We may think there’s nothing that unusual about the ‘typical British churchyard’. The lines of worn and lichen-spotted gravestones, the land made bumpy by centuries of burials, the narrow path winding between the tombs and the great dark bulk of the church looming over it all might seem so familiar as to hardly incite comment.

But churchyards can be the strangest and most gothic of places – outdoor emporiums of the weird, walled collections of the bizarre. What if I were to tell you that churchyards harbour oddities as striking as standing stones and stone circles, statues of pagan goddesses, smouldering footprints left by the Devil, ships’ figureheads acting as grave markers, and slabs on which corpses were laid so the vicar could check they were appropriately attired?

While researching my latest book – Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends (Shire/Bloomsbury) – I was constantly amazed by just how thoroughly odd the artefacts lurking in our churches and churchyards can be and how peculiar and intriguing the bits of folklore linked to them are. So read on to learn about ancient stones said to act as direct telephone lines to His Satanic Majesty, elaborate Victorian carts for transporting coffins, dinosaur footprints, and evidence of infernal games of leapfrog. Below are seven truly weird features of British churchyards.

Number One: Standing Stones and Stone Circles in British Churchyards

It’s strange to think that standing stones – objects associated with paganism – might lurk in the very Christian precincts of churchyards. Here and there, however, these enigmatic objects crop up. Evidence suggests many churches were built on pagan sites, with several – for instance – found within earthworks and henges, on manmade mounds or even topping barrows. This could have been a means of the new religion asserting its dominance over the old, of cleansing the neighbourhood of the influence of the old gods and of benefitting from any reverence the populace felt for such locations. Though the erectors of standing stones and builders of stone circles had disappeared long before Christianity came to these islands – and the stones were probably as mysterious to later pagans as they are to us today – it’s likely that these monuments still exerted awe over people’s minds. Taboos against damaging standing stones and burial mounds persisted into the 1800s, with one farmer on the Isle of Man recorded as sacrificing a calf before he dared disturb a barrow.

In Midmar Churchyard, Aberdeenshire, there’s not only a standing stone but an entire stone circle. The Bronze-Age circle, estimated to be around 4,000 years old, has a diameter of 17 metres, with some of the stones reaching 2.5 metres in height. This mysterious ring – whose stones contrast oddly with the later Christian grave markers – is one of Scotland’s best-preserved recumbent stone circles. In ‘recumbent’ circles, the largest stone is positioned ‘lying down’, with the two tallest stones usually flanking it – an arrangement that has led to descriptions of the Midmar Circle as ‘fanglike and demonic’. The Midmar area appears to have been a site of religious importance, as two more stone circles lie to the east and south-east of the village and other standing stones scatter the locality. Many of these stones are of a similar date and one of the other circles is also recumbent.

Midmar Stone Circle, in Midmar Kirkyard, Aberdeenshire – fanglike and demonic? (Photo: Silent Earth)

A Welsh church – St John the Baptist’s, in Ysbyty Cynfyn, Ceredigion – may have been built inside a stone circle. The round churchyard wall incorporates several standing stones, with two even serving as gateposts. More stones litter the churchyard and nearby fields and the church is ringed by a low earthen bank, all of which suggest a once significant monument. The current church is 19th century, but in the Middle Ages a hospice run by the Knights Hospitaller stood on the site. The Welsh Ysbyty translates as ‘hospital’.

A large standing stone in the wall of St John the Baptist’s Churchyard, Ysbyty Cynfyn, Ceredigion. (Photo: Scribblah)

Near the porch of St Twrog’s Church, Maentwrog, Gwynedd, is a standing stone that St Twrog apparently hurled from the Moelwyn Mountains to crush a pagan altar. The handprint of St Twrog – who seems to have boasted characteristics of both a saint and giant – is said to mark the stone. A superstition claims that if you rub the stone, you’ll one day return to Maentwrog. Another belief states that the stone indicates the grave of Pryderi, a legendary king from the Welsh cycle of myth the Mabinogion.

Standing stone in St Twrog’s Churchyard, Gywnedd – hurled by the saint or the gravestone of a mythical king? (Photo: The Modern Anitiquarian)

A 1.75-metre-high standing stone – which may have once been even taller as its upper section seems to have been broken off – guards the porch of St Gwrthwl’s Church, Llanwrthwl, Powys. The stone – which may be over 4,000 years old – might have prompted St Gwrthwl to build the first church on the site to take advantage of its spiritual associations.

The most famous – and imposing – standing stone in a British churchyard, however, has to be the Rudston Monolith, which looms next to All Saints’ Church, in Rudston, East Yorkshire. The monolith – a towering eight metres – is Britain’s tallest standing stone. The gritstone megalith – which weighs in at 40 tonnes – was studied by the antiquarian, early archaeologist and druid-obsessive William Stukeley (1687-1785). Stukeley dug around the stone and concluded it went as far into the ground as it protruded above it. Stukeley also claimed he’d found human remains buried around the monolith, indicating it was a focus of human sacrifice. Though such assertions might be far-fetched, the Rudston Monolith may well have been the centre of a ‘ritual landscape’. Henges, barrows, earthworks and traces of ancient settlements dot the vicinity and three cursuses – long, manmade trenches or ditches – converge towards the monolith. The monolith dates from the early Bronze Age or late Neolithic times, meaning it would have been set up at least 2,500 years before its site became a place of Christian worship. The name ‘Rudston’ – probably meaning ‘cross stone’ – hints at a pagan monument being adapted for Christian uses.

The Rudston Monolith in Rudston Churchyard, East Yorkshire – Britain’s tallest standing stone. (Photo: Stephen Horncastle)

Such a huge and bizarre artefact has, unsurprisingly, generated legends. One tale claims the monolith was a missile hurled by the Devil to demolish All Saints’ Church. Divine intervention deflected this diabolical projectile and the monolith embedded itself harmlessly among the graves. Another piece of folklore states the monolith dropped from the clouds, squishing some sinners who were desecrating the churchyard. This story might have grown out of garbled memories of a meteorite that fell at the nearby village of Wold Newton in 1795, landing with a colossal bang and missing a labourer by just ten yards. Though the Rudston Monolith isn’t a meteorite, its gritstone doesn’t match up with the rock types of the immediate area. The monument must have either been carved from a glacial erratic or dragged from 10-to-20 miles away, an astounding achievement considering the technology of the time. Yet another local tradition maintains there’s a dinosaur footprint on the megalith’s side, but this long-held belief was debunked by a 2015 English Heritage survey.

Number Two: Seafarers’ Graves in British Churchyards

Surrounded by ocean, Britain has long been a seafaring country and a number of churchyards reflect this fact. Unsurprisingly, Cornwall – with its miles of rugged and dangerous coast – hosts some unusual monuments honouring those who earned a hazardous living on the waves.

In the village of Morwenstow, a most unusual carving can be seen in the churchyard – a woman holding up a shield and brandishing a sword. In 1843, a Scottish ship named the Caledonia went down close the village, with 40 crew members perishing. Their bodies were interred in Morwenstow’s clifftop churchyard and the ship’s figurehead – salvaged from the wreck – was set up as their grave marker. Legend says if you walk too close to the figurehead at night, its sword will slash at you. The figurehead now in the graveyard is a replica – the worn original has been moved inside the church.

The figurehead of the Caledonia, in Morwenstow Churchyard – a grave marker for the ship’s unfortunate crew. (Photo: Easymalc’s Wanderings)

Another nautical ‘tombstone’ can be found in the churchyard of the Cornish village of St Mawgan. In 1846, 10 sailors were found frozen to death, drifted ashore in a boat. The boat’s stern was carved with their names and set up to mark their resting place.

In St Mawgan’s Churchyard, Cornwall, a boat’s stern serves as a grave marker for a group of sailors found frozen to death. (Photo: I Walk Cornwall)

At Veryan, Cornwall, 19 German sailors from a ship that sank in 1914 are buried in a single line head-to-toe, in a grave that’s an incredible 40 metres in length. The grave is thought to be the longest of its type in Britain.

A sailors’ grave – containing 19 crew members buried head-to-toe – in Veryan Churchyard, Cornwall. (Photo: CornwallLive)

Number Three: Lychgates in British Churchyards

I’m sure you’ve noticed that many British churchyards have a porch-like, pointy-roofed structure over their entrance. I suspect you might have also wondered about the purpose of these unusual buildings. These porch-like constructions are known as lychgates and once had a rather macabre function.

‘Lich’ is Old English for ‘corpse’ and corpses were laid under the lychgate to await the priest before funerals. The first part of the funeral service was also conducted beneath the structure. You can still see seats at the sides of some lychgates for pallbearers and mourners. In the Middle Ages, before mortuaries were widespread, bodies could be kept under the lychgate for up to two days. The lychgate would keep the rain off and the seats would have no doubt been a welcome feature for those watching over the corpse.

Medieval lychgate in St George’s Churchyard, Beckenham, South London. (Photo: Wheeltapper)

Under some lychgates are low, long platforms known as lych-stones. The lych-stone was where the body – sometimes coffined, sometimes just shrouded – rested. Between 1666 and 1814, an official – usually the parish priest – was obliged to inspect the corpse as it lay there. This was to ensure the body was wrapped in a woollen shroud. It was a legal requirement that corpses be dressed in this way – a measure introduced to protect the wool trade. (In many places, however, it seems this rule was ignored.)

Though most medieval lychgates have rotted away, a few can still be seen, such as at St George’s Church, in Beckenham, South London. St George’s 13th-century lychgate is thought to be England’s oldest. At St Euny’s Church, Redruth, Cornwall, is a remarkably long lych-stone. It was designed to support three coffins because accidents in the local tin-mining industry sometimes necessitated multiple funerals.

Long lych-stone in St Euny’s Churchyard, Redruth, Cornwall (Photo: Tim Green)

Number Four: Funeral Biers in British Churchyards (and Churches)

In and around certain churchyards, you might spot small, curious house-like structures. In St George’s Churchyard, Beckington, Somerset, is a building just one metre high with gothic-looking double doors while opposite St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Ospringe, Kent, stands a puzzling construction – with arched doorway and slit window – looking like some ominous stone-built garden shed. These ‘gothic garages’ are known as bier houses and once stored funeral biers – the four-wheeled trolleys that transported the bodies of parishioners on their journey to the grave.

A bier house opposite St Peter and St Paul’s Churchyard, Ospringe, Kent (Photo: Penny Mayes)

Many parishes had their own bier and these elderly implements can still be seen in certain churches and churchyards. Some churches have found creative uses for these objects. At Norton, Powys, a bier displays leaflets, notices and collection boxes whereas a bier in Balsham, Cambridgeshire, supports a scale model of the church. At Harvington, Worcestershire, and at Hampsthwaite, Yorkshire, biers have done duty in the churchyard as bases for floral displays. Fine Victorian briers can be seen at the Old Church of St Bartholomew, Botley, Hampshire; at St Lawrence’s Church, Evesham, Worcestershire; and at All Saints’, Holdenby, Northamptonshire.

 

A fine Victorian funeral bier in Botley Old Church, Hampshire (Photo: Helen Banham)

 

Victorian funeral bier in St Lawrence’s Church, Evesham, Worcestershire. (Photo: Richard Croft)

 

Bier supporting a floral display in Hampsthwaite Churchyard, Yorkshire. Unfortunately, in 2013 vandals made off with the wheels. (Photo: Hampsthwaite Village)

Number Five: Goddesses in British Churchyards

In Braunston-in-Rutland, in 1920, it was decided that the doorstep of All Saints’ Church needed replacing. The worn stone was levered up – to reveal a most curious carving on its other side, an image that had spent unknown centuries being pressed into the mud by the feet of generations of worshippers. The carving is of a female figure with protruding eyes, rubbery lips, a sticking-out tongue, ‘double nose’ and pert breasts. This intriguing character now leans against the church’s tower.

The mysterious Braunston Goddess, in Braunston-in-Rutland Churchyard (Photo: SiGarb)

Though the carving has acquired the title the ‘Braunston Goddess’, it’s not known what period she comes from or what she was intended to represent. She isn’t a gargoyle and bears little resemblance to any known style of carving though she does have some slight similarities to Sheela-na-gigs and ‘hunkie-punk’ church grotesques. There have been several attempts to explain the sculpture – that she’s a medieval ‘guardian’ of the type placed over doorways and windows to frighten off evil spirits or that she might depict a queen or even a whore. Others suggest the ‘goddess’ may pre-date the church and that she could be a fertility symbol or Celtic deity. A different hypothesis is that she might have functioned as a tribal boundary marker, placed on a border that roughly corresponded to the modern frontiers of Rutland and Leicestershire. Unless more evidence appears, however, the origins and purpose of this ‘goddess’ will remain questions we can only guess at.

Though it’s debatable whether the Braunston Goddess is a remnant of pagan antiquity, another churchyard ‘goddess’ in the British Isles is undoubtedly pre-Christian. Just outside the gate of St Martin’s Churchyard, Guernsey, stands La Gràn’Mère du Chim’tière (or Grandma of the Cemetery). This five-foot-five-inch statue – modestly robed though with rather prominent breasts – was probably sculpted in the Neolithic era, between about 2500 and 1800 BC. La Gràn’Mère – who may well have been carved from a standing stone – was probably also reworked in Roman times, between 100 BC and 100 AD.

Locals have long had a tradition of leaving flowers and coins around the sculpture, but these devotions so infuriated a pious churchwarden that he insisted La Gràn’Mère be destroyed. The statue was broken in half, but this so incensed the locals that they had her repaired with concrete and she continued to receive their reverence. Even today, La Gràn’Mère is a popular addition to wedding photos. The church La Gràn’Mère guards sits on the site of a Neolithic tomb shrine and the churchyard boasts two springs, one of which is said to have healing powers. But is La Gràn’Mère an entirely benevolent entity? In Folklore of Guernsey, Marie De Garis writes, ‘Looked at during the daytime, La Gràn’Mère wears a very benign look, but photographs taken by flashlight at night reveal quite a different aspect. She then looks a fierce and malevolent object.’

La Gran Mere, St Martin’s Churchyard, Guernsey. The crack indicates where she was broken in half in 1860. (Photo: Peter Kenny)

Number Six: Devil’s Footprints in British Churchyards

Many difficult-to-explain oddities in churches and churchyards – ranging from ‘witch’s cauldrons’ to the missing tips of steeples – have been blamed on the Devil, but perhaps the most dramatic mementos the Evil One has left are his smouldering footprints. In certain churchyards, you can still see these footprints today.

Legend claims that one night the Devil tried to steal a bell from the tower of St David’s, in Lanarth, Ceredigion. His efforts, however, awoke the vicar who drove him off. The Fiend leapt down into the graveyard and landed on a stone, upon which he left his fiery footprint.

The Devil is also held responsible for a 38-centimetre footprint which marks a stone near the gate of St Mary’s Churchyard, in Newington, Kent. As at Lanarth, the Evil One was determined to steal the church’s bells. He scaled the tower, put them in a sack and leapt down, landing on a stone with great force, thereby branding it with his demonic imprint. The bells, though, jolted from the sack and rolled into the nearby Libbet Stream. All attempts by villagers to retrieve the bells failed. An aged witch said that only four white cows would be able to tug the bells out. Four white cows were found and harnessed up and seemed to be successfully pulling the bells free. An onlooker, however, made a comment about a black spot on one of the cow’s noses. The bells tumbled back into the stream, disappeared beneath the water and have never been seen since. Local folklore claims the stream bubbles at the spot the bells sank and that the stone with the Devil’s footprint will spark if struck by a pebble.

Devil’s footprint found just outside the gate of Newington Churchyard, Kent, England. (Photo: Mapio)

Newington’s notorious stone is actually a prehistoric mudstone. Some locals say the stone was moved in the 1930s, after which a series of unfortunate events afflicted the village until the stone was moved again and placed next to the church. According to one superstition, if you rest your finger on top of the stone and walk around it three times, it will bring you good luck.

Number Seven: Devilish Stones in British Churchyards

A number of other unusual stones in and around British churchyards have connections with His Satanic Majesty. In Bungay, Suffolk, a mysterious rock known as the Druid’s Stone stands in St Mary’s Churchyard. Local folklore asserts this stone is a portal for contacting the Devil. If you’d like a direct line to the Fiend, you must either run around or knock on the stone 12 times. The Druid’s Stone is probably a glacial erratic brought to Bungay in the last ice age.

The Druid’s Stone, in Bungay Churchyard, Suffolk – a portal for contacting the Devil? (Photo: Ashley Dace)

At Marston Moreteyne, Bedfordshire, an intriguing stone stands in a field next to the parish church, also called St Mary’s. Legend says that one Sunday the Devil jumped down from the church then joined some local lads in said field, who were desecrating the sabbath by enjoying a sneaky game of leapfrog. The Devil enthusiastically participated in their sport and all were having a merry time until a hole in the ground opened, into which they all leapt and were never seen again. The stone indicates the place they vanished. This stone – sometimes referred to as the Devil’s Toenail – is actually a small Neolithic standing stone, a rarity in Bedfordshire. St Mary’s has a detached bell tower, a fact also blamed on the Fiend. The Devil tried to steal it, but – finding it too heavy – dropped it in the churchyard.

The Devil’s Leap Stone – also known as the Devil’s Toenail – in a field near Marston Moreteyne Churchyard, Bedfordshire, England. (Photo: Orion Air Sales)

More Oddities and Weird Artefacts in British Churches and Churchyards

The above items represent just a few of the thoroughly weird artefacts and peculiar tales I came across while researching my new best-selling book Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends (Shire/Bloomsbury). The book is bursting with examples of Britain’s eccentric heritage, ranging from golden balls placed on steeples by occultist aristocrats, to vampire graves, dragon-slaying swords and spears, and spooky collections of funeral effigies. Church Curiosities also explores bone crypts and secret tunnels, examines the mummified skulls of well-known statesmen, and highlights such oddities as preserved hearts hidden in pillars, the graves of beloved church cats, door knockers modelled on demons’ faces, burn marks left by black hellhounds, and ceremonies involving choirboys being suspended upside-down over the Thames. The book’s already hit the number one best-seller spot in three Amazon categories.

If you’d like to immerse yourself in a world of fascinating, disturbing, charming and deeply unusual artefacts, grab your copy of Church Curiosities now.

Get Church Curiosities Now

(This article’s main image – showing the Rudston Monolith – is courtesy of Colin Frankland)

The post 7 Really Weird Objects in British Churchyards appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

It’s easy to see why this phenomenon so startled the people of Devon. In some villages, almost every homestead had been visited and the hoofmarks went right up the sides of houses and over roofs. They meandered through churchyards and gardens and across fields, sometimes disappearing before starting again a few metres further on, as if the diabolical being had leapt or even flown. Sometimes they’d stop on one side of a haystack and continue on the other, without any hay being disturbed. Elsewhere, the creature had squeezed through tiny holes in hedges or jumped tall fences or impossibly high walls. Two witnesses claimed the footsteps had stopped at the entrance to a pipe just six inches in diameter then reappeared at the other end, a feat many felt had to be supernatural as no animal large enough to produce such prints could have wriggled through that tube. The prints apparently halted before the Exe estuary – a two-mile-wide span of water – then casually started again on the opposite bank.

Many gardens and fields were marked with mysterious single lines of ‘Devil’s Footprints’. (Photo: Claire Witham) 

There was also the sheer length of the beast’s damnable journey. Though accounts varied, it was estimated that the being must have walked between 40 and 100 miles on the night of 8th-9th February – an accomplishment no earthly creature could manage. The footprints seem mainly to have been concentrated in south and east Devon, travelling from Exmouth to Topsham then across the Exe to Dawlish and Teignmouth. Some stated that the prints had appeared as far south as Torquey and Totness, as far north as the outskirts of Exeter and as far east as Weymouth in Dorset. The Devil’s Hoofmarks did, however, show some variation. Within some the impress of a horseshoe could be seen; other hoofprints boasted claw marks, lending credence to the notion of their infernal origin.

Map of Devon – the Devil’s Footprints appeared mainly in the south and east around the Exe estuary.

News of the Devil’s Footprints soon spread through Devon and beyond. Articles appeared in The Times and in the local press. The Illustrated London News published a series of letters speculating about what could have caused the demonic imprints. These reports betray the terror – mingled with curiosity – that many locals felt. Residents, sometimes in armed groups, followed the footprints. Some traced the marks for miles, though without discovering much that could explain them. It’s, however, claimed that one local hunt tracked a mysterious beast to a wood near Dawlish. The huntsmen sent in the hounds to corner the creature, but the dogs soon ‘came back baying and terrified’.

The Western Luminary and Family Newspaper stated the footprints had created ‘an uproar of commotion’ while according to The Times a ‘considerable sensation has been evoked in the towns of Topsham, Lympstone, Exmouth, Teignmouth and Dawlish, in the south of Devon … the superstitious go so far as to believe that they are the marks of Satan himself … great excitement has been produced among all classes … many superstitious people in the above towns are actually afraid to go outside their doors after night.’ A letter in Woolmer’s Exeter and Plymouth Gazette said, ‘The poor are full of superstition and consider it little short of a visit from old Satan or some of his imps’. The Western Times related that Exmouth had been ‘thrown into a state of alarm, in consequence of a report that the town and neighbourhood had been visited in the night by no less a person than his Satanic Majesty, and that the marks of his feet were distinctly to be seen imprinted on the snow.’

