries emanating from a nearby meadow. Intriguingly, this seems to be near to the site where the stone foundations of a medieval chapel lie beneath the lawn. Bones and the carving of a stone head with a grotesque human face were also found here by the Reverend Parker c.1921. Then, there’s a message I was sent a few years ago by someone who was left unsettled by a dream about a Victorian boy standing facing the boundary wall surrounding the Bellamour estate and hearing the word ‘angry’ as she awoke at 3.33 am.

I believe stones from the old hall were used when building the boundary wall at Bellamour

One final story dates back to around the time of the attempted demolition of the old hall. In 1963, the owner invited a psychic from Birmingham to visit and she claimed to have picked up on a lady with a cross around her neck and a man carrying a Bible. Underwhelmingly, she also claimed to have seen ‘lots of trees around’. Wait, I’m getting the word…..’cobblers’.

I’m looking forward to digging into these tales of hidden treasure, crying bones, beckoning nuns and phantom footsteps to see if any truth is buried within them. Watch this space for more about Bellamour…

Sources

https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=95a0691d-b349-4845-82f6-2d81e4b93893&resourceID=19191

Links With the Past, Sophy Louisa Bagot

Staffordshire Advertiser, Saturday, 25 May 1929

Rugeley Times, Saturday, 30 January 1982

Lichfield Mercury, Friday, 20 August 1943

Lichfield Mercury, Friday, 21 September 1923

http://coltonhistorysociety.org.uk/

Mucky Business

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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

Staffordshire Record Office document Q/SR/249/69

Bodies of Evidence

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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…

Sources:

Staffordshire Parish Registers Collection

Click to access part-2-2023.pdf

Land at Curborough South, Lichfield, Staffordshire: Archaeological Evaluation © Cotswold Archaeology

WATERY LANE, LICHFIELD
EARTHWORK SURVEY, EVALUATION TRENCHING AND MITIGATION, Headland Archaeology

https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=d01084bb-f418-47a7-b5e4-4b292c3cd6d1&resourceID=19191

The Reservoir Part I

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Old cottages are nothing but hassle my ex had insisted, preferring a bland but energy efficient box on a new estate to anything that an estate agent could market as ‘chocolate box pretty’. I left him last year but he probably hasn’t turned away from his 85-inch television for long enough to notice yet.

How appropriate then that it was an infuriating drip in the bedroom that might just prove him right. It couldn’t be a leak, there hadn’t been any rain for ages. A bucket would have to be the temporary fix for now and at the pub later, I’d ask if anyone could recommend someone who could pop round and take a look.

An hour into my shift and the heat behind the bar was almost unbearable. It made worse still by the fact I seemed to be pulling cold pints for everyone in the village but myself. The talk at the tables was speculation about hosepipe bans and barbecue plans. All standard topics for discussion every time the country had a dry spell until I heard one group of older gentlemen talking about the nearby reservoir. I’d noticed myself on the drive over the causeway that the water levels had dropped and when one of them said, ‘‘The old village will be reappearing soon’, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation.

‘Village? It was a couple of old cottages and a mill. Not bloody Brigadoon. I read some nonsense on Facebook the other day about people being able to hear the bell of a drowned church tolling below the surface. Flippin’ idiots could probably hear St Leonard’s up the road’.

‘There was that old bridge though, named after the nursery rhyme, remember?’

‘Kitty Fisher’s Bridge? That was named after a real person apparently. A local lass, threw herself in the brook they say, because she’d lost her lover. We were always warned not to swim there away from there as kids. They said she’d pull us beneath the water’.

‘I think I saw her once’, one of the men said softly, more as an admission to himself than the surrounding group. The others looked at him for a second before one of them broke the silence with a quip.

‘She’s been dead at least two hundred years, Mike. Even you weren’t around then’.

‘I think I saw her’, he repeated, bolder this time. ‘Stood on the banks of the reservoir. It was that heatwave of ‘76, and like a fool, I’d taken myself down there to fish. It weren’t much more than a puddle. I glanced up and there she was standing on the bank, about 50 foot away from me. Dripping wet, she was.  I was just about to shout to her, see if she was ok and she…disappeared. One second she was there and then the next. Well, she just wasn’t’.

His monologue was once again interrupted by the joker of the pack. ‘You’ve always had that effect on women, Mike’, followed by comments from the others about needing to take more water with it. Mike laughed along with the banter but the trace of a puzzled expression still lingered on his face. It was clear, to me at least, that he had been deadly serious about what he saw that summer and it was something he had been trying to make sense of ever since.

(Note: This story is semi-fiction. It’s inspired by a real place and its folklore but a lot of it also comes from my imagination. Anyway, part II to follow soon!)