Various sketches of the Devil’s Footprints made by eyewitnesses, from the papers of the Devon vicar the Reverend H.T. Ellacombe

Not everyone agreed the Devil’s Footprints had supernatural causes. Journalists, naturalists, clergymen, and the more educated who looked down on their superstitious neighbours were soon coming up with theories to explain the sinister occurrence. Later writers have also tried to identify who or what made the marks. Possible culprits have ranged from untethered balloons, to swans clad in padded shoes, to badgers, otters, and escaped kangaroos and monkeys. Some have blamed weird weather patterns; others have suggested UFOs and sea monsters. Some have seen a human influence at play – from attempts by austere Protestants to frighten religious opponents to Romany Gypsies on stilts creating the marks to scare off rival bands of Travellers.

The Devil’s Footprints were certainly a strange case. Let’s look at the explanations that have been put forward and try to make some sense of this diabolical conundrum.

Donkeys, Badgers, Cats – Could an Ordinary Animal Have Made the Devil’s Footprints?

Accounts from the time describe the Devil’s Footprints as between three-and-a-half and four inches long and around three inches wide. The marks were mainly in single file, rather than alternating to the left and right as the prints of humans and many animals would. The distance separating the marks was small, between eight and 16 inches, suggesting either short hops or an almost mincing gait. If these marks could have been made by some land animal rather than ‘His Satanic Majesty’, we must enquire if any creature common in the British Isles might have produced them.

Most of the marks were cloven and traces of horseshoes were found within some so we should start by asking whether the imprints may have simply been left by donkeys or ponies. People at the time noted that the marks indeed looked like the hoofprints of such animals. The Western Luminary and Family Newspaper described the marks as ‘exactly, in shape, like a donkey’s hoof’ while The Times stated ‘the impression of the foot closely resembled that of a donkey’s shoe’. The possibility that such a creature might have left the prints, though, was quickly dismissed due to the layout of the marks. As The Western Luminary put it, they were ‘evidently done by some two-footed animal’.

Might humble donkeys have made the Devil’s Footprints in Devon? (Photo: The Donkey Sanctuary of Canada)

But donkey prints can be deceptive. According to the researcher Theo Brown, ‘donkeys are the only animals that plant their feet in an almost perfect single line’, a fact that has led her to conclude that at least some of the Devil’s Footprints were made by such creatures. Though this might seem an easy answer to our mystery, the idea the prints were left by donkeys conjures up some tricky questions. Human steps weren’t seen alongside the Devil’s Hoofmarks and it’s unlikely that people would have led or ridden donkeys in the thick of a winter night through gardens and churchyards and across expanses of private land. Most of these theoretical donkeys must have, therefore, strayed and several such beasts would have needed to escape simultaneously to produce the quantities of marks seen. Also, there’s no way that donkeys could have trotted up the walls of houses or slithered through narrow pipes. And the creatures are unlikely to have walked over roofs.

We might also question why country people wouldn’t have recognised donkeys’ trails. To this objection, it might be said that significant falls of snow are uncommon in south Devon, an area with one of the most temperate climates in Britain. Might locals, agitated by the less explicable marks – such as those going up houses – have then seen the prints of stray donkeys in the unfamiliar snow and decided they were more sinister than they actually were? In opposition to this idea, we must consider a letter sent to The Illustrated London News by a correspondent calling himself ‘South Devon’, who gave the impression of being an veteran countryman who’d also spent time in Canada and who’d ‘much experience of tracking wild animals and birds upon the snow’. South Devon claimed that on the morning of 9th February the prints of well-known creatures were recognisable as ‘the snow bore the fresh marks of cats, dogs, rabbits, birds and men clearly defined’ and that – unlike the Devil’s Footprints – they excited little comment. South Devon did admit that the Devil’s Footprints ‘were the perfect impression of a donkey’s hoof’, but stressed that ‘foot had followed foot in a single line’ and that no known animal walks in a ‘line of single footsteps, not even man’. This suggests South Devon – and perhaps others in the area – were actually unaware of how donkeys’ hoofmarks can appear in snow.

A sketch of the Devil’s Footprints – sent in by the correspondent ‘South Devon’ – which appeared in The Illustrated London News

Though stray donkeys might well have made some of the hoofmarks, they can’t account for them all. Another creature accused of making the diabolical imprints was the humble badger. Also in a letter to The Illustrated London News, the well-known naturalist Richard Owen put the blame on this seemingly innocent animal. Owen emphasised that badgers are not only nocturnal but can travel significant distances while looking for food, especially in winter. Badgers also have long claws and claw marks were spotted in some of the Devil’s Hoofprints. The pawprints of badgers are, however, staggered and the creature has quite a large tread, meaning it would almost certainly leave a double line of marks. It’s also somewhat comical to imagine stout and sturdy badgers scaling walls, strolling across rooftops, and springing over haystacks and high fences.

Trails of animals that may have been mistaken for the Devil’s Hoofmarks: a. Whitetail deer; b. Cottontail Hare; c. Fox; d. Badger; e. Otter

Another everyday animal blamed for the Devil’s Footprints was the cat. On the morning of 9th February, the tenant of Aller Farm in Dawlish discovered that the night’s strange weather had distorted some pawprints his cat had left in the snow. Snow had come down heavily around midnight, but towards dawn there’d been a slight thaw and some rain. The temperature had then dropped again and there’d been a frost. Such melting and refreezing had warped the steps of the unassuming moggie ‘into the shape of a small hoof, with still the impression of the cat’s claws enclosed’. The tenant reported this to the Reverend Edward Fursdon, the vicar of Dawlish, who presumably noted it down.

The association of cats with the Devil’s Footprints is an interesting one. Cats can spring considerable distances, perhaps accounting for some of the (smaller) breaks in the lines of imprints. They’re also excellent climbers, which could maybe explain some of the marks on the sides of houses, although such prints would be unlikely to be in single file. (Also, except where snowdrifts had accumulated, the prints on house sides are likely to have been muddy ones rather than stamped in snow and so would have been recognisably feline.) Cats, though, have certainly been known to saunter across roofs. And while cats don’t create trails as linear as donkeys’, the prints of cats – and other animals like foxes – can give the impression of being in single file. Devon’s farms and villages in the mid-1800s no doubt contained lots of cats so the distorted tracks of domestic moggies might account for some of the Devil’s Footprints. It’s unlikely, however, that many cats would have taken it upon themselves to embark on journeys miles long through the snow.

More Possible Culprits for the Devil’s Footprints – Hopping Mice, Otters, Squirrels, Toads, Monkeys and Kangaroos

Yet more animals have been identified as possible creators of the Devil’s Footprints. On 8th March 1855, the Exeter Flying Post suggested the key to the mystery might be found in the form of the lowly toad. The paper reported that a Torquey man had followed a curious trail through his garden and found a large toad sitting by a tree stump at its end. It’s, however, unclear if it was the toad that made the tracks or if it just happened to have positioned itself where they stopped. It’s also uncertain whether the Devil’s Footprints did indeed extend as far south as Torquey despite what some claimed. Toads have webbed feet so it’s unlikely their trails would match the descriptions of the Devil’s Footprints unless weather conditions had substantially distorted them. The creatures can, though, presumably hop through pipes – perhaps providing an answer to the conundrum of the six-inch tube.

Comparison of eyewitnesses’ sketches of the Devil’s Footprints, made in Devon, England, from the papers of the Reverend H.T. Ellacombe

Other animals skilled at hopping, springing and jumping have been accused of making the diabolical marks. The Inverness Courier newspaper argued the Devon prints were made by a hare, as similar marks found near Inverness were thought to have been created by a hare or polecat. It remains unclear, however, whether such creatures really did leave those puzzling tracks near the Scottish town.

Rats, mice and other rodents sometimes engage in hopping and so have been viewed as possible causes of the Devil’s Footprints. In a letter to The Illustrated London News, one Thomas Fox wrote that he’d found tracks in his brother’s garden similar to those in Devon and suspected rats may have made them. In the 1950s, the zoologist Alfred Leutscher stumbled upon similar markings in Epping Forest. Leutscher knew that certain animals – including rabbits, hares, squirrels, mice and rats – sometimes leap with all four feet together. If there’s sufficient snow, their traces can resemble hoofmarks and Leutscher argued this effect is enhanced if the impressions thaw then refreeze. He believed only one animal, though, would have been the right size to make the Devon marks – the wood mouse – and claimed to have observed tracks left by this creature in Epping Forest that matched descriptions of the Devil’s Footprints. But – though wood mice might have made some of the Devon imprints – it seems unlikely that wood mice or other rodents would hop for such long distances rather than walking or scurrying or that single creatures could have made the trails that Devon villagers followed for miles.

Thomas Fox’s sketch of ‘rat prints’ in his brother’s garden – might this animal have left the Devil’s Footprints?

A more outlandish explanation for the Devil’s Footprints involved a hopping creature of a more exotic type. There were claims two kangaroos had left the marks after escaping from a private menagerie in Sidmouth. A Reverend G.M Musgrave seems to have been the first to put forward this idea, expounding it in a sermon. A letter to the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette outlined how ‘on Sunday last, the Rev. Musgrave, delivered one of his usual eloquent discourses in Lympstone Church, and in speaking of Satan as a tempter, who was continually besetting our path, though invisible, aptly alluded to this mysterious visitor who had left behind him visible evidence of his presence and expressed it as his opinion that the foot-prints were those of the kangaroo: but it must have been a busy animal indeed to have played up such pranks as this creature has done.’ Though kangaroos could have bounded over certain obstacles, even these incredible creatures would have struggled to get onto rooftops or leap high walls. Kangaroo prints are in no way similar to hoofmarks and the distance bounced by kangaroos certainly exceeds 16 inches, the maximum span recorded between the Devil’s Footprints. While there were indeed two kangaroos in the Sidmouth menagerie, there’s no evidence either of them escaped.

The Reverend Musgrave later admitted he came up with the kangaroo story to calm his congregation, who’d been terrified by the Devil’s Footprints. In March 1855, he sent a letter to The Illustrated London News: ‘the state of the public mind of the villagers … dreading to go out after sunset … under the conviction that this was the Devil’s work … rendered it very desirable that a turn should be given to such a degraded and vitiated notion … and I was grateful that a kangaroo served to disperse ideas so derogatory.’

Illustration of the tracks of a jumping wood mouse by Alfred Leutscher in his book Tracks and Signs of British Animals (1960). Might weather conditions have merged such marks into the Devil’s Footprints?

An even more incredible suggestion was that the marks were left by a monkey that had escaped from a menagerie or circus. A monkey might have had the agility to climb walls and skip across roofs, but a single monkey couldn’t have left so many footprints in one night and – again – there’s no evidence of such a creature absconding around the time the Devil’s Footprints appeared.

A more sensible notion is that otters caused some of the marks. Cold weather might have driven such creatures away from their frozen rivers and streams in search of food and all the places where the Devil’s Footprints were found were within half-a-mile of such watercourses. Even in the mid-1800s, otters weren’t common creatures so many country people may have not recognised their trails. The two witnesses who saw the prints near the pipe suspected an otter might have squeezed through it and they noticed the creature that had made the marks had slunk under low branches, like an otter would. In addition, crossing the Exe estuary would have probably not presented much of an obstacle to these semi-aquatic animals. Though some of the demonic prints may have been made by otters, it’s unlikely these creatures could have left them all, especially those running up walls or over rooftops.

Animal prints in Rupert Gould’s book Oddities (1928): a. Thomas Fox’s ‘rat prints’; b. Hind foot of an otter; C. Badger’s hind foot; D. One of the Devil’s Hoofmarks

It may be that a variety of animals were responsible for the Devil’s Footprints. Their marks may have been made somewhat more uniform by the thawing and refreezing action of the weather (though the extent of the similarity of the prints still raises questions). Early 1855 did see exceptional cold – the winter had been so intense that ‘the thermometer was one degree lower than has ever been known before by the oldest inhabitant’ and stretches of the rivers Exe and Teign froze over, allowing games and even a feast to be held on the ice. Such conditions could have driven animals to adopt unusual behaviours, travelling further in their search for food and leaving longer trails. These trails – in the excitable minds of some – could have merged into evidence of an epic trek, a journey so outlandish it could only have a supernatural explanation.

There are still many questions, however, about the Devil’s Footprints so we’ll leave behind the animal realm for now and look at the activities of birds, balloons and humans.

Might Birds Have Been Responsible for the Devil’s Footprints?

It might seem a rather obvious assertion that birds were to blame for some of the prints. Most bird species would have no trouble flapping over haystacks, walking across roofs, entering walled gardens or clearing the Exe estuary. Smaller varieties could have navigated pipes and got through holes in hedges. There’s also evidence that the freezing weather caused flocks of seabirds to come inland, which could explain why similar prints were found across a large area. The breaks in the lines of prints may have been caused by birds flying short distances before coming down and walking again.

The problem with this argument is that the feet of birds – whether clawed or webbed – leave prints that in no way resemble hoofmarks. Some have claimed the birds’ feet might have iced up, giving their tracks an unusual shape. One Reverend H.T. Ellacombe did apparently notice flurries in the snow around some of the Devil’s Footprints – flurries iced-laden birds may have created by beating their wings as they tried to take off. But it’s improbable that even iced-up bird feet would have left impressions like hoofmarks. It is possible, though, that already agitated observers – viewing, from some metres away, bird prints on roofs distorted by thawing and freezing – could have seen them as grim evidence the Evil One had visited.

Could birds have caused Devon’s Devil’s Footprints? (Image: Greg Williams)

An entertaining, though improbable, suggestion is that a domesticated swan sporting padded shoes caused the Devil’s Footprints. An escaped – and very much exhausted – swan is rumoured to have been caught at St Denis, near Paris, five days after the Devon footprints appeared. A silver collar round the swan’s neck showed it had come all the way from Germany, from ‘the domain of Prince Hohenlohe’. The bird’s feet were apparently padded to stop it damaging ornamental gardens and lawns. Swans can fly large distances, but it’s unlikely that even the most vigorous swan would have crossed the channel, flown all the way to Devon, left hundreds of thousands of footprints in one night then headed back to the Continent. A whole flock of such birds would have needed to abscond to produce the amount of prints seen.

Could a Stray Balloon Have Left the Devil’s Hoofmarks?

According to the novelist Geoffrey Household (1900-1988), an experimental balloon produced the Devil’s Footprints. The balloon, kept at the naval base Devonport Dockyard, somehow got free and set off on a journey across the countryside. The balloon carried two shackles on the end of its mooring ropes and these caused the balloon to continually dip down. It was these shackles – making frequent contact with the snow – that pitted Devon with its trail of curious marks. Household’s source was one Major Carter, a local man who’d heard the story from his grandad, an employee at the Devonport base. Carter’s grandfather told him that the incident had been hushed up because the balloon had damaged conservatories and shattered greenhouses and windows. The balloon finally ceased its flight at the east Devon town of Honiton.

Might an experimental balloon like this one have caused Devon’s Devil’s Footprints?

The balloon theory would explain how the Devil’s Footprints had got on roofs and how the entity that made them had bounded over haystacks and walls. It could also account for the gaps in the trails and the crossing of the Exe, during which the shackles would have presumably just hit water. It’s likely, however, that the balloon’s mooring ropes would have left marks in the snow too and there are no records of any such imprints. The balloon also would have probably sooner or later become tangled in a tree, bush, hedge or other obstruction. It seems more likely that the balloon story was invented after the appearance of the Devil’s Footprints as an attempt to explain them.

Might the Devil’s Hoofmarks Have Their Origin in a Religious Dispute?

One explanation for the Devil’s Footprints is that they were left as a hoax, a somewhat sinister prank arising out of disputes within the Church of England. The Church at the time was divided between High-Church followers of the Oxford Movement and more puritanical Low-Church Anglicans. The Oxford Movement – put simply – sought to reintroduce medieval elements into Anglicanism, with a stress on ritual, vestments, incense and the beauty of worship and the belief that religious services should be whole-body experiences rather than just appealing to the intellect. To more radical Protestants, this smacked too much of Catholicism and they wanted more focus on the Bible and sermons, with churches and ceremonies kept plain and austere.

Some suspect the Puritans – feeling their opponents were basically in league with the Devil – used the snowfall as an opportunity to frighten them. With some sort of implement – perhaps a horseshoe attached to a long pole – they made trails in the churchyards of vicars who supported the Oxford Movement, as well as across the landscape more generally. The use of such an implement might explain the marks going up houses, emerging from pipes, and on either side of undisturbed haystacks. It could also account for the similarity of many of the imprints. If an implement had been employed, however, one might expect all the Devil’s Footprints to be identical – which they weren’t – though thawing and refreezing may have distorted some.

The main objection to such a theory lies in the sheer number of marks – it would have taken a conspiracy of hundreds of Puritans to produce so many. What’s more likely is that – noticing the commotion the Devil’s Hoofmarks had caused – some Puritans took advantage of the uproar to make a religious point. This might explain the prints found in Topsham Churchyard on 13th February – several days after the bulk of the marks had been discovered on the morning of the 9th. Ominously, the tracks at Topsham went up ‘to the very door of the vestibule’. Though the vicar at Topsham was High Church, not all the churches where prints were found had vicars who adhered to the Oxford Movement. At Dawlish, a more Puritan parish, hoofmarks led ‘from the vicarage to the vestry door’ and prints were discovered ‘all over the churchyard and between the graves’.

Interestingly, the trauma of religious disputes does sometimes give rise to alleged experiences of the supernatural. For instance, a vampire legend in Croglin, Cumbria, may have its roots in the religious conflicts that arose around the time of the English Civil War. The Croglin legend even includes rumours of a vampiric bat flying out of the tomb of an unpopular clergyman.

Might the Devil’s Footprints Have Been Made by Gypsies on Stilts?

According to the autobiography of Manfri Frederick Wood In the Life of a Romany Gypsy (1973), the Devil’s Footprints were made as part of an elaborate plan hatched by Gypsies to frighten off rival travelling groups. Rather than Devon, Wood places the incident in Somerset though he admits, ‘I am not sure about the exact area or even the approximate date when this occurred – but it is a true story as I got it from one of my uncles and it filled the newspapers at the time and caused a great sensation.’

Wood goes on: ‘That night, as everybody in the area found first thing in the morning, the Devil walked right across the county of Somerset. Only it wasn’t the Devil at all but some seven Romany tribes using over 400 sets of measure stilts with size-27 boots at their base. The whole operation took over 18 months to plan and prepare.’

The issue the Romanies had was they felt their territory was being overrun by Didekais (people of part-Romany heritage) and ‘Pikies’. (‘Pikey’ is generally a derogatory term for Gypsies and Travellers, but in Wood’s account it probably refers to non-Romany travelling people.) The idea was to frighten away these competing groups by exploiting their fear of ‘the Mulo’. According to Wood, in Gypsy lore a Mulo is a vampire-type figure that ‘came out of its tomb every night as the dead man’s double’ and would also emerge for half-an-hour at high noon. Gypsies had once been so terrified of the Mulo that they ‘made a point of stopping at a camping site in time to get out of the Mulo’s way inside their tents or wagons. So the old Gypsies years ago never travelled at noon and were out of sight by dusk.’ Some Gypsies, though, saw the Mulo not as a revenant of a dead man but rather as the Devil in the deceased man’s guise.

Wood states that, having long ago converted to Christianity, most ‘of the pure Romanies in this country no longer bother about Mulos and travel at any time of the day or night’ whereas ‘a good many of the Didekais and Pikies are still very particular about keeping out of the Mulo’s way. In our family, the belief in Mulos was a very useful weapon for clearing an area more or less permanently of Pikies.’

A group of Gypsies in the snow – could Romanies have created the Devil’s Footprints?

The ‘measure stilts’ the Romanies used ‘consisted of a pair of step ladders that could be lengthened or shortened by means of slides and hinges. They were joined at the top by a wheel. The bottom of the step ladder stood in the great big boot and the man operating the stilts stood on one of the ladders and joggled about on it to make as deep a foot impression as possible. Then he would either swing the second ladder over the top by the wheel – if there was enough head room – or … he would raise the ladder by the slide and move it forward in one “Devil’s stride”. Either way, he got an exact measure of a stride, as the measure stilts were constructed so they could not over- or under-stride the three yards it was meant to do.’ In order to avoid being spotted when on public highways, the stilt-walkers would ‘throw a sheet over the whole works so the Devil would be seen walking rather than a man with ladders.’

The Romanies made it look as if the Devil had walked ‘right across Somerset in as straight a line as possible’, which even meant that ‘his footsteps had to go straight up one wall’ of any building in his path then ‘over the roof and down the other wall. The stilt-walker could not walk up walls – he had to straighten out his stilts to turn them into a long ladder and then make a muddy line of “devil’s strides” … Halfway over the top, he had to hoist the ladder up and swing it right round, and without too much noise, to the other side of the building. This was the snaggiest part of the whole business as it required exceptional strength and poise.’

Apparently, ‘the route was planned very carefully and every part of it studied … When the plan was put into operation, it went off without a single hitch … The next day, the Devil’s Footprints could clearly be seen along the whole route. It put the fear of God into all the locals – but that was not the point of the exercise. For the next few years it kept the area free from Pikies and Didekais who swore blind it was a Mulo that had crossed and they were not going to take any chances.’

As strangely fascinating as this account might be, this explanation for the Devil’s Footprints has flaws. Wood places the incident in Somerset rather than Devon (though he admits his memory may be faulty with regards to location). The size-27 boots the Gypsies attached to their stilts would have produced prints far bigger than the Devil’s Footprints and of a different shape. The stride between the marks left by the Romanies would have also been much larger. In addition, the Romanies made their trail in a straight line whereas many of the Devon tracks meandered. It’s difficult to believe that 400 people traversing the countryside on stilts wouldn’t have set dogs barking or that at least some of them wouldn’t have been apprehended or had accidents. There’s also no evidence – as far as I know – of Gypsies elsewhere using similar techniques to clear areas of rivals.

One detail might, however, hint that stilt-walkers could have left some of the marks. In 1889-90, the journal Notes and Queries discussed the Devil’s Footprints and one correspondent claimed that the impression of ‘a point of a stick’ had been left at lengthy but regular intervals besides the prints. Could such sticks have helped stilt-walkers balance? This detail was, however, reported decades after the footsteps appeared and the fact the stick-marks were regular wouldn’t fit with someone using such an implement whenever they feared they might topple over.

I suspect that the Devon incident entered Gypsy folklore and that the telling of the tale became ever more elaborate and ever more intertwined with Romany history as the years passed. Or perhaps – like the Puritans above – the Romanies heard of the Devil’s Footprints and hoaxed more marks (though on a smaller scale than claimed) to serve purposes of their own.

Could the Devil’s Footprints Have Been Formed by Weird Weather Patterns?

Another possible cause for the Devil’s Footprints was proposed by the Scotsman J. Allan Rennie. Rennie suspected the footsteps had been made by a strange weather phenomenon, one he claimed to have witnessed. In 1924, in northern Canada, Rennie saw a line of mysterious tracks in the snow while crossing a frozen lake. His companion, ‘a French-Canadian dog skinner’, became agitated, blaming the prints on a monster called the Windygo. So disturbed was the dog skinner that he deserted Rennie’s expedition. Not long afterwards, it was Rennie’s turn to be petrified. He saw tracks approaching him in the snow though no visible creature seemed to be making them:

‘The tracks were being made within 50 yards of me – 20 – 10 – then smack! I shouted aloud as a large blob of water struck me in the face. I swung around, brushing the moisture from my eyes, and saw the tracks continuing across the lake.’

When he’d recovered from the shock, Rennie reasoned that the prints had been caused by ‘some freakish current of very warm air coming into contact with the very low temperature which had set up the condensation.’ Rennie claimed to have observed similar tracks in Kent in 1939 and in Strathspey, Scotland, in December 1952 and January 1953.

Did a strange weather phenomenon cause Devon’s Devil’s Footprints? 

If such a phenomenon does exist, it could explain the Devon marks left in difficult-to-access places like rooftops, and presumably walls and high fences wouldn’t present obstacles to currents of air. The prints Rennie observed, however, travelled in straight lines rather than meandering as in Devon and were bigger than the Devon marks. Those Rennie saw in Canada looked as if snowshoes had made them while the marks in Strathspey were 19 inches long, 14 wide and 7 feet apart. Furthermore, meteorologists are dubious about whether air currents could produce such tracks. Those the naturalist and author of Animal Legends (1995) Maurice Burton consulted declared such claims ‘impossible’.

So What’s the Conclusion – What Did Cause the Devil’s Footprints?

This post shows that an incredible range of causes have been suggested for the Devil’s Footprints – from kangaroos, to stray balloons, to hopping mice, to Devil-obsessed Puritans to Gypsies teetering on stilts. But even more outlandish ideas have been proposed. In 1972, one George Lyall, writing in Flying Saucer Review, asserted a UFO had made the prints, by hovering over Devon and firing laser beams at the snow, apparently as part of a measuring exercise. The ex-navy officer Rupert Gould, on the other hand, put forward the idea that an unknown sea creature had emerged from the ocean to leave the marks. Gould’s theory mainly relies on the fact that all the prints appeared close to the sea or the Exe estuary. He also noted that pony-like footprints had once been found on the Antarctic Kerguelen Islands, at a time when that territory had no land animals.

Leaving aside the more offbeat suggestions, might we attempt a hypothesis for the Devil’s Footprints? No one explanation is completely satisfactory, but perhaps a combination of some of the ideas above could go some way towards accounting for the diabolical marks. I suspect most of the footprints were left by a variety of animals. Stray – or ridden – donkeys are likely to have created some, hence the hoofprints with horseshoes. Other marks could have been caused by creatures such as cats, otters and badgers or by the hopping of toads, mice, rats and other rodents. The thawing and refreezing that occurred on the night of 8th-9th February might have then distorted these prints into hoof-like shapes. Additional marks – also distorted and seen from a distance – could have been left by birds, which might account for some of the prints on roofs and on opposite sides of high walls and haystacks. The extreme cold weather might well have driven animals to stray from their regular territories and travel farther in search of food, meaning prints appeared where they wouldn’t normally. Though the correspondent South Devon claimed that the marks of ordinary animals were also visible in the snow and caused no excitement, these could have been left after the melting and refreezing that distorted earlier steps.

Marks in snow made by a red squirrel – could some of the Devil’s Footprints have been left by hopping rodents? (Photo: Fortpelhamfarm)

Observing the commotion these unusual prints provoked, human pranksters could have then created more over the next few nights. The activities of such people might account for those marks leading ominously up to churches or walking straight up house walls. The hysteria the Devil’s Footprints triggered also likely led to descriptions of them being exaggerated and over the years memories of the phenomenon were probably embellished further.

Even eye-witnesses at the time may have been prone to exaggerate. South Devon, for instance, rather than being a mature countryman was later revealed to be the 19-year-old William D’Urban, who’d go on to be the first curator of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum at Exeter. D’Urban was responsible for getting certain notions into the press: that all the marks were ‘exactly the same size and the step the same length’ (which, as we have seen, wasn’t quite true), that the prints extended for 100 miles (others estimated it was more like 40), were in a straight line (they often meandered) and were found as far south as Torquey and Totness. South Devon also mentioned a 14-foot wall being jumped and prints on the roofs of houses. It’s possible that youthful enthusiasm gave extra colour to South Devon’s account and some of his contemporaries did dispute his claims. The Reverend G.M. Musgrave (he of the ‘kangaroo theory’) wrote to The Illustrated London News about South Devon’s assertions: ‘The outline accompanying your intelligent correspondent’s recital of the circumstances hardly conveys a correct idea of the prints in question.’

As for the excitable account of hounds being terrified by a sinister creature near Dawlish, suggestions have been made that the passage of time has in fact enhanced a different tale – that of the hunt closing in on nobody more threatening than a village idiot. This imbecile – who was fond of ‘decking himself in layers of chicken and goose feathers’ and roaming through woods imitating animal noises – was almost lynched by the nervous party. With regards to the footprints’ audacious crossing of the Exe, the river is two miles wide only where it meets the sea. It can be waded across in places at low tide and may have even been frozen on the 8th-9th February, meaning many animals could have crossed it without occult help.

Phenomena similar to the Devil’s Footprints have been observed elsewhere, suggesting that certain combinations of circumstances may produce marks like those seen in Devon. In 1922, the Daily Mail reported that tracks ascribed to the Devil had appeared in Norfolk and the Cotswolds, including on rooftops. In January 1855, prints similar to a deer’s were discovered on the walls and roofs of several pubs near Wolverhampton. (The fact only pubs were targeted might suggest local moralists were responsible.) In 1957, cloven prints – 12 inches apart – were found in a Hull back garden. Prints found in Belgium towards the end of World War II are said to have run for two miles ‘in a dead straight line’. In March 1855, The Times reported that hoofmarks manifested annually in the snow on a certain hill in Russian Poland. Locals blamed the hoofmarks – which, if no snow had fallen, would appear in the hill’s sandy soil – on malign supernatural influences. Though the Devon case is the most famous – and seems the most extensive – example of mysterious footprints, the fact it isn’t the only one could indicate that natural conditions – with perhaps some added human hoaxing – may occasionally result in such spooky occurrences.

Mysterious tracks sketched in Belgium towards the end of World War II by Eric Frank Russell

But What If the Devon Footprints Really Were Left by a Devilish Creature?

By peering into English folklore, we can see why Devon locals decided the Devil had taken a night-time hike across their county. The single lines of prints suggest a hopping motion while the clearing of haystacks and high fences indicates spectacular jumps. The Devil has long been famous for his hops and leaps. Near Frensham, Surrey, three hills known as the Devil’s Jumps were apparently created by Satan kicking up mounds of earth as he bounded across the countryside. The London demon Spring-heeled Jack – who terrorised that city in Victorian times – was said to leap improbable distances, jump fences and bound onto rooftops thanks to springs hidden in his boots. Indeed, some blamed Spring-heeled Jack for the Devil’s Footprints.

Our nightmares of leaping devils don’t, however, seem to have completely faded, even in modern times. According to an article on the British Paranormal Website, in 2007 a well-respected couple from Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex – a teacher and businessman – were driving home from a restaurant at about 10.00 pm on an especially dark night. Passing a wood, they became aware of movement in the undergrowth and thought it was a deer. Suddenly a strange creature leapt from the trees. The couple described it as a cloven-hoofed, very thin and bearded biped. This Pan-type figure trotted into the middle of the road, stared at the couple and unleashed a cry ‘half-way between a tyre’s screech and a cow’s moo’. The creature then disappeared back into the wood with a ‘movement like that of a stop-motion figure from an old claymation movie, being both disjointed and angular.’

The couple saw this character near a gorge called the Devil’s Dyke, an area that’s been the location of many ‘devil sightings’. The article’s writer, A.L. Cuin, states the couple ‘are known personally to me and they are definitely not the kind of people to indulge in fantasies and then make them known. They are convinced by what they saw and will accept no challenge to their account.’ Make of that what you choose.

(This article’s main image is courtesy of Flower. An excellent summary of the Devil’s Footprints phenomenon, and copies of primary and secondary sources, can be found in this resource edited by Mike Dash.)

The post The Devil’s Footprints – Devon’s Diabolical Hoofmarks in the Snow appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

Intrigued by how the tomb towers over the other grave markers, you might move closer and observe its Neo-Egyptian design. You might suspect this mausoleum has generated legends. Coming closer still, walking up the steps, you’d see the tomb’s huge bronze door bears a band of hieroglyphs. Scarab beetles are prominent – Ancient Egyptian symbols of the defiance of death and time and the embrace of the eternal.

You’d be right to think this mausoleum has become a node of London legend, a focus for urban myths, a nexus of the most incredible folklore. Some believe the tomb contains a working time machine or teleportation device, cobbled together by an eccentric Victorian inventor with the help of an Egyptologist who’d discovered scientific secrets while decoding hieroglyphs on the walls of tombs or carved into sarcophagi.

The tomb is the resting place of Hannah Courtoy – a wealthy London heiress obsessed with Ancient Egypt – and her two spinster daughters. The men responsible for the time machine the Courtoys allegedly share their mausoleum with also lie in Brompton Cemetery. Just a few metres from the Courtoy tomb is the grave of the Egyptologist Joseph Bonomi, his headstone carved with a depiction of the jackal-headed god Anubis. And near the graves of Bonomi and Courtoy – in an unmarked plot – lies Samuel Alfred Warner, an idiosyncratic inventor whose ideas for ‘teleporting torpedoes’ so interested the British Navy they allowed him to blow up boats in the English Channel.

The hieroglyph-inscribed door of the Neo-Egyptian Courtoy tomb, Brompton Cemetery, London – note the scarab beetles, symbolising victory over death. (Photo: Royal Parks)

But what were the connections between Hannah Courtoy, Joseph Bonomi and Samuel Warner? How did Hannah come by the immense wealth needed to build such a spectacular tomb? Could there be any truth in the legend that a time machine lurks in the Courtoy mausoleum? And might Hannah Courtoy, her daughters, Bonomi and Warner still be zipping through time and space today, having cheated aging and death and just occasionally returning to their Brompton Cemetery base?

Keep reading for tales of disagreeable French wigmakers, knife-armed prostitutes, bitterly contested wills, murders undertaken to protect national security, and secret teleportation passages to other London Victorian graveyards and even Paris cemeteries.

Hannah Courtoy’s Tomb in London’s Brompton Cemetery

Brompton Cemetery is one of London’s so-called Magnificent Seven – the ring of large Victorian graveyards built in the countryside on the then-outskirts of the capital to relieve pressure on the rapidly growing city’s gruesomely overcrowded churchyards and burial grounds. Kensal Green Cemetery opened in 1833 while the highly gothic West Norwood Cemetery was accepting burials by 1837. Highgate Cemetery opened in 1839; Abney Park, Nunhead and Brompton Cemeteries were in business by 1840; and Tower Hamlets Cemetery opened in 1841.

Victorian angels in Brompton Cemetery, London. (Photo: Edwardx)

These graveyards – with typical Victorian enthusiasm – were grandly laid out, with vast gates, long tree-shaded avenues, landscaped grounds and elaborate networks of catacombs. Much of the design drew inspiration from ancient civilisations and earlier epochs. Highgate Cemetery boasts an imposing Egyptian-style gate leading into the Egyptian Avenue while the padlocked doors to Brompton Cemetery’s extensive catacombs are emblazoned with the age-old occult symbol of snakes curling around staffs. In both Brompton and Highgate, urns are kept in buildings known as Columbariums, a custom which draws from Roman mortuary practices. Brompton was planned in the form of an enormous outdoor cathedral, in the style of Rome’s St Peter’s Square and Basilica, with its ‘nave’ running from Old Brompton Road towards the central colonnade and chapel. The cemetery was luxuriantly planted with shrubs and trees. Ornate graves and mausoleums – ranging from pseudo-gothic chapels and Arts-and-Crafts faux-medieval reliquaries to Egyptian-style obelisks (symbolic of the sun god Ra) – have added to Brompton Cemetery’s gloomy yet appealing grandeur.

The Main Avenue in Brompton Cemetery, looking towards the chapel. Note the Neo-Egyptian obelisks. (Photo: Russell Trebor)

Those buried at Brompton include the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, John Keats’s muse Fanny Brawne, the founder of the Cunard shipping line Samuel Cunard, and the murdered Victorian actor William Terriss, whose ghost apparently haunts Covent Garden London Underground Station. Beatrix Potter would stroll the cemetery and pick out names from gravestones for her characters – with Peter Rabbett and Mr Nutkins among those chosen. But – out of all the broken pillars and shrouded urns and praying angels and other Victorian memento mori and funerary art – it’s the Courtoy mausoleum that stands out most.

Completed in 1854, the Courtoy tomb is twenty feet tall and made from polished granite. Its bronze door is ornately inscribed with what appear to be Hannah’s initials, H.C. Egyptian hieroglyphs decorate one of its steps and the tops of its walls, as well as a rectangular band on the door. The mausoleum’s crowned with a structure resembling a stepped pyramid and attractive Egyptian designs adorn its cornices. One thing that’s perhaps drawn the attention of psychogeographers and occultists is the fact the tomb stands on its own kind of island, its own circle of ground in the middle of a crossroads. Crossroads in folklore are liminal places, with the intersection of two roads suggestive of a spot where different states or dimensions might meet – life and death, this world and the otherworld, perhaps even different eras. Crossroads were for a long time sites of gibbets and gallows. Suicides were buried at these junctions and magical rituals conducted. Crossroads were even viewed as places where – as in the case of the blues musician Robert Johnson – you could approach the Devil to ask a favour.

The Courtoy Mausoleum – or Victorian time machine – in London’s Brompton Cemetery. (Photo: Flickering Lamps)

Those with a fondness for the esoteric have also pointed out that – in addition to the hieroglyphs – the tomb bears strange decorations. There are wheel-like motifs at the door’s bottom, which some claim are symbols for – or components of – the time machine. High on the walls, on all four sides of the tomb, are large circular holes. Each of these contain what appears to be a glass orb and each has eight smaller holes in a ring around it. Some say these patterns resemble clocks or dials; others assert the glass spheres are crystals that power the time machine; yet more enthusiasts maintain the holes suck in the sun’s energy or are connected in some way to Bonomi’s explorations of the occult. Many indeed claim Bonomi designed the Courtoy tomb.

Wheel motifs on Brompton Cemetery’s Courtoy tomb – are they components of a time machine? (Photo: Dead Good Travel)

A mausoleum like this must have cost a huge amount of money and we must ask where Hannah got it from, especially as she started life at a humble level, working as a servant and barmaid. Also, we might wonder exactly how Bonomi and Warner are said to have collaborated with regards to the strange tomb and the weird machine it supposedly contains. Read on and we’ll try to find out.

The Unusual Life and Strange Egyptian Obsessions of Hannah Courtoy

Hannah Courtoy was born Hannah Peters, most sources say in 1784. She left home young, escaping an abusive father, and worked as a housekeeper and in taverns. In 1800, a friend introduced her to John Courtoy, a 70-year-old man in bad health. Of French descent and originally a wigmaker, Courtoy had made an enormous fortune from lending money. He appointed Hannah his housekeeper and a close relationship soon developed between the two. The sources are unclear about what Courtoy’s malady was, but some hint it had been caused by a psychological trauma triggered by a prostitute slashing at him with a knife.

Whatever effect this incident had on Courtoy’s physical health, it appears – at least – to have had a lasting mental impact, making him antisocial and taciturn. He warmed to his young housekeeper, however, and – within a year of entering his employment – Hannah gave birth to the first of what would be three daughters. Hannah always claimed the daughters were John Courtoy’s and she took his name though they never married. Some, however, suspecting Hannah of gold-digging, believed the friend who’d introduced her to Courtoy – one Francis Grosso – had fathered the girls.

Despite managing to get closer to the grumpy Courtoy than anyone else, Hannah still struggled with living with a man who could be profoundly unpleasant. She appears to have escaped into the fascinating world of Ancient Egyptian civilisation and myth, topics which obsessed many Georgians and Victorians. The colonial opening up of Egypt by the British and French and advances in archaeology fuelled these fixations. In 1877-8, the almost-3,500-year-old obelisk Cleopatra’s Needle was shipped to London stand next to the Thames. Plundered objects filled the British Museum while newspapers were full of the exploits of archaeologists and – sometimes – the curses placed upon them by the angry Pharaohs whose tombs they broke into. One particularly outlandish story had a mummy’s screaming ghost haunting not only the British Museum, but also a nearby London Underground Station the spook accessed via a secret tunnel. Another strange episode had an English doctor attempting mummification himself, turning a Manchester heiress into a mummy that ended up exhibited in one of that city’s museums. Egyptian motifs appeared on products as diverse as jewellery and furniture, Egyptian themes invaded operas and novels, and miniature pyramids even popped up in British graveyards to hold the remains of eccentric squires and wealthy professional men. Hannah – like so many of her compatriots – appears to have become more and more engrossed with the mystical society that once flourished on the banks of the Nile.

The gates to the catacombs of Brompton Cemetery, London, decorated with the occult emblem of snakes curling around staffs. Note also the memento mori symbols of downward-facing torches and a winged hourglass. (Photo: Royal Parks)

As John Courtoy aged and his health further declined, Hannah seems to have gained more influence over him. In 1810, Courtoy made a will leaving most of his fortune to an ex-wife named Mary Anne Woolley and their five children. This will was amended in 1814 to award Hannah the largest share of Courtoy’s assets. When Courtoy died in 1818, both Woolley and Courtoy’s French relatives challenged the amended will, claiming Courtoy had developed dementia and hadn’t been completely in his senses when he’d altered the document. Court battles dragged on until 1827, but by this date Hannah and her daughters had secured most of Courtoy’s wealth.

Hannah, boosted by her inheritance, lived a lavish life, a life that meant she could indulge even more in her ‘Egyptomania’. Indeed, her wealth and status gave her access to some of those most knowledgeable about Ancient Egypt. Diaries kept by a Courtoy servant, Maureen Sayers, show a regular visitor to the house was the Egyptologist Joseph Bonomi. Hannah and Bonomi soon struck up a friendship and spent hours discussing Egyptian hieroglyphs, religion, magic and astrology. All this led Hannah to conclude the Egyptians had possessed a deep understanding of the cosmos and its workings. One subject Hannah and Bonomi may have dwelled on was time travel. The Victorians frequently speculated that the Ancient Egyptians had knowledge of this art. H.G. Wells’ 1895 novella The Time Machine, for instance, features the motif of the Sphinx. During their lengthy chats about Egyptian lore, the idea seems to have been raised of Hannah funding one of Bonomi’s expeditions. (Cynics might say this could explain the amount of time Bonomi dedicated to his female disciple). The two also arranged for the construction of a 175-foot monument to the Duke of Wellington, a structure they made sure resembled an Egyptian obelisk.

Hannah Courtoy’s friendship with Bonomi continued as the years passed. Many claim Hannah chose him to design her tomb and its Neo-Egyptian style certainly pays homage to their obsessions. The elaborate mausoleum was, however, not ready when Hannah passed away on 26th January 1849 at 14 Wilton Crescent, Belgravia, one of London’s most exclusive addresses. It would be half-a-decade before Hannah’s body could be moved into its final – though opulent – abode. Two of Hannah’s daughters, Mary and Elizabeth – neither of whom married, reputedly because they didn’t want men chasing their money – joined her in the mausoleum, in 1876 and 1895 respectively. Hannah’s other daughter Susannah – who married the barrister Septimus Holmes Godson – is buried elsewhere in Brompton Cemetery.

The Courtoy tomb – rumoured to be a Victorian time machine – in London’s Brompton Cemetery. (Photo: Mirella Pastrav)

Mysteriously, no plans of the Courtoy tomb can be found in Brompton Cemetery’s archives: some claim it’s the only tomb for which plans are unavailable. But couldn’t the tomb just be opened so we can know what’s inside? The mausoleum’s key is missing and – as a large key of archaic design would have to be specially made to unlock the tomb – the door cannot simply be opened by a locksmith. Perhaps tellingly, the cemetery authorities seem reluctant to have such a key created. But did Bonomi really design Hannah’s mausoleum? And could the Courtoy tomb really contain a Victorian-Egyptian time machine or teleportation device? To answer such questions, we’ll need to know a little more about the lives of Joseph Bonomi and Samuel Alfred Warner.

Joseph Bonomi the Younger – Did He Deduce the Secrets of Time Travel during His Egyptian Research?

Joseph Bonomi the Younger was born in London in 1796. His father – the unsurprisingly named – Joseph Bonomi the Elder was an Italian immigrant, who grew famous for his skill as an architect and draughtsman and as a designer of country houses. An older brother, Ignatius Bonomi, was also a noted architect.

Joseph the Younger – who would become well-known as a sculptor, artist, Egyptologist and museum curator – began his artistic journey by studying at the Royal Academy. In 1822, he travelled to Rome – his father’s native city – to continue his education there, but after several months found himself in debt. He was rescued by the Scottish antiquarian and Egyptologist Robert Hay, who offered him a modestly paid commission to join an expedition to Egypt. Thus began a lifelong fascination for Bonomi.

Portrait of the Egyptologist Joseph Bonomi the Younger, by Matilda Sharpe (1868) – did he discover the secrets of time travel?

In Egypt, he sketched antiquities and temple interiors, even inventing a kind of drawing-frame-cum-viewfinder to record such ancient remains more accurately. Bonomi also produced plaster casts of the reliefs of the famous temples of Kalabsha. After two years with Hay, Bonomi – resentful at his low salary – fell out with him. He stayed in Egypt, however, living in Cairo, where he illustrated the pioneering Egyptologist James Burton’s Excerpta hieroglyphica. His finances restored by such work, Bonomi re-joined Hay in 1832 and – after a couple more years in Egypt – undertook tours of Syria and Palestine. In 1839, he contributed illustrations to Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians by Sir John Gardiner Wilkinson, a man described as ‘the father of British Egyptology’.

Upon his return to England, Bonomi followed his family tradition by branching out into architecture. He co-designed the entrance to Abney Park Cemetery, ensuring the gateway was built in an Egyptian style, complete with hieroglyphs signifying the graveyard was ‘the Abode of the Mortal Part of Man’. Bonomi masterminded the famous Egyptian facade for the Temple Works flax mill in Leeds, which opened in 1841, and in 1850 he designed an ‘Egyptian spring’ at Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire, for the mathematician, antiquarian and numismatist Dr John Lee. Between 1842 and 1844, he even fitted in another tour of Egypt, this time as part of a Prussian expedition.

Abney Park Cemetery’s Neo-Egyptian gateway, designed by Joseph Bonomi the Younger. (Photo: Tarquin Binary)

Bonomi kept up his practice of being an illustrator and was considered one of the most skilled reproducers of hieroglyphs in Britain. He  published books on Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia illustrated with his own drawings and wrote well-received works on obelisks and other Egyptian monuments. He also compiled and illustrated many Egyptian collections, including that of the Egyptologist Samuel Birch, who produced a hieroglyphical grammar and dictionary and translated The Book of the Dead. Along with the architect Owen Jones, Bonomi set up the Egyptian Court in the spectacular Crystal Palace when – after it had housed the Great Exhibition of 1851 – it was rebuilt in Sydenham, South London, in 1854. Bonomi also helped arrange the Egyptian exhibits in the British Museum and became the curator of the Sir John Soames Museum in 1861. Joseph Bonomi the Younger died in March 1878 and was laid to rest in Brompton Cemetery.

The Neo-Egyptian Facade of Temple Works flax mill in Leeds, designed by Joseph Bonomi the Younger. (Photo: Sarah Grice)

So Joseph Bonomi had a profound understanding of hieroglyphs and Ancient Egyptian culture and had worked closely with many of Britain’s leading scholars of Egyptology. He’d also proved himself as a architect of Neo-Egyptian buildings. It’s therefore entirely possible that Hannah Courtoy would have asked him to design her mausoleum and that – as he was close to her – Bonomi would have accepted the job. While we don’t know if this is what took place, those who argue there’s a connection between Bonomi and the Courtoy tomb point to an intriguing detail on Bonomi’s own headstone.

Bonomi’s tombstone is fairly modest, certainly in comparison to the lavish Courtoy mausoleum. At its top are the Christian symbols of a cross and the Greek letters alpha and omega, but further down things get a lot more Egyptian. Towards the stone’s foot is an engraving of the Egyptian deity Anubis, the jackal-headed god of death, mummification, embalming, tombs, cemeteries and the afterlife. There are two intriguing things about the depiction of the deity. One is that the god is facing in the direction of the Courtoy tomb. The other is that Anubis is positioned on some sort of structure or plinth. Some have remarked on this edifice’s similarity to the Courtoy mausoleum. While the dimensions of Anubis’s plinth don’t exactly match the trapezoid shape of the Courtoy tomb, you have to admit – if you allow just a little imagination to colour your thinking – that the resemblance is curious to say the least.

Joseph Bonomi’s gravestone in Brompton Cemetery – note the depiction of the Egyptian god Anubis: is he looking towards the Courtoy tomb? (Photo: Edward Hands)

But what of the more outlandish notion that Bonomi – while deciphering hieroglyphs – stumbled upon the secrets of time travel and helped build a time machine that he hid in the tomb? And if he did make such a bizarre discovery, how might Bonomi have transformed this esoteric knowledge into a practical invention? Bonomi – despite his many talents, deep learning and artistic skill – wouldn’t have had the technical know-how to create such a cutting-edge contraption. In fact, no one in Victorian England would have unless they’d managed to crack some of the most difficult scientific puzzles facing humanity and made a technological leap centuries ahead of their time. One name has been proposed for a man who might just have accomplished such things – Samuel Alfred Warner.

Did Samuel Alfred Warner Invent Brompton Cemetery’s Time Machine?

Samuel Alfred Warner was born in 1793 in Heathfield, East Sussex. His father, William, a carpenter, was rumoured to have a sideline in smuggling. Little is known of Samuel’s early life, but by 1819 he appears to have been working with a London chemist on an explosive. For some time, he served King Pedro I of Brazil and on returning to England managed to capture the interest of King William IV with claims he’d invented secret weapons.

From around 1830, Warner maintained he’d produced two startling innovations. One was what he termed an ‘invisible shell’, a kind of high explosive underwater mine or torpedo ‘no bigger than a duck’s egg’. The other he called the ‘long range’, which, it appears, was a balloon that dropped the ‘invisible shells’ automatically. Warner seems to have attempted an unsuccessful trial of these weapons in collaboration with Charles Green, a pioneering hot air balloonist.

Undeterred, Warner pressed on, conducting a demonstration on an Essex lake that was watched by the prime minister Sir Robert Peel – a demonstration that saw a boat blown up. The government were intrigued and committees were appointed to look into Warner’s inventions. The problem was that, when questioned by the committees, Warner refused to reveal any details of his gizmos until he’d been assured of a payment of £200,000 for each, a staggering sum for the time. Warner – seen by many as a charlatan today – further complicated matters by claiming that during the Napoleonic Wars he’d served under his father on a ship chartered by the British government for espionage purposes and that he’d destroyed two enemy vessels using his inventions. He provided no proof for this narrative, which was marred by anachronisms.

Nevertheless, a further trial of Warner’s devices was arranged, in the English Channel off Brighton in 1844. A substantial crowd watched another ship being destroyed, but officials deemed they couldn’t ascertain what exactly had caused this. Sceptics suspected Warner had attached explosives to an already weakened vessel before the demonstration began. The establishment, however, didn’t lose faith in Warner’s gadgets and in 1852 the House of Lords appointed another committee to examine his claims. After this committee had existed for only one week, though, the Duke of Wellington decided that – as the matter was of military importance – the Ordinance Department should investigate it. The Ordinance Department, however, doesn’t appear to have followed through with any inquiry and official enthusiasm for Warner’s ideas lapsed.

In the early days of December 1853, Warner died in unclear circumstances, leaving a widow and seven children. The fact that he was buried in an unmarked grave indicates he made little – if any – money from his supposedly revolutionary inventions.

So what could connect this offbeat inventor with Joseph Bonomi and Hannah Courtoy and what might link him to the Courtoy tomb and the time machine it allegedly contains? Some say Warner knew or was friends with Bonomi or that for a time the pair were business partners. There’s also the mystery of what exactly Warner’s weapons were capable of. It’s claimed that – as the remote detonation of a bomb would have been impossible with the technology of the era – Warner’s torpedo could have only worked via some kind of teleportation or time slip. This – it’s asserted – Warner achieved thanks to secret knowledge gleaned from hieroglyphs by his friend Bonomi. Funded by Hannah’s fortune, the duo then developed their ideas and constructed a time machine, which they hid in Brompton Cemetery’s Courtoy tomb.

Hannah Courtoy’s Neo-Egyptian tomb in London’s Brompton Cemetery – does it conceal a Victorian time machine? (Photo: Edwardx)

Mythmakers have also seized on the date and unexplained manner of Warner’s death. He died not long after official interest in his theories ended. Might the government have decided his weapons were simply too dangerous to be unleashed on the world or feared them falling under the control of an enemy nation? Could the powers-that-be have therefore murdered Warner to prevent him offering his services to another state or inflicting mass carnage on the planet? Some have even suggested it was Bonomi who bumped Warner off, perhaps out of jealousy or to keep the knowledge of their remarkable invention secret. Others say it isn’t Warner who lies in the unmarked grave – the body in there’s just a decoy and Warner’s actually alive and traversing the aeons in his contraption.

Questions, those fond of a good urban legend assert, do remain. Warner was buried around the time the Courtoy tomb was completed. And Bonomi’s Egyptian-themed headstone was set up not long before Warner’s death. Though Bonomi wouldn’t pass on till many years later, the stone was erected to mark the resting place of four of his children who died of whooping cough in 1852. Might there be more than coincidence here? And why did Hannah’s tomb take so long to finish if there wasn’t some project of great scientific complexity going on? Let’s plunge deeper into this myth and see if we can find any answers to its riddles.

A Teleportation Chamber and the Making of a Surprisingly Modern Myth

It’s been claimed the Courtoy tomb isn’t actually a time machine at all, but rather a teleportation device. This idea was floated most famously in a 2011 blogpost by the London musician Stephen Coates, otherwise known as the Clerkenwell Kid. Coates maintains that teleportation passageways were created to connect the Courtoy mausoleum to tombs with similar designs in London’s other great Victorian graveyards. In fact, all the Magnificent Seven cemeteries were graced with these Neo-Egyptian teleportation buildings. On his blog, Coates provides photos of tombs in Highgate and Kensal Green with resemblances to the Courtoy mausoleum. Another, at Abney Park, is rumoured to have been designed by Bonomi. Coates admits, however, that the ‘teleportation chambers’ in the other cemeteries ‘appear to have entirely vanished’.

A Neo-Egyptian tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery, London – one of Coates’s alleged teleportation chambers. (Photo: Philafrenzy)

The purpose, Coates claims, of all this teleportation malarkey was to create ‘a transportation grid around London to reduce the time taken to travel the large distances of the vast congested metropolis.’ So, then, a kind of precursor to the London Underground was planned using a hieroglyph-derived method of occult propulsion rather than steam or electricity. Some have taken Coates’s theories further, claiming the metaphysical metro even connects to an Egyptian mausoleum in a Paris graveyard – though it’s uncertain whether this Victorian Eurostar links up with Père Lachaise Cemetery or the burial ground in Montmartre. As for Samuel Alfred Warner’s mysterious demise, Coates feels he may have became ‘lost while teleporting’.

As entertaining as Coates’s blogpost is, I suspect that much of the myth of Brompton Cemetery’s ‘time machine’ grew up from articles like it. An influential article seems to have been one published by the international news agency Reuters on 29th October 1998. This piece, written by Helen Smith and likely with an eye on the upcoming festival of Halloween, features quotes from a little-known author called Howard Webster. Webster states that he began researching the Courtoy tomb after being struck by it while visiting Brompton Cemetery for an unrelated project. The article tells us Webster ‘now believes the twenty-foot-tall building was a time machine built by a maverick Victorian genius, Samuel Warner.’ Webster also makes the now familiar claims that Warner was murdered by the government, that he collaborated with Bonomi and that Hannah Courtoy financed their endeavours. In addition, Webster mentions the engraving of Anubis on Bonomi’s headstone, emphasising that the god is looking towards the mausoleum and that the direction the deity faces also ‘suggests in Egyptian mythology a soul lost out of time.’

Smith’s article also quotes a ‘spokesman at Brompton Cemetery’ called James Mackay, who has a somewhat sober take on Webster’s claims. While Mackay admits it’s possible that ‘some of the papyri they (archaeologists at the time) were decoding dealt with time travel’, he thinks that Warner was ‘an ingenious hoaxer who used tricks to blow up ships for his weapons demonstrations and managed to dupe the Courtoy spinsters into believing he could build them a time machine.’ Mackay does, however, acknowledge that if Warner did believe he was constructing such a device ‘his choice of a cemetery was a shrewd and appropriate one … it was one of the few places where one could work unobserved and where even the most eccentric structures could be explained away.’ Mackay points out that ‘a cemetery where the wealthy and famous are buried is also a location that one could say with great certainty is unlikely to be the subject of redevelopment over time.’ Just like the Egyptian tombs Bonomi imitated, these ‘structures could remain intact over centuries’.

A Victorian gothic mausoleum in London’s Brompton Cemetery. (Photo: Edwardx)

Adding to the mystery, the Reuters article claims ‘there is almost no trace of the Courtoy spinsters. They left no will or other record of their existence, even though the size and opulence of their tomb suggests they were wealthy and influential.’ The article also states the Courtoy mausoleum is the only one in Brompton Cemetery for which no plans can be found, with Mackay remarking ‘the biggest mystery is that you couldn’t build anything in the cemetery without plans and there are no plans’. In addition, Smith’s piece stresses that ‘there is no surviving key’ and that the tomb’s ‘huge bronze door … has not been opened for more than 120 years.’ It also has Webster raising the possibility that ‘Warner’s is not the body in the unmarked grave … I like to believe … he is still alive and travelling through time in his machine.’

I’d suggest this article is the genesis of Brompton Cemetery’s time machine myth. Most of the legend’s central ideas seem to have been arrived at by Webster in his ‘research’. Smith does feature the ‘cemetery spokesman’ Mackay, but it’s not clear from the article if he’s just responding to Webster’s notions or referencing more established folklore. One point he does make, however, is wrong – the Courtoy tomb isn’t the only one in Brompton Cemetery missing its plans. Blueprints are unobtainable for a number of major mausoleums. Likewise, it isn’t in any way exceptional for the keys of old tombs to be lost. The article’s assertion that the Courtoy’s left no will is also incorrect – Hannah Courtoy’s will can be found in the National Archives and is even available online. And I haven’t been able to find any trace of the writer Howard Webster anywhere else despite a thorough trawl through the internet. It’s my suspicion that Webster, an obscure author – having seen the unusual tomb and discovered that a famous Egyptologist and erratic inventor were buried nearby – concocted most of the, admittedly impressive, legend during the 1990s. Popularised by Smith’s widely read article, the myth become a piece of accepted London folklore and others over the years embellished it.

Many of these embellishments, while quaintly fascinating, can also be discounted. The idea that the circular motifs carved into the door’s bottom are components of the time machine is highly questionable. Such indentations are common in Victorian mausoleums – a means of allowing any foul vapours to escape the tomb, thereby preventing gases building up to dangerous levels. As for the ‘crystals’ and ‘dials’ set in the stone near the top, the glass could simply be decoration and the smaller holes also openings through which the fumes of decomposition could disperse.

The ‘missing key’ may have been lost as late as 1980 – some suggest during a visit by Hannah’s descendants though it’s unclear whether they went inside the tomb. The reluctance of the cemetery to replace it is probably down to the fact that having such an implement forged by an expert artisan would be quite an expense, especially for a graveyard full of ancient and precious monuments that must be maintained. The exterior of the Courtoy Mausoleum was, however, repaired in 2009 as frost-cracked chunks of granite had started dropping off the sides.

The Arts-and-Crafts tomb of Frederick Richards Leyland, in the style of a medieval reliquary, Brompton Cemetery. (Photo: Edwardx)

Fresh attention was focused on the Courtoy tomb and its legend when the mausoleum featured on the cover of a 2003 album by the Scottish Musician Drew Mulholland, who records as Mount Vernon Astral Temple. The cover of the album – entitled Musick that Destroys Itself  – shows an spooky vortex radiating from the tomb’s entrance. Stephen Coates’s popular blogpost then added more to the myth. Interestingly, in his post, Coates suggests the Courtoy tomb inspired Dr Who’s Tardis – an intriguing idea for which there’s, unfortunately, no proof. For anyone, however, looking at the tomb and knowing its legends, the realisation it resembles some stone-walled Tardis must inevitably spring to mind. As for his concept of the seven Victorian-Egyptian teleportation chambers, Coates – while admitting he ‘came up with the whole teleportation system as the background to a short story’ – prefers to characterise his idea as an ‘alternative theory based on historical fact’. Maybe there’s just something about creepy Victorian graveyards and their tendency to generate weird folklore – it’s been rumoured, for instance, that vampires have lurked in both Highgate Cemetery and Glasgow’s Southern Necropolis.

Enthusiasm for Brompton Cemetery’s myth shows no sign of abating. For those with an inclination towards the gothic, the cemetery runs moonlight tours, which inevitably stop at the tomb-cum-time-machine. Storytelling sessions have also been organised at the graveyard, by Coates and the storyteller Vanessa Woolf. The money raised will go towards the funding of a key by which the mausoleum could be opened as well as contributing to renovation efforts in the cemetery. The first event took place in 2015 and, Woolf says, ‘We were absolutely overwhelmed with bookings.’

‘There’s a huge interest in the story in London,’ Woolf told the website Mental Floss. ‘This is a story rooted in the secret, in the occult, but no one is quite sure what actually happened.’

But what if a new key could be fabricated? Woolf said, ‘It’s much nicer in a way not having it. It’s all really in the minds of the audience. It’s a slab of rock. The real magic is in their minds.’

Coates, while eager to get a look inside the tomb, still feels that ‘opening it may not establish it’s not a time machine. It may just deepen the mystery.’ He indeed suspects – even if the tomb’s interior proves to be that of an ordinary mausoleum – the really interesting stuff might be concealed in a secret subterranean chamber. Getting access to that would be the next step.

(This article’s main image – of the Neo-Egyptian Courtoy tomb in London’s Brompton Cemetery – is courtesy of Edwardx.)

The post Brompton Cemetery’s Time Machine – a Victorian Contraption Hidden in a London Tomb? appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

But where there are dragons, there are also dragon slayers. Most of the time, these monsters met their nemeses: usually in the form of a sword- or lance-wielding hero. These gallant souls – ranging from farmhands to passing knights to notable landowners – are commemorated up and down the country: in legends and folksongs, in stained glass and on carvings on church bench ends.

But, we may wonder – if such bold individuals existed – might we not expect to find some of their tombs? This blog post will be a search through the churches of drowsy villages, a probe through ruined chapels, a poke around isolated manor houses on fog-shrouded peninsulas in a hunt for the worn memorials, the dragon-decorated grave-slabs, the scale-and-sword-inscribed tombs rumoured to conceal the remains of those still celebrated today for ridding their localities of pestilent reptiles.

In our quest, we might stumble across the swords said to have killed such monsters. We’ll also explore how the tombs of dragon dispatchers have influenced Britain’s best-known Romantic poets and absurdist authors. We’ll unearth accounts of giants’ bones being exhumed, in addition to learning of bottomless pools, dragons over a mile long, eccentric ceremonies involving bishops, the most enormous pies and puddings ever baked, and desperate attempts to outwit the Devil. We’ll also investigate the dark obsessions, sinister fears and strange archetypes that lurk behind tales of dragons and those who cull them. Come with me and we’ll see if we can find England’s three best dragon slayers’ tombs.

Number One: The Knucker and the Slayer’s Slab, Lyminster, Sussex – Bottomless Pools, Greedy Dragons and Massive Pies

A horrendous water dragon – known as a knucker – was reputed to live in a deep pond, called a knucker hole, near Lyminster, Sussex. This knucker – which had the appearance of a winged and hideous sea serpent – would slink out of its pool to rampage around the countryside. It destroyed whole fields of crops right before harvest, gobbled up livestock and even ate humans, though – according to some accounts – it only wolfed down beautiful maidens.

One version of the story states that the King of Sussex – this all occurred in Saxon times, around the 5th century – grew so vexed with the dragon he offered the hand of his daughter in marriage to any man who could kill the monster. A young wandering knight, hearing of this hazardous deal, took up the challenge. After a bloody and exhausting battle, he managed to slay the beast. Following his wedding with the princess, the knight settled down in Sussex. He lived a long and happy life and – after he passed away – the locals gave him a special tombstone to honour his achievement.

A medieval knight slays a dragon.

That gravestone can still be seen in Lyminster, in St Mary Magdalene’s Church. The stone – known as the Slayer’s Slab – is very worn: it originally lay in the churchyard but was moved inside to prevent further damage. If you examine it, locals say, you can make out a sword sculpted against a background of dragons’ ribs. A different piece of folklore claims these ridges were instead caused by a vengeful dragon trying to claw its way down to the slayer in the grave.

Variations on the knucker legend have – rather than knights – men of humbler origin taking the dragon on. Some claim a Lyminster farm boy called Jim Pulk challenged the beast; others say it was a young man named Jim Puttock from the village of Wick or the nearby town of Arundel.

Jim Pulk is said to have baked the most enormous pie and laced it with poison. He loaded this gargantuan pastry onto a cart, which needed two horses to pull it, and took it to the knucker hole. The knucker devoured the pie – and the horses and the cart, but the poison soon worked its effects and the monster died. Jim chopped off the dragon’s head with his scythe and took it as a trophy to the Six Bells Inn, where he intended to enjoy a pint to celebrate.

Seated in the pub, lauded by all as a hero, Jim took a hearty swig of ale and wiped his hand across his mouth to clear away some froth. Tragically, he still had some of the dragon’s noxious blood on his skin or – according to some legends – some poison from the pie. Jim swallowed a few drops, which was enough to kill him. Jim was buried in the churchyard under the Slayer’s Slab, which the local people had carved out of gratitude.

The Slayer’s Slab – can you make out the sword and the dragon’s ribs? (Photo: Odd Days Out)

The Jim Puttock take on the legend has the Mayor of Arundel offering a reward to anyone who could slay the knucker. A record of this tale – told in dialect – was taken down from an old hedger by one Charles G. Joiner in 1929 and published in Sussex County Magazine. According to the hedger, no one at first accepted the mayor’s challenge. The mayor was, however, desperate to get rid of the beast. This was perhaps understandable as the dragon would go ‘spannelling about the brooks by night to see what he could pick up for supper, like a few horses, or cows maybe, he’d snap ’em up as soon as look at ’em.’ Another unpleasant habit the monster had was sitting at a high point on a causeway and if ‘anybody come along there, he’d lick ’em up, like a toad licking flies off a stone.’

The mayor, therefore, doubled his offer and Jim Puttock stepped forward. The mayor commanded everyone to give Jim whatever he asked for, no matter the expense. Jim ordered a ‘gert iron pot’ from the blacksmith, masses of flour from the baker, vast quantities of apples from orchards, and enough lumber from woodsmen to make a ‘gert stack-fire in the middle o’ the square’. He then cooked ‘the biggest pudden that was ever seen’. Jim transported the pudding on a cart to where the knucker was lying, with his immense body sprawled across a hill while ‘tearing up the trees in Batworth Park with his tail.’ His curiosity aroused, the knucker spoke to Jim:

‘How do, man?’

‘How do dragon?’ said Jim.

‘What you got there?’ said dragon, sniffing.

‘Pudden,’ said Jim.

‘Pudden?’ said knucker. ‘What be that?’

‘Just you try,’ said Jim.

In a few seconds, the dragon snaffled up the pudding, the horses and the cart. Jim himself almost got eaten, but avoided being sucked into the dragon’s mouth by hanging onto a tree.

‘Twern’t bad,’ said the knucker, licking his chops.

It soon, however, became clear that the gigantic pudding was more than even the greedy knucker could cope with. The knucker was soon rolling around, roaring, bellowing, vomiting, swivelling his massive eyes and lashing his tail. Jim, meanwhile, had somewhat casually nipped to the pub for a beer. When he came back, the knucker was complaining of a terrible bellyache.

‘Never mind,’ said Jim. ‘I’ve got a pill here, soon cure that.’

‘Where?’ said the knucker, bending his great head forward.

‘Here,’ said Jim.

Jim brought out an axe from behind his back and cut the dragon’s head clean off. Unlike the other Jim, though, Jim Puttock didn’t die after decapitating the monster. He lived out his years and – when his time came – he was buried under the Slayer’s Slab.

The famous Lyminster knucker hole – from where a horrid dragon slithered forth. (Photo: dellagriffiths)

Knucker holes are a common feature of Sussex. These curious pools might only be 20 feet or so across, but are exceptionally deep. They’re often reputed to be bottomless. A story says that, after the knucker’s time, the men of Lyminster tied six bell ropes from the church together and fed them down into the pool, but they didn’t touch the bottom. The pool was eventually explored by divers, who discovered it had a depth of around 30 feet. Knucker holes are fed by underground springs, keeping the water fresh and relatively warm. Though you’d imagine Lyminster’s knucker hole would have been polluted by the poisonous dragon, the pond’s water was actually thought to have healing properties. Locals used to bottle it as a cure for all ailments. Today, sadly, the famous knucker hole is fenced off with barbed wire and used to breed trout.

A knucker hole at Lancing was believed to be bottomless or to go down to the other side of the world. More knucker holes could be found at Shoreham, Binstead, Worthing and in other places and many were reputed to have their dragons. People noticed the warm pools gave off steam in frosty weather – perhaps the legends of dragons partly came from that. Maybe the supposedly fathomless ponds connected the knucker holes in the popular mind with another bottomless pit – that occupied by the great dragon, the Devil. Or parents might have used stories of knuckers to scare their children away from the dangerous pools.

A knucker hole on the Sompting Estate, Sussex, England – apparently, a cart was once lost in its depths. (Photo: Sompting Estate)

It’s interesting that the tale of the Lyminster knucker is set in Saxon times. ‘Knucker’ probably comes from the Saxon word ‘nicor’, meaning ‘water monster’. This term can be found in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, in which the epic’s hero clambers ‘o’er stone-cliffs steep … narrow passes and unknown ways, headlands sheer, and the haunts of the nicors.’

Similar words exist across European cultures. The word ‘nixie’ can mean water spirit. In Iceland, nykur means water horse; in German, a nickel is an underground goblin while a similar creature is known as a knocker in Cornwall. Water spirits are called neck in Scandinavia and näkki in Finland. Näcken are Scandinavian water men while näkineiu are mermaids in Estonia. Most of these words describe some kind of frightening or supernatural being, often connected – like knuckers – with water. Maybe a similar connotation can even be found in the colloquial term for the Devil ‘Old Nick’.

As for the Slayer’s Slab, the gravestone bears no inscription so it’s impossible to know who it commemorates. A close examination, however, will show that – rather than a sword lying on a dragon’s ribs – the stone actually depicts a cross on a herringbone background. This unusual stone may have been co-opted to add colour to a local knucker legend or might have actually generated the legend itself, with the story being invented to explain the stone. I’d suspect the former explanation is more probable. One child in the 1930s, however, believed the tales about the dragon so implicitly he’d regularly leave snapdragons on the grave. A stained glass window in St Mary Magdalene’s Church shows Jim Pulk offering the dragon his pie, but it’s hardly the size of the pie of legend or likely to finish the beast off.

Window showing dragon slayer Jim Pulk, with the knucker, Lyminster. The pie is rather smaller than in the legend. (Photo: Odd Days Out)

Number Two: Tomb of Piers Shonks, the Dragon Slayer of Brent Pelham, Hertfordshire

If you were to browse around St Mary’s Church, in the village of Brent Pelham, Hertfordshire, you might come across the strangest tomb in an alcove in the nave’s north wall. There’s an ornately carved slab of black marble – it’s well-worn, but if you examined it, you’d make out a dragon and flames as well as angels and an elaborate cross. The dragon – via a spear thrust in its mouth – is receiving its comeuppance. Above the slab is an inscription leaving no doubt this tomb commemorates a dragon slayer:

‘Nothing of Cadmus nor St George, those names

of great renown, survives them but their fames;

Time was so sharp set as to make no Bones

Of theirs, nor of their monumental Stones.

But Shonks, one serpent kills, t’other defies,

And in this wall, as in a fortress lies.

Piers Shonks was a local lord who slew the infamous dragon of Brent Pelham, a winged serpent with armour-like scales. This monster had made its home in a cave beneath the roots of an ancient yew tree that stood just outside the village, a den that proved a perfect base from which to terrorise the neighbourhood. Some time around the Norman Conquest, Piers Shonks – who resided in a moated manor house whose ruins can still be seen in Brent Pelham – promised to rid his domains of this reptilian menace.

Shonks, however, seems to have been more than just a noble – he had something of the magical and monstrous about him. A giant who – according to some accounts – stood at 23 feet tall, Shonks was famed as a hunter: rumour claimed his hounds were winged. Piers set out to face Brent Pelham’s terrifying dragon accompanied by just one servant and these faithful and swift dogs.

The inscription on the tomb of the dragon slayer Piers Shonks, in Brent Pelham, Hertfordshire, England. (Photo: Stepneyrobarts) 

He confronted the beast at its lair and – after a long and bloody combat – killed it by shoving his spear down its throat. But Shonks wasn’t able to enjoy his triumph for long. There was an almighty crash of thunder, an overpowering stench of brimstone and the Devil himself appeared. The Fiend was furious about the slaughter of one of his favourite monsters and he promised that – when Shonks died – he’d claim his soul. Just to make sure the dragon slayer understood his spirit was doomed, the Devil pledged that Piers wouldn’t escape his scaly clutches whether he was buried in the church or outside it.

Piers didn’t seem worried about the Devil’s threat. He lived a fulfilled life and – when he lay dying in 1086 – he asked a servant to bring him his bow. With the last of his strength, Piers fired an arrow and demanded he be buried wherever the arrow came down. The arrow flew through a window of the church and collided with its north wall so that was where his tomb was built. As Shonks was interred neither in the church nor outside it, the Devil was thwarted from stealing his soul.

But, as I said, Piers Shonks had something uncanny about him. Even the obstacle of death didn’t prevent him protecting the people of Brent Pelham. A man – named Jack O’Pelham – once stole a faggot, but just before he reached his home, the spirit of Piers Shonks appeared. Jack fainted from shock and was so shaken he vowed he’d never again commit a criminal act. Shonks also haunts the churchyard and church, frightening any who’d cause mischief in these holy precincts.

The dragon on Piers Shonks’s tomb, Brent Pelham – does this depict the manner in which Shonks disposed of the beast? (Photo: Icknield Indagations)

To any sceptics who might doubt the legend of Piers Shonks, villagers have a few things to say. Folklore states Shonks was a giant and its said that – in 1835 – Shonks’s tomb was opened. The bones found within might not have quite been those of a 23-foot man, but the skeleton was of a person who’d have measured nine feet. Some think that, before the dragon took up residence near Brent Pelham, it lived close to the village of Barkway. Out of gratitude for the slaying of the monster – until 1900 – Barkway paid Brent Pelham six shillings a year ‘dragon rent’. There’s also Brent Pelham’s name. ‘Brent’ means ‘burnt’, which refers to the destruction the dragon wreaked.

The sceptics might, however, have a few things to say back. A stylistic analysis of the marble tomb suggests that – if Piers Shonks died in 1086 – the tomb would have been constructed about 200 years too late. The tomb – like the Slayer’s Slab – has no inscription to indicate who lays within it, but its carved motifs don’t prove it holds a dragon slayer’s bones. The fiery dragon likely represents the Devil. The tomb is also decorated with the emblems of the Four Evangelists: an angel, eagle, lion and bull. These, along with the cross, are likely to symbolise Christianity overcoming Satan’s power. A devilish dragon being skewered in the mouth is also a common medieval image.

The inscription on the wall above the tomb is a much later addition, probably dating from the late 16th or early 17th century. Perhaps an antiquarian of that time – knowing Piers Shonks’s legend and seeing a dragon on the slab – erroneously connected the two. Some suspect a vicar of Brent Pelham, the Reverend Raphael Keen (died 1614), had the lines chiselled there.

The tomb of dragon slayer Piers Shonks, Brent Pelham. Note the Christian symbols of an angel and cross as well as the Four Evangelists’ emblems. The angel is carrying a man up to heaven in a piece of fabric, but he looks a little small for the gigantic Shonks! (Photo: Icknield Indagations)

As for ‘Brent’ meaning ‘burnt’, this is far more likely to refer to a 12th-century fire that destroyed the village rather than flames a dragon vomited. Interestingly, though, ‘Pelham’ means ‘place of springs’, perhaps suggesting a link between dragons and water like in the case of the knucker above. The date the dragon slaying reputedly took place is also intriguing. Piers Shonks is said to have been a Norman knight and a number of dragon-slaying legends are set in the years around the 1066 Conquest. Norman-descended families could have propagated these myths to bolster their claims to their new lands.

Several common folkloric motifs can be seen in the Piers Shonks story. There’s the idea of a churchyard guardian. Some folktales claim the soul of the first – or last – person interred in a graveyard is tasked with guarding it. As a result, black dogs were sometimes buried in churchyards or church foundations – so their spirits could relieve human ghosts from such burdensome duties. At Brent Pelham, it seems, these responsibilities were assumed by the protective spirit of Piers Shonks.

As for the burial in the church wall as a ruse to evade Satan, similar tales can be found elsewhere. In Yspytty Ystwyth, Dyfed, a wizard who’d promised the Devil his soul ‘whether buried within a church or out’ tricked the Evil One by pulling off the same stunt. The Brent Pelham tale may have partly grown up to explain the tomb’s presence in the wall. The church was rebuilt in the middle of the 14th century so it seems the tomb is older than the church – might the tomb have originally not been in the wall but been incorporated into it during this reconstruction?

Number Three: The Sockburn Worm and the Tomb of Sir John Conyers, County Durham – Alice in Wonderland, Romantic Poets and a Dragon Slaying Sword

Effigy said to be of Sir John Conyers, slayer of the Sockburn Worm. (Photo: Brian Combs)

On the bridge across the River Tees between the villages of Croft (North Yorkshire) and Hurworth (County Durham) the oddest ceremony takes place. Whenever a new Bishop of Durham is selected, he must pause upon this bridge on his journey north, where he’s confronted by the sword-brandishing mayor of the nearby town of Darlington. The mayor tells him:

‘My Lord Bishop. I hereby present you with the falchion wherewith the champion Conyers slew the worm, dragon or fiery flying serpent which destroyed man, woman and child; in memory of which the king then reigning gave him the manor of Sockburn, to hold by this tenure, that upon the first entrance of every bishop into the county the falchion should be presented.’

This custom is a revival of a tradition that used to involve the Lord of the Sockburn (an eerie and isolated peninsula in a bend of the Tees) and every newly appointed Prince Bishop (who were once the powerful ecclesiastical and secular rulers of County Durham). The lord would make the speech above and present the falchion (a type of medieval sword) to the Prince Bishop who’d then give it back and bid the lord enjoy the possession of his lands. The ceremony was obviously a way in which the lord could show loyalty to the Prince Bishop while still having considerable freedom over his estate.

The Bishop of Durham receiving a replica of the falchion that killed the Sockburn Worm. (Photo: The Durham Cow)

The ceremony – for several centuries – seems to have been a big occasion. Bishop Cosin wrote about going through it in 1661 when fording the Tees. He stated that ‘the numbers of gentry, clergy and other people was very great, and at my entrance through the river Tees there was scarce any water to be seen for the multitude of horse and men that filled it, when the sword that killed the dragon was delivered to me with all the formality of trumpets and gunshots and acclamations that might be made.’

Legend does indeed claim that Sir John Conyers, a young local noble, slayed a dragon. The Sockburn Worm – either a wyvern (two-legged dragon) or flying serpent – had terrorised the peninsula for seven years, devouring farm animals as well as any humans who got in its way. The creature had exceptionally bad breath. A manuscript in the British Museum, dated from the first half of the 1600s, complains of its ‘monstrous venoms and poysons …. for the scent of the poyson was so strong, that no person was able to abide it.’

Shortly before the Norman Conquest, some say in 1063, Sir John decided something had to be done. He went in armour to Sockburn’s All Saints’ Church and pledged the life of his only ‘sonne to the holy ghost’. Hoping God was now on his side, he went out to face the horrid worm, armed with his falchion. Sir John hacked bravely at the beast while dodging its corrosive breath and – after an intense struggle – was triumphant. He kicked some of the worm’s stinking carcass into the River Tees before burying the rest on the peninsula. A grey stone – which you can still see today – marks where the dragon lies. News of Conyers’ victory spread through the nation and the king was so relieved to have his realm freed from the beast he granted Sir John and his descendants possession of Sockburn in perpetuity.

But though we can see the worm’s grave, what of Sir John’s tomb? All Saints’ Church is now a ruin, but for many years it contained a fine stone effigy of a recumbent knight, an effigy local people have always claimed decorated the resting place of Sir John Conyers. The knight is clad in a coat of mail; he holds a triangular shield and clutches a sword in his right hand. There’s a carving of a dog and wyvern fighting at his feet, which – it’s asserted – is a reference to the very wyvern Conyers killed. As the church fell into ever-greater disrepair, the effigy was moved into the somewhat more robust Conyers Chapel, which was added onto the church in the 14th century and reroofed in 1900. Sir John’s effigy remains there today.

A wyvern and dog fight at the foot of Sir John Conyers’ effigy, in Sockburn, County Durham, England. (Photo: Hypnogoria)

Though Sir John’s falchion was presented in the ceremony for hundreds of years, the sword used in the modern ritual is a replica. You can, however, still see the original, dragon-slaying sword. The sword was kept in Sockburn Hall manor house until 1947, when it was donated to Durham Cathedral. It’s displayed in a glass case and – for a small fee – you can see it as part of the Cathedral’s Open Treasure Exhibition.

The Conyers Falchion in Durham Cathedral – did this sword slay the Sockburn Worm?

The Sockburn Peninsula occupies a deep bend in the Tees. It’s sparsely populated and not on the way to anywhere else, giving it a spooky, isolated feel. There’s just an expanse of flat fields, the calm river, eerie silence; the only human structures are the manor house, the ruined church, and a few farm buildings. It’s as if the dragon’s ghost looms over the vicinity, injecting the venom of gloom into the air or hovering on the mist that rolls off the river. Despite its dreary quiet, however, Sockburn has managed to make some impressive contributions to literature and history.

The peninsula was a site of early Christian importance. Bishops were crowned there – with Higbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, undergoing this honour around 780 AD and Eanwald, Bishop of York, in 796. A much later churchman associated with the area was the father of Lewis Carroll, creator of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. From 1843 to 1868, Carroll’s father was the rector of Croft, whose attractive church, rectory and churchyard jut out into the Tees next to the bridge where the falchion ceremony is performed. Carroll spent most of his adolescence in the village, having come there aged 11. Carroll’s fictional monster, the Jabberwock, might owe much to the legends of the Sockburn Worm:

‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the jubjub bird and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!’

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought –

So he rested by the Tum Tum tree,

And stood a while in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O’ frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’

He chortled in his joy.

Was Jabberwocky inspired by the dragon-slaying legends around the Sockburn Worm? Illustration by John Tenniel 1871.

Might the Jabberwock be the Sockburn Worm and the vorpal blade Sir John Conyers’ falchion?  One of 11 siblings, Carroll seems to have started making up stories to amuse his large family and the first verse of Jabberwocky was written at Croft. Carroll’s time there may have inspired other literary motifs. In Croft church is a sedilia – a kind of seat for the clergy, built into a wall – upon which is carved the face of a lion or cat. Looked at from a certain angle, when sitting in the pews, this creature appears to have an incredibly wide smile. If you stand up, however, the grin disappears, a kind of reverse of what happens to Carroll’s Cheshire Cat: ‘Well, I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,’ thought Alice, ‘but a grin without a cat. It’s the most curious thing I’ve ever seen in my life!’

In 1950, Croft Rectory’s floorboards were levered up, revealing a number of Victorian artefacts, including a child’s shoe – and a white glove, a glove of the kind the white rabbit might have worn in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll may have taken even more inspiration from the north east of England. His sisters lived in Whitburn, now in Tyne and Wear, where he often visited them and where he wrote parts of Jabberwocky. He’s said to have met a carpenter while walking on a local beach and to have seen a stuffed walrus in the town. He also visited a house named Whitburn Hall – and played crochet on the lawn. The hall’s owner had recently introduced white rabbits into the grounds.

The grinning ‘Cheshire Cat’ in Croft Church that may have inspired Lewis Carroll

Some other literary figures linked with Sockburn were the Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. In 1799, one Tom Hutchinson built a farmhouse at Sockburn, in which he lived with his sisters, Mary and Sara. Tom’s most famous achievement seems to have been breeding a 17-and-a-half-stone sheep, but his siblings would affect literary history. Wordsworth was distantly related to the family and he visited, bringing Coleridge. Wordsworth soon fell for Mary and the pair married in 1802. Coleridge – though married already – succumbed to Sara’s charms. She inspired a poem, Love, in which Coleridge depicts his sweetheart leaning against a statue that sounds similar to Sir John Conyers’ effigy:

She leant against the arméd man,

The statue of the arméd knight

She stood and listened to my lay

Amid the lingering light.

All this takes place in the moonlight  ‘beside the ruined tower’ of a ‘ruin wild and hoary’ that could well be the remains of All Saints’ Church.

Despite all the inspiration it’s given, there’s plenty to query about the Sockburn Worm legend. Various explanations have been suggested for the tale. It may have evolved from memories of dragon-prowed Viking ships that raided up the River Tees or it may have simply been inspired by the wyvern on Sir John’s tomb. The Conyers family appear to have been of Norman descent and the story is set just prior to the 1066 Conquest. The tale then might – like some other English dragon legends – have been created to justify these newcomers’ landholdings in the area.

And what about Sir John Conyers’ falchion? We’re told Sir John slew the Sockburn Worm in 1063. The sword on display in Durham Cathedral features the heraldic decorations of a black eagle on one side of its pommel and the three lions of England on the other. This indicates the sword couldn’t have been made earlier than 1194, when the three-lion motif first appeared on the royal crest. Other details of the sword would probably date it to about 1260-70, around 200 years after Sir John supposedly slew his dragon. It’s possible that the weapon in Durham Cathedral was made to replace an earlier sword, but this must remain speculation. The legend is true in its claim that the Conyers were granted the manor of Sockburn, but this seems to have happened around the start of the 12th century, before the forging of the sword but after the reputed dragon slaying. The sword’s crossguard is, interestingly, decorated with dragons. All this would suggest sword and myth may have been created around the same time to boost the claims of the Norman interlopers, the Conyers, to their estates. The Conyers Falchion is still, however, a precious artefact, as only about half-a-dozen medieval falchions are thought to have survived.

The ruins of Sockburn Church, in which Sir John Conyers prepared to slay the dragon. Behind the ruins is the Conyers Chapel, in which the ‘dragon slayer’s’ effigy lies.  (Photo: Ataffo)

As for the effigy of ‘Sir John’ which Coleridge so romanticised, it cannot be of the legendary dragon slayer. It dates to the middle of the 13th century. A memorial brass near the effigy in the Conyers Chapel does commemorate a Sir John Conyers, but – the plaque’s gothic lettering tells us – he died in 1394.

The idea the Conyers would hold their estates in perpetuity thanks to Sir John’s heroics has also proved false. The Conyers were at Sockburn for centuries, but in the late 1500s or 1600s they moved their family seat a little further north to Horden, near Peterlee, and sold Sockburn to the Blacketts, a family of Newcastle industrialists. This perhaps reflected the slow shift of wealth and power from feudal lords to merchants and manufacturers as the capitalist system took shape, but Sockburn’s new masters still treasured the falchion and still faithfully presented it to each new Bishop of Durham. The Blacketts seem to have sold off or rented out bits of Sockburn to various people as the years passed. As for the Conyers, some went to America, but the English branch of this once proud dragon-slaying clan fell into decline. In 1809, the 9th Baronet, Sir Thomas Conyers, was found living in a workhouse in Chester-le-Street and the family died out completely in 1910.

Sockburn Hall, viewed across the tombs of Sockburn’s abandoned All Saints’ Church. The current hall was built in 1834 on the site of an earlier structure.

The ceremony with the falchion on the bridge also dropped into sad decay. The last time the sword was publicly presented was in 1826, when Sir Edward Blackett handed the weapon to Bishop Van Mildert. There was a rather desultory ritual in June 1860 when the sword was presented to Bishop Villiers when he was crossing the Tees, but this was a private ceremony in which the bishop didn’t even bother to leave his train carriage. The custom then lapsed until it was revived in its modern form with the 1984 appointment of Bishop David Jenkins, with Darlington’s mayor taking on the role of Sockburn’s lord. The falchion – well, its replica, anyway – has been presented to all new bishops ever since.

A Bonus Dragon Slayer’s Tomb: the Case of the Slingsby Serpent, North Yorkshire

The three dragon slayers’ tombs above are probably England’s best-known, but I’m going to tell you of another dragon killer’s grave. Let’s journey to the edge of those mysterious uplands, the North Yorkshire Moors.

Half-a-mile outside the village of Slingsby – beside the road to the town of Malton – a huge and hideous serpent was said to inhabit a deep hole. This serpent – according to the antiquarian Roger Dodsworth (1585-1654) – ‘lived upon the prey of passers-by.’

The dragon was so feared that the road was even diverted so travellers could avoid becoming the beast’s next meal. Dodsworth wrote, ‘The street was turned a mile or so on the south side, which does still show itself if any take pains to survey it.’ By the time the Reverend Thomas Parkinson wrote his Yorkshire Legends and Traditions in 1888, it seems this kink had been ironed out – presumably thanks to the serpent being long slain.

The Slingsby Serpent – a snake with a nasty habit of snacking on travellers

The credit for dispatching this nightmarish creature is given to a knight from the local Wyvill family and his dog. Wyvill attacked and managed to kill the serpent, but in doing so received his death wound. A monument was set up to this hero in Slingsby’s All Saints’ Church. A stone effigy of the dragon slayer was placed on his tomb, with his faithful hound depicted at his feet. The dog is also said to have died due to the delayed effects of the dragon’s poison.

The Wyvill family have lived around Slingsby since 1215  and there’s indeed an effigy of a knight in Slingsby Church, bearing the Wyvill’s coat of arms. It probably commemorates the 14th-century Sir William Wyvill and there was once, apparently, a dog at the statue’s feet. This dog was, according to Dodsworth, ‘a talbot coursing’. A talbot is a – now extinct – light-coloured hound and ‘coursing’ means hunting so the memorial might have represented Sir William’s enjoyment this pastime rather than any dragon-slaying adventures.

A Wyvill effigy in Slingsby Church – does it depict a dragon slayer? The lower part of the statue, where the dog might have been, seems to have been broken off. (Photo: Slingsby Village)

One story claims the dragon was over a mile long. This, however, doesn’t tally with Roger Dodsworth’s descriptions. Though Dodsworth has the dragon living ‘in a great hole, round within’, he depicts it as ‘three yards broad and more’. Hardly big enough for a mile-long creature to curl up inside.

It’s possible, nevertheless, that locals noticed an unusual hole by the road – a pothole or sinkhole maybe – and looked for ways to explain it. Dragons have often been blamed for odd landscape features. The Lambton Worm – a dragon that once plagued County Durham – liked to wrap itself around hills. Two hills – Penshaw Hill near Sunderland and Worm Hill in nearby Fatfield – have strange ridges running around them, marks said to have been left by the worm’s body. The Linton Worm – which terrorised the Scottish borders, causing much land to become desolate – was killed by a local laird. As the worm thrashed about in its death throws, it created a range of hills, a tract of terrain now known as Wormington. Northern Scotland was once harassed by the Stoor Worm, a hideous sea serpent whose breath could contaminate plants and kill animals and humans. When the creature was finally slain, its teeth fell out – becoming the Orkney, Shetland and Faroe Islands – while its body became Iceland.

What Could Lie Behind Myths of Dragon Slayers?

We’ve already looked at a few explanations for the dragon-slaying stories above: the legends could have been invented to explain unusual tombs or landscape features, to justify claims to landholdings or to scare children away from places of danger. But, at a deeper level, what might myths of despatching dragons represent? Remarkably similar dragon-killing stories can be found in many parts of the world and across historical epochs and not all of them can be explained away by weird tombs or Norman nobles anxious to cement the ownership of their estates.

Many dragon myths are connected to two interlinked factors: water and fertility. We’re used to thinking of dragons as fiery beasts, but water plays a role in numerous dragon tales. The knuckers of Sussex lived in deep pools and the Stoor Worm appeared from the sea to cause havoc. The Linton Worm was known for skulking around a loch or bog. The Lambton worm was first pulled from the River Wear by a sinful knight fishing on a Sunday. The shocked knight cast it into a well, where – over several years – it grew to a terrifying size. The Sockburn Worm haunted a river-engirdled peninsula while the etymology of Brent Pelham links its dragon to springs. Some legends of St George say the dragon he killed came out of a lake.

St George slays the dragon in a painting by Johann Konig c. 1630. Notice the water nearby.

A common mythological pattern is the slaying of a dragon or serpent by a god associated with thunder or storms. The dragon, we’re told, has been blocking the rightful flow and distribution of water, thereby causing a drought. This harms the fertility of the land and plunges the world into chaos. A god or hero must fight the beast to restore the natural balance and get the waters flowing again. The fact a storm god usually steps up for this task is obviously connected to the releasing of water.

So, in Indian myth, we have the storm and river god Indra killing a multi-headed serpent who’d caused a drought by trapping waters in his mountain cave. In Greek myth, the serpent Typhon is chaos itself – it has a massive number of heads, many of different animals, with which it babbles a cacophony of disturbing sounds. The monster lays waste to the land, gobbles livestock, and either poisons waterways or drinks them up, turning rivers to dust and sucking seas dry. Typhon challenges Zeus for control of the cosmos, but the sky god defeats the snake with his mighty thunderbolt. Zeus buries the beast’s carcass and good order and natural balance return. The monster’s corpse beneath the earth is, though, blamed for volcanic activity. In Hittite myth, the storm god Tarhunt kills the giant serpent Illuyanka. The Norse thunder god Thor takes on the monstrous sea snake Jörmungandr, who’s destined to threaten the order of the universe during Ragnarök, the Viking Apocalypse. In the Bible, the serpent Leviathan represents the watery primal chaos upon which God imposes order by creating the world.

In the legends of dragon slayers explored in this blogpost, we can see how dragons cause chaos and threaten the fertility of the land. The dragons munch livestock, decimate crops, lay waste to whole regions and poison plants with their foul breath. Only by killing such creatures can our heroes reimpose order and make the land bountiful again.

The dragon slayer either rescuing or marrying the king’s daughter – as in Sussex – could also indicate a concern with fertility. The female (the earth) has been liberated from the monster and – now through her marriage – can be fruitful. The common motif of dragons guarding treasure or a reward being offered for slaying them is probably fertility related too. The ‘treasures’ the dragon hordes symbolise the vital waters, which need to be set free so abundance and prosperity can spread through the land. Interestingly, St George is associated with fertility, sometimes being depicted as green or surrounded by foliage. The name ‘George’ translates as ‘farmer’. 

St George killing the dragon, as depicted by Vitorre Carpaccio 1502-7. Again, water is present.

Dragon legends may also reflect remnants of a darker tradition – that of human sacrifice. This can be seen in the dragon’s penchant for snaffling human beings and – especially – kidnapping or wolfing down young maidens. In Greek myth, the sea monster Cetus ravages the land and it’s felt the only solution is to chain the princess Andromeda to a rock as a sacrifice to the beast. The hero Perseus, however, turns up, kills the creature and receives the hand of the beautiful Andromeda in marriage. Such tales could represent societies moving away from the idea that human sacrifice is necessary to appease the gods and to ensure the land yields sufficient supplies.

The motif of dragon slayers dying while defeating their monsters may also have roots in these disturbing customs: the young man willingly offers up his life for the good of his community and the fertility of the land. At Ragnarök, Thor is destined to kill Jörmungandr as the serpent sprays his poison over the skies and seas. This venom, sadly, will prove too much for Thor who’ll die shortly after slaughtering the creature. Jim Pulk at Lyminster and Wyvill at Slingsby succumb to their dragons while also managing to slay them. Conyers offering up his only son to the Holy Ghost in Sockburn is a Christianised version of ideas of sacrifice.

A different take on dragon legends is put forward by the psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961). For Jung, if I’ve understood him right, dragons represent the watery chaos of the subconscious mind, from which the ego must break free. We must, therefore, slay our dragons so we can develop mentally as individuals. This is a vital step in moving from youth to adulthood so that’s why the dragon slayers of legend are usually young. The treasure the dragon guards represents the precious potential for personal development. Entering the dragon’s dark, horror-filled cave is like plunging into the subconscious mind, from which we’ll hopefully emerge – having faced down our fears – with the riches of a profound psychological experience. Such a process might also be understood as a rebirth in the subconsciousness’s dark womb.

Jung, though, didn’t see dragons as entirely negative creatures. Serpents represent nature – albeit in a chaotic untamed form – and so can heal and nurture as well as destroy. A serpent curling around a stick or glass is a widespread symbol of medicine and it’s interesting that the water of the knucker hole at Lyminster was thought to have curative properties. Serpents, for Jung, can also transmit a primal wisdom. There’s the serpent proffering knowledge in the Garden of Eden and even Christ urged his followers to ‘be wise as serpents’. For Jung, the depiction of dragons as completely evil points to a weakness, a kind of immaturity in the fabric of Christian and Western cultures.

All this might seem a long way from worn slabs and crumbling effigies in rural churches. But perhaps these ‘dragon slayer’s tombs’ and the strange legends around them are our homely English versions of inspiring, terrifying and deeply held archetypes, archetypes of that universal, nightmarish yet ambiguous creature, the dragon.

(This article’s main image shows the face of an effigy that once decorated what was rumoured to be the tomb of the dragon slayer Sir John Conyers in Sockburn, County Durham, England. Photo: Joe Wood)

The post England’s Top 3 Dragon Slayers’ Tombs appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

Above a bronze fountain, the naked Eros teeters gracefully, almost overbalancing but not quite. This god of carnal and romantic love, both bawdy and beautiful, is perhaps a suitable deity to hover over the West End with its numerous distractions and entertainments, pleasures and indulgences, and ephemeral crowds seeking sometimes innocent amusements, but also sometimes darker and more destructive goals.

But why, you might wonder, is a Greek divinity poised in such a place? The statue has a strange and controversial history, a history involving opium wars, heroin addiction, enormous levels of prostitution, naughty World War II servicemen, temperamental fugitive sculptors, puns and ribald word plays, earnest Victorian philanthropists, and outraged calls for Eros to be removed and melted down.

But what if I were to tell you that – contrary to popular belief – Piccadilly Circus’s Eros statue isn’t of Eros at all? It was originally intended to be his brother, Anteros. There is, admittedly, a family resemblance – both are lithe, winged, bow-and-arrow wielding gods with a penchant for nudity.

But while Eros’s fiery arrow creates intense lust and obsessive romantic love; the love inspired by Anteros’s missile is of a more sober, respectable kind – a love for one’s fellow humans and deep concern for their welfare. Anteros shuns self-centred sexual urges and all-consuming crushes and instead encourages us to take a broader view, inspiring us with a disinterested and level-headed benevolence.

Indeed, Piccadilly’s Anteros monument is officially known as the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. It was built to commemorate Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury (1801-1885), a Tory politician, committed evangelical Christian and social activist. During his long career, Shaftsbury fought to improve the lives of child labourers and the inmates of insane asylums, as well as campaigning against Britain’s involvement in the opium trade. Some of Lord Shaftesbury’s admirers – disapproving of the pagan background of Anteros – even insisted the sculpture be renamed The Angel of Christian Charity.

Eros stands guard over Piccadilly Circus. (Photo: London City Calling)

It’s the thesis of this blogpost that the statue in Piccadilly Circus has proved an ambiguous and ambivalent deity, presiding over – on the one hand – lust, debauchery and pleasure seeking, and – on the other – zealous attempts at urban improvement and moral reform. Under Eros’s – or Anteros’s – raised bow and archer’s gaze, all kinds of things have transpired.

But who exactly was Eros? Who was Anteros? Who was Lord Shaftesbury? Who sculpted Piccadilly Circus’s controversial statue and why has it been so infamous? How has ‘Eros’ survived bombing raids, urban upheavals, vandalism and repeated attempts to remove him from his exalted post? Read on and we’ll find out.

Eros – the Greek God of Sex and Love

Eros was the Greek God of romantic love and sexuality. His Roman equivalent was Cupid and he’s lingered on through Christian and modern times as the type of arrow-armed cherub seen on Valentine’s cards. Eros’s name comes from the Greek ἔραμαι, meaning to desire or love.

In later Greek sources, Eros is the son of the love goddess Aphrodite. A mischievous character, his meddling in the affairs of gods and mortals causes them to fall passionately in love with often unsuitable individuals. Unlike the plump Cupids of Renaissance art and modern iconography, though, the Greeks depicted Eros as an athletic young male, brimming with sexual vigour.

The Roman philosopher and dramatist Seneca wrote of Eros: ‘He smites maids’ breasts with unknown heat, and bids the very gods leave heaven and dwell on earth in borrowed forms.’ A Greek epic of the 3rd century BC has the goddess Hera telling Athena: ‘We must have a word with Aphrodite. Let us go together and ask her to persuade her boy, if that is possible, to loose an arrow at Aeetes’ daughter, Medea of the many spells, and make her fall in love with Jason.’

Eros brandishes his fatal arrow. (Photo: Shrine of Eros)

Another epic – this time from the 5th century AD – states, ‘Eros drove Dionysus mad for the girl with the delicious wound of his arrow, then curving his wings flew lightly to Olympus. And the god roamed over the hills scourged with a greater fire.’

According to the Roman poet Ovid, not even Eros’s mum was immune to his potent arrows: ‘Once, when Venus’s son was kissing her, his quiver dangling down, a jutting arrow, unbeknown, had grazed her breast. She pushed the boy away. In fact, the wound was deeper than it seemed, though unperceived at first. (And she became) enraptured by the beauty of a man (Adonis).’

In addition to roguishly triggering love and lust, Eros had other functions. Some saw him as a god of liberty and friendship and warriors from Sparta and Crete offered him sacrifices before battle in the hope he’d protect them and ensure victory. Eros seems to have – somewhat fittingly – been worshipped by a fertility cult in late antiquity and to have been a popular object of veneration, along with his mother Aphrodite, in Athens. The fourth day of every month was dedicated to him.

Eros was a member of the Erotes, a group of winged male deities frequently linked with love between men. He also formed part of a triad – along with the god Hermes and divine hero Heracles – that granted gay lovers characteristics such as beauty, loyalty, eloquence and strength.

Some saw Eros as a very ancient god. In his Theogony (one of the oldest of Greek sources), Hesiod states that Eros was the fourth god to appear, being preceded into existence only by Chaos, the earth goddess Gaia, and Tartarus (the abyss). The philosopher Parmenides believed Eros was the first of all gods to manifest. Participants in the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries viewed Eros as an extremely early god, claiming he was the son of Night:

‘Black-winged night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Darkness, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Love (Eros) with his glittering golden wings, swift as whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in the deep abyss with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light.’

Eros about to plunge his arrow into a helpless victim. ‘Sacred and Profane Love’ (1602-3) by Giovanni Baglione

But, despite his many legends and capabilities, Eros is chiefly remembered as a love god. Interestingly, a Greek and Roman folktale – Eros and Psyche – has Eros getting a taste of his own arrows. Psyche – though just a mortal woman – was so stunning she caused men to leave off the worship of Aphrodite as they all rushed to pay devotions to her. The jealous goddess sent Eros to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest being in the world, but Eros was instead smitten with her himself. The pair endured separation and heartache as they dealt with the meddling of Psyche’s envious sisters and a series of impossible tasks Aphrodite set the mortal beauty to see if she was worthy of her son.

Psyche managed to complete the challenges and was granted immortality. With Eros, she had a daughter – named either Voluptus or Hedone (meaning physical pleasure or bliss). On winning immortality, Psyche seems to have acquired butterfly wings. She symbolised the human soul and her name meant ‘butterfly’ in Ancient Greek.

So Who Was Anteros?

Eros’s brother Anteros was quite a different entity. He symbolised a calmer, requited love rather than the burning, passionate love represented by his sibling. Eros’s mother Aphrodite and father Ares produced Anteros as a playmate for Eros, who was lonely. He thus represents the idea that, to be healthy, love must be reciprocated by another. The name Anteros means ‘love returned’ or ‘counter love’.

In appearance, Anteros is similar to Eros, being a bow-and-arrow-clutching winged youth. Hence, the confusion of the two at Piccadilly Circus. Anteros, however, is usually depicted with butterfly wings whilst Eros’s are of the feathered type and Anteros’s hair tends to be longer. Anteros is also one of the Erotes.

The statue of Anteros fires his invisible arrow in Piccadilly Circus. (Photo: Lisa)

Plato believed Anteros represented the sensation of being filled with love for another. Divine love then fills the soul of the beloved in return and this results in the love being reciprocated. The Platonic idea, however, depicts this love as friendship rather than the carnal love of Eros.

Anteros did, though, have a more sinister side. He avenged unrequited love, penalising people who rejected the advances of those who adored them. A story tells of an altar put up to Anteros in Athens as a memorial to a Metic (or foreigner) named Timagoras by his fellow Metics. Timagoras had fallen for an Athenian called Meles. Upon hearing of Timagoras’s love, Meles jokingly commanded him to leap off a huge rock, which Timagoras did. On seeing his admirer’s dead body, Meles leaped from the rock too.

Who Was Lord Shaftesbury?

It might at first seem strange that a fountain topped by a naked pagan god should be dedicated to Lord Shaftesbury, a sternly moral, fundamentalist Christian who sought to right a great deal of what he saw as abuses in the world. But an examination of his life might lead us to see why such a statue ended up being erected in his honour. It’s all, in its own strange way, to do with love.

Born in London in 1801, Anthony Ashley-Cooper was educated at Manor House School in Chiswick before spending three years at Harrow and going on to Oxford University. The childhood of Lord Ashley – as he was known until his father died and he inherited his title – seems to have been arid and loveless, a circumstance apparently common among the British upper classes at that time.

Lord Shaftesbury in 1877 – but how did this austere Christian inspire Piccadilly Circus’s Eros statue?

The biographer of Ashley, G.F.A Best, wrote, ‘He saw little of his parents and when duty or necessity compelled them to take notice of him, they were formal and frightening.’ Ashley never liked his father and often described his mother as ‘a devil’.

A source of light in these gloomy early years came from the family housekeeper, Maria Millis. The affection she gave him and her hands-on Christian faith made a deep impression on Ashley. Best states, ‘What did touch him was the reality, and homely practicality, of the love which her Christianity made her feel towards the unhappy child. She told him Bible stories; she taught him prayer.’ Ashley also seems to have had a positive relationship with his sisters.

Ashley’s misery, however, continued at school. Manor House, apparently, contained ‘a disgusting range of horrors … The place was bad, wicked, filthy; and the treatment was starvation and cruelty.’ During his teenage years, Ashley’s Christian faith deepened and two experiences during this time seem to have shaped his later preoccupations. A pauper’s funeral once passed him at the bottom of Harrow Hill: ‘The drunken pall bearers, stumbling along with a crudely made coffin and shouting snatches of bawdy songs, brought home to him the existence of a whole empire of callousness which put his own childhood miseries in context.’

To the young Ashley, then, the world seemed a cruel, vulgar, uncaring, filthy place. But his second profound experience at school suggested ways existed by which it might be improved. A pond in Harrow School’s grounds was notorious as a breeding place of mosquitos. When asked to write a Latin poem, Ashley chose the pond as his topic, hoping to make the school authorities take notice of the festering pool. He succeeded – the pond was inspected then filled in.

So Ashley began to feel a zeal for social reform. Though a patriarchal Tory who felt the middle and lower orders should know their place, he did seem to genuinely care for the plight of the wretched and disadvantaged. In terms of religion, he was a pre-millennial evangelical Anglican – meaning he believed Christ would return soon, a factor that gave his activism an urgency.

In 1826, Ashley became a Tory MP, representing Woodstock – what was known as a ‘pocket’ or ‘rotten’ borough. (A constituency with a tiny population, which the local Lord made sure would vote for his chosen candidate) Though Ashley’s principals didn’t seem to get in the way of his accepting such a corrupt appointment, he did use his position in Parliament to campaign against what he considered society’s worst abuses.

One of the first causes Ashley got involved with was the reform of Lunatic Asylums (as they were then called). During a visit to such an institution in Bethnal Green, Ashley found patients sleeping chained up and naked on beds of straw. They had to perform their bodily functions in their beds and on the weekends, these beds weren’t cleaned out. On Mondays, the patients were washed down with freezing water. 160 people had to share a towel and there was no soap. Throughout his political career, Shaftesbury campaigned to improve such conditions, backing a number of parliamentary bills. Shaftesbury wrote, ‘Beyond the circle of my own Commissioners and the lunatics that I visit, not a soul, in great or small life, not even my associates in my works of philanthropy, has any notion of the years of toil and care that under God, I have bestowed on this melancholy and awful question.’

Another of Ashley’s causes was the condition of the child labourers who toiled in Britain’s rapidly expanding industrial system. He campaigned to ensure under-18s weren’t expected to work more than 10 hours a day, introducing the Ten Hour Act in 1833. Though he had some success in reducing working hours, his goal was not achieved until 1847. A Lancashire-based campaigner for the Ten Hour Act wrote, ‘If there was one man more devoted to the interests of the factory people than another it was Lord Ashley. They might always rely on him as a ready, steadfast and willing friend.’

Ashley successfully opposed the employment of women and children underground in coal mines, a campaign resulting in the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842. Children as young as five had jobs beneath the surface; slightly older children and women pushed and hauled heavy carts of coal during gruelling 12-hour shifts. The shocking fact that these women sometimes worked bare-breasted and – possibly worse – even wore trousers was a key factor in getting an outraged Victorian public onside and the act through Parliament.

Ashley was also a champion of young chimney sweeps. These ‘climbing boys’ – some of whom had been sold by their parents – had to clamber up filthy narrow flues. They suffered burns and skin lacerations; their noses and throats filled up with soot; and they worked under the constant risk of suffocation. The boys often ended up crippled and notoriously prone to a disease associated with their occupation – cancer of the scrotum. Ashley vigorously supported a bill in 1840 aimed at outlawing the employment of these boy chimney sweeps, but it wouldn’t be until 1875 that he succeeded in getting an enforceable act passed. Ashley personally rescued a young sweep he found living behind his London house in miserable conditions and sent him to school to ‘be trained in the knowledge and love and faith of our common saviour.’

A chimney sweep with a tiny ‘climbing boy’.

Another issue Ashley plunged into was the debate that raged around opium. In 1880, Lord Shaftesbury (he acquired his title after his father’s 1851 death) became the president of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, which had been formed by Quaker businessmen in 1874. This ‘trade’ basically consisted of the British pressuring Indian farmers to grow opium, which was then sold at auction with the understanding that those who bought it would smuggle it into China. The problem was that the British bought large quantities of Chinese tea, but the British Empire didn’t create any products China needed, except silver, a fact which threatened a shortage of that metal. The solution to righting the trade deficit – as the British Empire saw it – was to bully China into taking imports of Indian opium. Heavy taxes on Indian opium farmers boosted the finances of the British East India Company while opium smuggling is thought at one point to have accounted for 15% to 20% of the British Empire’s revenue. ‘Opium Wars’ were fought in 1840 and 1857 to make the Chinese accept opium imports.

All this caused tortures of conscience for the morally minded. It’s estimated that by the early 1900s, over a quarter of Chinese men were regular users of opium or addicts and China’s own opium production boomed in response to this demand. It also disturbed the likes of Lord Shaftesbury that many Chinese associated Christianity with opium as some early missionaries had arrived on opium ships.

Some felt Britain itself was threatened by the worldwide opium explosion. Lurid newspaper reports had whites lured into East London opium dens run by Chinese immigrants. Novels – like The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens – dwelled on the seedy nature of opium smoking. Such fears were, however, exaggerated – there were plenty of British opium addicts, but they tended to take the substance in ‘medicinal’ concoctions such as laudanum. Lord Shaftesbury’s successor as president of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, Sir Joseph Pease, unsuccessfully tried to pass a motion in the House of Commons in 1891 calling the trade ‘morally indefensible’ and insisting government support for it be withdrawn. Pease’s motion wasn’t adopted until 1906 and the opium trade between India and China didn’t end until 1913.

‘The Asian Vice’ by Henri Vollet, inspired by common anxieties about whites being corrupted in Chinese-run opium dens

Lord Shaftesbury died on 1st October 1885 at the age of 84. His funeral service took place in Westminster Abbey and many poor people lined his coffin’s route, including costermongers, boot blacks, crossing sweepers, factory workers and flower girls, with many waiting hours to see the cortege pass. Though Lord Shaftesbury had been an upholder of the system that had ultimately caused the oppression of such people, he seems to have genuinely done the best he could to reform its grimmest aspects. Such concerns led to Shaftesbury being termed ‘the poor man’s earl’.

A biographer of Lord Shaftesbury, Georgina Battiscombe, stated, ‘No man has in fact ever done more to lessen the extent of human misery or to add to the sum total of human happiness.’ According to the influential Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, Shaftesbury was ‘the best man of the age … far above all the other servants of God in my knowledge … a man most true in his personal piety … fulfilling both the first and second commandments of the law in fervent love to God and hearty love to man.’

So how did this serious, intense, deeply Christian aristocrat come to be commemorated by what – however mistakenly – many consider to be a statue symbolising fleshy love and romantic lust? Let’s find out in the next section.

Eros Is Erected at Piccadilly Circus – Outrage, Theft and Sculptors Fleeing the Law

Not long after Lord Shaftesbury’s death, people began to discuss the possibility of a memorial. Such was Shaftesbury’s popularity, the idea quickly caught on and – less than a year after the Earl had passed away – the sculptor Alfred Gilbert was commissioned to devise a fitting tribute.

Though the memorial was commissioned swiftly, the creation of ‘Eros’ would prove a lengthy process. Gilbert seems to have considered the duty of commemorating the great man such a weighty one it would take him five years even to come up with a concept.

He finally hit on the notion of a bronze fountain, ornately decorated with nautical themes. The fountain – no doubt reflecting Shaftesbury’s concern for the public good – would be of the drinking variety. The bronze base would support a spectacular dome of water upon which a god would majestically float.

This stately deity, Gilbert explained, would be Anteros and the fountain would be named The God of Selfless Love, thereby honouring Shaftesbury’s lifelong philanthropy. Gilbert felt Anteros symbolised ‘reflective and mature love, as opposed to Eros or Cupid, the frivolous tyrant.’

The model Gilbert chose to pose as the winged youth was his own studio assistant, a 16-year-old Anglo-Italian called Angelo Colarossi. Angelo – who, as an imitator of a wing-sporting divinity, was perhaps appropriately named – also served as a model, along with his father, for the apocalyptic 1892 painting by Frederick, Lord Leighton And the Sea Gave Up the Dead Which Were In It.

‘And the Sea Gave Up the Dead Which Were In It’ (1892) by Frederick, Lord Leighton. The boy also modelled for ‘Eros’.

Though the fountain itself is bronze, Anteros was cast from aluminium. Today the two metals form an interesting contrast, with the algae-like green of weathered bronze juxtaposed with the hardy aluminium’s seemingly immortal shine. ‘Eros’ was the first statue cast from aluminium in the world, with the honours being performed by George Broad and Son at the Hammersmith Foundry. Using aluminium was a vital factor in the execution of Gilbert’s grand plan – its lightness enabled ‘Eros’ to balance in his balletic posture.

‘Eros’ proved immediately controversial. Even his sculptor had been tormented by doubts, especially with regards to the monument’s location. Gilbert felt Piccadilly Circus – a cramped, strangely-shaped space in the middle of a congested confluence of roads – was  ‘an impossible site, in short, on which to place any outcome of the human brain, except possibly an underground lavatory!’

The Duke of Westminster unveiled the statue on 29th June 1893 and the complaints began straight away. Prudish Victorians were shocked by Anteros’s nudity. The sculpture isn’t totally naked – a wind-billowed bit of fabric covers what my grandmother used to refer to as ‘the possible’ – but enough of Anteros was revealed to be considered disturbing. Many simply felt the statue was too sensual a memorial for the exceedingly respectable Shaftesbury.

The location of ‘Eros’ also drew much criticism though not for the spatial and artistic problems Gilbert had griped about. Piccadilly – in the epicentre of the West End with its theatres and bars – was seen as too frivolous a setting for a monument to such an earnest man. Far worse, the neighbourhood was associated with loose and rowdy conduct and – even worse than that – with prostitution.

Anteros – often mistaken for his brother Eros – on the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, Piccadilly Circus, London. (Photo: Learn Religions)

To mollify these moral objections, the statue was renamed The Angel of Christian Charity, giving a more Christian slant to the ideal of love Anteros represented. But the statue’s new name never stuck and few have ever referred to the artwork as Anteros. Perhaps – as we shall see – appropriately for its location, the figure has always been known as Eros to Londoners.

Not everybody, though, disliked the new monument. The Magazine of Art praised Eros as ‘a striking contrast to the dull ugliness of the generality of our street sculpture, a work which, while beautifying one of our hitherto desolate open spaces, should do much towards the elevation of public taste … and serve freedom for the metropolis from any further additions to the old order of monumental monstrosities.’

Despite such encouragement, the memorial’s early life didn’t go well. The fountain’s base proved too small, meaning water splashed around it, muddying the space surrounding the monument. Gilbert had – in the generous spirit of Lord Shaftesbury – chained cups to the fountain for people to drink out of. The cups were soon stolen. And the memorial was a target of so much vandalism that London County Council had to pay a keeper just to watch over it.

As for Gilbert, his work on ‘Eros’ – rather than earning him money – plummeted him into debt. While he received £3,000 for creating the monument, it actually cost him £7,000 to make, with the structure’s elaborate base accounting for most of the excess. Anxious to escape his creditors, Gilbert fled the country and ended up living in Belgium for 25 years. Perhaps even more traumatically, he doubted his own artwork. Feeling his fountain was an insufficient memorial to Shaftesbury’s greatness, he argued the whole thing should be melted down, with the metal being sold off and the money used to build homeless shelters.

Alfred Gilbert – who took on the ill-fated commission to create the ‘Eros’ statue at Piccadilly Circus, London

But whatever the sentiments of Gilbert – and the statue’s many critics – Eros stayed. He’s become a tutelary deity of the busy, hedonistic West End, floating over its throngs of romantics and pleasure seekers, ready to loose an invisible arrow who knows where. But still, the spirit of his more sober brother – and, by extension, the ghost of the sober Lord Shaftesbury – are there too, urging restraint, reform and ‘moral improvement’. Let’s see how the competing divinities of Eros and Anteros – strangely embodied in the same statue – have spread their contradictory influences around Piccadilly.

Eros or Anteros – Which Deity Presides over Piccadilly Circus?

Piccadilly Circus was created in 1819 to link Regent Street with the thoroughfare of Piccadilly. This street was named after Piccadilly Hall, a house first mentioned in a source of 1626. The word ‘Piccadilly’ comes from the fact the house was owned by one Robert Baker, a tailor well-known for his piccadills or piccadillies – terms used for various collars and ruffs. ‘Circus’ comes from the Latin word for ‘circle’, referring to the layout the road junction once had. Piccadilly Circus was, though, first known as Regent Circus South. It didn’t gain the title ‘Piccadilly Circus’ until the mid-1880s, when Shaftesbury Avenue – named after the charitable Lord – was constructed and linked to it. Ironically, these very alternations caused Piccadilly Circus to lose its rotund shape.

Eros at Piccadilly Circus, in the days before neon adverts and motorised transport

It’s perhaps unsurprising that Eros and Anteros have competed for mastery over Piccadilly Circus. Control of this axis – which, though slightly awkward, the capital still manages to rotate around – could be seen as quite a prize. There’s a sense that Piccadilly Circus is somehow the centre of all things, that all roads meet there, that it’s the hub of London, of England, and was even – in colonial days – the nexus of the whole British Empire.

The Baedeker Guide to London (maybe already plumping in Eros’s favour) declared it as ‘for the pleasure seeker, the centre of London’. The phrase ‘it’s like Piccadilly Circus’ is a well-known expression to describe anywhere bustling and crowded. A 1930s guidebook characterised the Circus as ‘a centre of gaiety … where thousands and thousands of people and almost as many cars struggle in vain for freedom.’ The pioneering nuclear physicist Lord Rutherford, in 1932, compared the journey of a neutron into the nucleus of an atom as ‘like an invisible man passing through Piccadilly Circus. His path can be traced only by the people he has pushed aside.’ In Sam Selvon’s novel The Lonely Londoners (1956), a character from Trinidad feels the ‘Circus have magnet for him, that Circus represent Life, that Circus is the beginning and ending of the world.’

It might even be said Piccadilly Circus is a symbolic focal point of the global capitalist system, with the famously gaudy lights of advertisements curving around the building opposite Eros. The first illuminated ad – made up of incandescent light bulbs – was for Perrier water in 1908. Such incandescent arrangements were replaced with neon signs, some of which – such as a large Guinness clock – boasted moving parts. A Coca-Cola sign was up by 1954, and Coke has remained a presence at the Circus ever since. Other brands to have twinkled over Eros include Bovril, Nescafe, Foster’s, McDonald’s and Samsung. The neon lights were eventually replaced with digital projections then LED displays, but Piccadilly’s flashing commerciality has long given the impression the Circus is a pivot around which the world’s economic hubbub revolves.

Early illuminations at Piccadilly Circus

So which deity does, in fact, preside over this vital interchange, this emblematic centre? Let’s dig back into (fairly) recent history and try to make up our minds.

The Case for Eros

Much of the bustle and business around the ‘Eros’ statue has long been associated with the satisfaction of lusts so we could say it’s fitting that this deity teeters above the West End. Dostoyevsky visited London in 1862 and wrote of the neighbourhood: ‘At night, prostitutes crowd several streets in this quarter by the thousands … here are sparkling expensive clothes and near rags and extreme differences in age all gathered together’ as well as ‘mothers who were bringing their young daughters into the business. Little girls around 12-years-of-age take you by the hand and ask you to go with them.’ In the 1830s, it was estimated that London contained 80,000 prostitutes, of which 8,000 would die each year. By the mid-19th century, around £8 million per year was thought to be spent on prostitution in the capital, equivalent to over £1 billion in modern money.

‘Every ten yards,’ a German visitor wrote, ‘one is beset, even by children of 12-years-old, who by the manner of their address save one the trouble of asking whether they know what they want. They attach themselves to you like limpets … often they seize hold of you after a fashion of which I can give you the best notion by the fact that I say nothing about it.’

Eros at Piccadilly Circus, probably in the 1930s

Prostitution was common in many parts of Central London, with the streets around Covent Garden and the Strand well-known for this activity. Piccadilly, though, seems to have served as a symbolic central point, a emblematic vortex of this trade. Around the turn of the 20th century, the American novelist Theodore Dreiser wrote of the capital’s prostitutes: ‘There were regular places they haunted … Piccadilly being the best.’ By this time, of course, Eros had been erected to watch over Piccadilly’s fleshy pursuits.

Eros’s influence was evident during World War I. Soldiers returning from the front meant the sex industry in the area boomed. The newspaper Weekly Dispatch mentioned one young officer who – when walking to Piccadilly Circus down Regent Street – was propositioned 16 times, including by teenagers and children. Levels of prostitution remained high between the wars, with pimps, prostitutes and their clients frequenting the bars and restaurants around Piccadilly Circus. Not that such habits were new – in 1896, the Trocadero restaurant had a policy that ‘if a lady alone should gain admittance she must immediately be surrounded by screens.’

World War II, unsurprisingly, led to another boost in behaviour that would have had Lord Shaftesbury’s eyebrows shooting up. Though the Eros statue was removed at the War’s outbreak to protect it from damage, it seems the god’s spirit still imbued Piccadilly. London was full of servicemen – including the, by local standards, well-paid American GIs – and this caused rates of prostitution to double. Such activities were aided by the difficulty of policing blacked-out streets. There was a sense that – as the controversial London author Thomas Burke had written – ‘the street is more private than the home.’ All these escapades were, of course, appropriate to Eros’s realm – the god some Ancient Greeks had seen as a ‘son of Night’.

American servicemen outside Piccadilly Circus Tube Station

The prostitutes – known as ‘Piccadilly Commandos’ – who swarmed around the American soldiers were so numerous and determined they caused alarm in the British establishment, with some even seeing them as endangering Anglo-American relations. In September 1943, Admiral Sir Edward Evans – the Head of Civil Defence in London – wrote to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, complaining of ‘vicious debauchery’ and claiming that ‘American soldiers are encouraged by these young sluts, many of whom should be serving in the forces.’

Not all the women drawn to the GIs were, however, prostitutes. World War II saw a general loosening of sexual morals, much of which happened around Eros’s plinth. After long shifts doing war work in the factories, young women headed to the West End to have fun. Official documents lament the antics of these girls ‘freed of parental control’. The female ‘hordes’ who crowded around West End hotels and troop hostels, it was feared, could create an embarrassing image of Britain abroad and supply the Nazis with ideas for propaganda.

The GIs themselves were seen as far from blameless. A police superintendent stated, ‘They congregate around Piccadilly Circus and Coventry Street, many of them the worse for drink and quarrelsome, until the early hours of the morning. They are easy prey for the innumerable prostitutes that frequent the neighbourhood.’

An American soldier flirts at Piccadilly Circus – note the flower seller. Could she be the daughter of one of the flower girls who watched Lord Shaftesbury’s cortege?

The senior American military surgeon based in Britain, Brigadier Paul Hawley, recorded that 30% of all doses of VD among American soldiers in the UK were picked up in London. Though some sources refer to the prostitutes themselves as ‘Piccadilly Commandos’, others claim this name was given to American soldiers who’d acquired the clap around where the Eros statue had so recently stood. Burning arrows, indeed. Though Eros had traditionally been a protector of warriors, he doesn’t seen to have shielded these American troops from such ailments. 

The official anxiety over sexual immorality in London’s West End was dealt with in a thoroughly British way. A committee of Whitehall bureaucrats was set up to produce a report. If the committee ever arrived at any conclusions, no one knows what they were.

Eros returned to Piccadilly Circus in 1947 and, in the Post-War world, the area maintained its connections with the sex industry. In 1955, the American biologist and sexologist Alfred Charles Kinsey visited London. Kinsey – whose books Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (1953) had shocked suburban America – counted around 1,000 prostitutes on the streets of the West End.

Piccadilly’s reputation as a centre of prostitution doesn’t seem to have declined until the turn of the 1960s. In 1959, the Street Offences Act made it illegal to loiter or solicit for the purposes of prostitution. The act pushed working girls off the street, and away from Piccadilly, into the clubs, massage parlours and walk-ups of nearby Soho. This change, some argued, made it easier for unscrupulous pimps and seedy entrepreneurs to exploit sex workers and rip off clients.

A postcard from the 1960s, showing Eros at Piccadilly Circus

Though the sex trade has largely been banished from Piccadilly Circus, the bustling district is still popular with those hoping to find either romance or something more casual. Websites still recommend Eros’s domain as a place where such visitors to London might stumble upon success.

In Ancient Greece, Eros wasn’t just famous for kindling love and lust between the sexes. He could also spark same-sex attraction and so it’s not surprising that Piccadilly Circus was once the centre of the capital’s gay life. Gays seem to have, especially, gravitated towards the Circus after Leicester Square was ‘cleaned up’ in the 1920s. Next to Piccadilly Circus was the Café Royal, upon which Thomas Burke commented, ‘Here and there may be seen queer creatures … an hermaphroditic creature with side-whiskers and painted eyelashes … male dancers who walk like fugitives from the City of the Plain. Hard-features ambassadors from Lesbos and Sodom.’

In his book Queer London, Matt Houlbrook argues that Piccadilly Circus was the focus of London’s gay scene until the 1950s, with notable venues including the lesbian Lilly Pond, on the corner of Coventry Street, the Regent’s Palace Hotel, the Criterion (also known as the ‘Witches’ Cauldron’ or ‘Bargain Basement’) and the Trocadero.

Piccadilly Circus at night, in 1962

Lord Shaftesbury campaigned vigorously against the opium trade – so it would have probably distressed him to know that his memorial would overlook the most notorious spot for opioid consumption in Britain. The actress Sheila Hancock (born 1933) recalled the difficulties of entering Piccadilly’s subterranean Criterion Theatre: ‘The first hazard was climbing over the recumbent drug addicts who used the stage door to inject the heroin prescription they got from the all-night Boots in Piccadilly Circus. (It became 24-hours in 1925 and was next door to the Criterion.)’

Once accessed, the Criterion was ‘a gloomy catacomb where only the mice were healthy on their diet of theatrical greasepaint, which they shared with the cockroaches. There were no windows, so the outside was banished once you’d descended into hell. We actors had to resort to oxygen inhalers on matinee days to keep us bubblingly energetic for our merry romp.’

Though the law later changed, doctors in the 1960s could prescribe heroin to addicts. There were around 200 known addicts in Britain and the majority got their prescriptions from the 24-hour Boots chemist on Piccadilly Circus. (The shop is still there though it no longer – as far as I know – dispenses opioids.) In the run-up to midnight, a queue of addicts formed, all clutching their prescription slips for the next day. The heroin was of top-notch pharmaceutical grade and came in tablets called ‘jacks’ (which is where the phrase ‘jacking up’ comes from). Fresh syringes and needles were handed out with each prescription. So, for a certain time, Boots the chemists at Piccadilly Circus – right beneath the monument erected to a passionate opponent of the opium trade – was Britain’s biggest heroin dealer.

The 24-hour Boots chemist at Piccadilly Circus, London – this humble shop was once Britain’s biggest heroin dealer.

The Case for – and against – Anteros

In spite of the lust and hedonism the statue of Eros has come to symbolise, there’s been another spirit at work around Piccadilly Circus – a spirit promoting a more sober and ‘responsible’ notion of love, expressed in a concern for the ‘betterment’ of society and the restraint of certain human impulses. The attempts to reign in the prostitution trade detailed above could fit into this pattern.

There have been plans to reform, renovate and even destroy Piccadilly Circus. Following the death of Edward VII in 1910, there were calls to clear away the Circus and replace it with a more orderly, rectangular open space named King Edward VII Square. Eros – that embodiment of disorder and desire – would be taken down and a statue of the king astride his horse put up. (We might query, though, whether a depiction of Edward, a notorious womaniser, would have set a better example than the Greek god of fiery love.) The planned square would also substitute the Circus’s shady bars and subterranean theatres with a Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and National Opera House. The arrival of the First World War – and then the Second – meant this neatening-up of the Circus’s congested and lively chaos never took place.

The 1950s saw renewed efforts to deal with the awkwardly asymmetrical Circus and the tumultuous life that swirled around Eros. A plan was hatched to build a huge office block on the site of the Café Monico, which would be just one of a ring of office towers, including a 132-metre edifice on the site of the Criterion Theatre. Concern about traffic jams led to the suggestion that several lanes of traffic could hurtle through the area while pedestrians would be elevated onto concrete walkways 60 feet up in the air. This plan was viewed favourably throughout the 1960s and a short film was even made, Goodbye Piccadilly, to preserve memories of what many assumed would soon be vanquished.

While these changes were never enacted, by 1972 a new plan had appeared – three octagonal towers would rise on the graves of the Trocadero, Criterion and Monico buildings. The chairman of Westminster Council’s planning department said he hoped demolition could start as soon as possible, sweeping away what was ‘little more than a down-at-heel, neon-lit slum.’

Such sentiments were, however, opposed by many in London, who viewed their ‘neon-lit slum’ with fondness. The Observer wrote, ‘Piccadilly Circus, more than anywhere else in the country, is a place for the people. It is not, first of all, a traffic junction or an office centre. It is somewhere people go to wander about, gawp and gossip, and generally amuse themselves. Those who have drawn up successive plans for its redevelopment have failed to understand its real nature, and, one after the other, their efforts have been laughed to scorn.’

Indeed, Eros has survived, as has the disorderly and disreputable Circus he rules over. That’s not to say that the neighbourhood and its local deity have seen no changes. In 1922, Eros had to be moved when construction began on Piccadilly Circus’s London Underground station. Eros was exiled to Embankment Gardens until the work was complete. He returned in 1931, but when World War II started he was moved again, for his own safety. Like many young Londoners, he spent the War outside the capital, in his case in Egham, Surrey.

Eros was removed and the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain covered in World War II.

When the god came back in 1947, he was re-sited somewhat. Eros now pointed his invisible arrow down Shaftesbury Avenue. This encouraged urban legends to grow up that the statute had been designed with a bow but not an arrow as a pun on the word ‘Shaftesbury’: as in the idea the arrow – or ‘shaft’ – had been ‘buried’ in that road. (There have also been – inevitably, given the history of the area – more ribald puns about the ‘burying of shafts’.) Another idea claims Eros’s bow is directed at Shaftesbury’s family home and last resting place in Wimborne St Giles, Dorset. But Alfred Gilbert couldn’t have had these intentions when he designed Eros – the archer originally took aim down Lower Regent Street, in the direction of the Houses of Parliament. In the early 1980s, Eros was again taken down, this time for restoration, before being returned in 1985.

Eros presides over Piccadilly Circus in 1994 – note the old Routemaster bus. (Photo: Colin Smith)

It’s clear that the spirit of Eros has triumphed over his critics and also over his more sensible brother, but – although Eros is loved by many – he still hasn’t gained total acceptance. The attempts to vandalise his statue – which started soon after Gilbert put it up – have continued, as if some people are disturbed at a deep level by what the god represents. Damage to the statue was discovered during its 1980s restoration and the statute was also vandalised in 1990. It was again taken away for repairs and didn’t return till 1994. In 2012, a tourist even broke Eros’s bowstring and a new one had to be fitted. Vandalism seems prevalent around the festive period. In 2013-14, a ‘snow globe’ was erected around the statue, filled with blowing ‘snow flakes’. Though primarily a visual spectacle, the globe had the added effect of keeping Eros safe from vandals. In 2014-15, a giant box for Christmas presents placed around the monument fulfilled a similar function.

Piccadilly Circus in modern times, still reigned over by Eros. (Image: Vermilion Studios)

Though reforms – ranging from the provision of public transport to the shaking off of the area’s reputation for prostitution – have lessened the passionate chaos Eros presides over, it’s likely this mischievous deity will be viewed with affection by most Londoners and visitors to the capital for some time to come. The statue has survived criticisms, wars, attempted redevelopments, vandalism and even the disapproval of its own creator. It’s as if this god has claimed his territory and doesn’t intend to be expelled from it.

(This article’s main image – showing Anteros, commonly known as Eros, at Piccadilly Circus, London – is courtesy of Juan Pablo Garnham. Is it perhaps from the time Eros’s bowstring was broken?)

The post Piccadilly Circus’s Eros – Statue of Sin or Figure of Morality? appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

Local folklore claims the lake is bottomless and that a tunnel connects it to the sea, 10-and-a-half miles (16.9 kilometres) away. The lake’s name even means ‘drop of sea’ in Cornish.

If you were walking high on Bodmin Moor, near Altarnun, Cornwall, and came across Dozmary Pool, you might feel puzzled that this pretty tarn – shimmering mirror-like in a pleasantly rugged landscape – could have attracted such legends.

But if you were to linger and stare at the pool, you might get a sense of the uncanny. If clouds were to slide over the sky and shroud the sun, the placid lake might start to look melancholy, sinister. The moorland around Dozmary Pool could become eerie and bleak, the dark hills above it threatening.

You might then give some credence to the tales about Jan Tregeagle, a fugitive from Hell and Cornish version of Faust. You might begin to half-believe the stories of the Lady of the Lake, of King Arthur’s sword Excalibur being cast into Dozmary Pool, and of curses woven and knotted into ‘witches’ ladders’.

In 1893, the writer Robert Charles Hope stated, ‘The pool is the theme of many marvellous tales, which the peasants most implicitly believe. It is said to be unfathomable and the haunt of evil spirits. Begirt by dreary hills, it presents an aspect of utter gloom and desolation.’

So let’s wade into this apparently bottomless store of myth, rumour and legend and see what we can discover about Dozmary Pool.

Dozmary Pool, the Lady of the Lake and King Arthur’s Sword Excalibur

Is Dozmary Pool the resting place of King Arthur’s sword Excalibur? (Photo: Jessie Lilac)

At the start of his kingly career, Arthur is said to have come to a lake and rowed out into it. A hand thrust up from the waters – belonging to a mysterious damsel, the Lady of the Lake. The hand of this beautiful enchantress was clutching a sword, the famous Excalibur, which she bestowed on Arthur.

King Arthur brandished the magical sword throughout his tumultuous reign, hacking and slashing at numerous villains, enemies and giants. Various legends have given Excalibur incredible properties – that its blade ‘gave light like 30 torches’ and could blind opponents, that it could ‘slice through iron as through wood’, that it had been forged in the mystical land of Avalon, and that any warrior wearing Excalibur’s scabbard wouldn’t lose of drop of blood.

But even this wondrous sword couldn’t protect King Arthur against treachery. Arthur’s antagonistic half-sister – the witch Morgan Le Fay – stole his scabbard, leaving him vulnerable to wounds. Then, while Arthur was fighting in France, his nephew – and son – Mordred rose up against him. Mordred seized Arthur’s throne and – in a somewhat Freudian fashion – married Arthur’s wife Guinevere. After hastening back to Britain, Arthur and his knights fought several battles against Mordred and his followers, with the final and most bloody being the Battle of Camlann.

After that battle, as King Arthur lay fatally wounded – again, in good Freudian fashion, thanks to Mordred – he called upon his faithful servant Bedivere. Arthur told Bedivere to throw Excalibur into a nearby lake, which many believe was the very lake he was presented with the wonderful weapon from. Bedivere tried to do as commanded, but – bewitched by the beautiful, gleaming sword – it took him three attempts. When he finally hurled it over the lake, Bedivere was amazed to see a hand shoot up from the waters, catch the sword and majestically sink with it below the waves. The Lady of the Lake had reclaimed Excalibur.

According to some accounts, a black boat then appeared, bearing – some say – magical ladies and queens, among them (a presumably repentant) Morgan Le Fay and even a (presumably dried off) Lady of the Lake. Carried into the boat, Arthur was taken to the Isle of Avalon, where his wounds would be tended and where he would lie in a centuries-long sleep that hovered between death and life. This weird coma, many assert, gives King Arthur the option of waking one day and returning when England really needs him.

The trouble is that the medieval writers of Arthurian romances, like Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas Malory, neglected to mention where this lake is. Neither can its location be found in the Celtic and French chronicles Geoffrey and Thomas based their works on. But certain legends point to Dozmary Pool as being the place. Perhaps this is due to the air of doleful mystery that surrounds the lake, with the stark moors and sombre hills recalling the sadness of Arthur’s murder and the lamentable departure of England’s legendary king. Maybe it’s easy to imagine the Lady of the Lake poking her arm up from Dozmary Pool’s grey, eerie and – supposedly – bottomless waters.

Over the centuries, eager mythographers have made attempts to connect Dozmary Pool with sites of reputed Arthurian importance, sites legend has linked with the 5th-and-6th-century era during which Arthur is rumoured to have reigned. About 10 miles from Dozmary Pool is the hamlet of Slaughterbridge, where a bridge spans the River Camel. Some legends claim this is where the Battle of Camlann took place, with Arthur and Mordred lunging and swinging at each other on the bridge and the river running red with blood. The closest lake to Slaughterbridge is the enigmatic Dozmary Pool. So, if the battle did occur there, Dozmary Pool’s the only lake into which Bedivere could have tossed Excalibur, even if 10 miles might have been a bit far for the wounded Arthur to stagger. There are reports of locals unearthing armour and other relics of war around Slaughterbridge.

Slaughterbridge, Cornwall – the site of King Arthur’s last battle? (Photo: Andy F)

Near Slaughterbridge is the ‘Arthur Stone’, which some say marks the king’s grave. (Assuming, that is, that Arthur wasn’t carried off by the funereal barge to Avalon.) This stone – part of whose worn inscription, some believe, spells out ‘Arty’ – attracted a visit from the Arthur-obsessed poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, whose Idylls of the King repackaged Arthurian legend for a Victorian readership.

The Arthur Stone, Cornwall – does its mysterious inscription honour Britain’s legendary monarch? (Photo: visitcornwall)

Above Dozmary Pool, lies King Arthur’s Common, upon which stands King Arthur’s Hall, a mysterious rectangle of stone ruins and earth banks. Not far away, there’s even a King Arthur’s Bed, a large rock boasting a strange man-shaped hollow. Another nearby site is Castle Killibury, a collection of earthworks some link to a place called Kelliwic, one of King Arthur’s courts. Here, some legends say, Mordred provoked the events that culminated in the Battle of Camlann, by dragging ‘Gwenhwyvar (Guinevere) from her throne’ and kidnapping her.

Tintagel Castle – a cliff-perched, sea-battered stronghold about 20 miles from Dozmay Pool – is said to be the site of King Arthur’s conception. Arthur’s dad Uther, having taken a fancy to the lady of the castle, had sneaked into her bedchamber disguised – by Merlin’s trickery – as her husband.

Dozmary Pool certainly has a brooding atmosphere. But, if we clear the mists of legends and overly keen conjectures from our eyes, any role for the pool in Arthur’s narrative starts to look shaky. The armour and other artefacts discovered around Slaughterbridge – rather than being remnants of the Battle of Camlann – probably come from a separate battle that took place around 800 C.E. As for the Arthur Stone, researchers have proved it has no King Arthur connections – its inscription in fact commemorates a ‘son of Magarus’. King Arthur’s Hall – being Neolithic or Bronze Age – is too early to have hosted the meetings and festivities of the knights of Camelot. The man-shaped depression in King Arthur’s bed was likely just sculpted by harsh moorland weather and Castle Killibury is actually an Iron-Age hillfort.

The dramatic ruins at Tintagel are the remains of a castle built in the 1230s – long after Arthur’s time – though there is some evidence for a royal settlement at Tintagel dating to the early Middle Ages. As for Dozmary Pool itself, it doesn’t have any islands – and so can put forward no candidates for the Isle of Avalon. A more likely contender for Avalon is Glastonbury Tor, which was once an island surrounded by marshes.

The King Arthur sculpture at Tintagel Castle, the supposed site of the king’s conception. (Photo:visitcornwall)

But the legends connecting King Arthur to Dozmary Pool have persisted up to modern times, with a recent incident demonstrating the strength of the notion that the lake is Excalibur’s resting place. In 2017, a seven-year-old schoolgirl from Doncaster, Matilda Jones, was paddling in Dozmary Pool when she told her father she’d spotted a sword.

Her Dad, who’d told his kids about Dozmary Pool’s Arthurian associations while driving south for the family holiday, said, ‘She was waist deep when she said she could see a sword.’

‘I told her not to be silly and that it was probably a bit of fencing, but when I looked down, I realised it was a sword. It was just there lying flat on the bottom of the lake.’

Matilda and her father pulled a rusted, four-foot, regal-looking weapon from the bed of Dozmary Pool. According to some King Arthur legends, whoever possesses Excalibur is England’s rightful monarch. It’s unlikely, however, that Matilda will be crowned just yet. The sword she found isn’t thought to have an age of more than 20 or 30 years.

Mr Jones said, ‘I don’t think it’s particularly old. It’s probably an old film prop.’

Dozmary Pool, the Witch’s Ladder and Bubbles Filled with Curses

Dozmary Pool is associated with a sinister magical device known as a ‘witch’s ladder’. A witch’s ladder was a cord or string with cocks’ or pheasants’ feathers woven into it. Each feather represented a specific curse or spell, each of which was intended to cause the witch’s victims aches, discomforts and pains. What appeared to be a witch’s ladder was discovered in the attic of an old house in Wellington, Somerset, in 1878, a discovery which sparked a blaze of interest and controversy among Victorian academics and folklore enthusiasts.

Does a witch’s ladder – knotted with curses – lie in Dozmary Pool? (Photo: Into Cornwall)

The device’s connection with Dozmary Pool comes from a novel by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924), a Devon priest, antiquarian and folklorist. In Mrs Curgenven of Curgenven (1893), Baring-Gould described a witch weaving a ladder from black wool and white and brown thread, tying in cocks’ feathers every two inches, and saying, ‘There be all kinds o’ aches and pains in they knots and they feathers … ivry ill wish ull find a way, one after the other, to the jint and bones and head and limbs o’ Lawyer Physic.’

The witch then cast her ladder into Dozmary Pool, in the belief that – as the water gradually rotted it and undid the knots – the curses would be unleashed. Some say that when you see bubbles rising to Dozmary Pool’s surface, it means one of these hexes has been released into the world.

Dozmary Pool and the Damned Spirit of Jan Tregeagle

Reputed to be one of the wickedest men to have ever lived in Cornwall, Jan Tregeagle’s crimes were rumoured to include murdering his wife and son and acquiring an estate by tricking an orphan out of his inheritance. A steward under the Duchy of Cornwall in the 17th century and a magistrate, Tregeagle was notoriously hard on his tenants and infamous for enriching himself at their expense. He was even said to have made a Faustian pact with the Devil, trading his soul for even more wealth. After Tregeagle’s death, the locals felt great relief, but any respite from Jan wasn’t destined to last.

There are several versions of the Jan Tregeagle legend, but the basic story is as follows. After Tregeagle died, there was a court case involving some tenants he’d helped swindle. At one point in the trial, a defendant shouted, ‘If Tregeagle ever saw it, I wish to God he would come and declare it!’

Any laughter this remark triggered was soon silenced. Thunder boomed, lightning flashed, a stench of burning brimstone filled the court, and the shade of Jan Tregeagle – pale, transparent, but undoubtedly resembling the man he was in life – appeared in the witness box. Gasps resounded, some witnesses and spectators fled, but the judge stayed calm enough to question the apparition. Tregeagle’s ghost admitted forging a document and justice was served in the tenants’ favour, but Jan’s spirit then begged not to be sent back to Hell, pleading for protection from the demons waiting to whisk him there.

A local vicar took pity on him, possibly influenced by the fact that – shortly before he died – Jan Tregeagle had hedged his bets by donating land to the Church. The vicar decided to set the frightened soul impossible tasks to keep it busy till Judgement Day. Jan’s first job was to empty Dozmary Pool.

Dozmary Pool, Cornwall – a haunt of the damned spirit of Jan Tregeagle? (Photo: Amanda King)

Emptying a bottomless lake would be difficult enough, but – to make sure Tregeagle would be kept at this labour until the Day of Doom – the vicar told him to empty the waters using a limpet shell with a hole in it. According to legend, wicked supernatural beings cannot cross living water, so – as long as Jan stayed in Dozmary Pool and worked on his task – the demons couldn’t get him. They instead massed on the shore – along with their black, red-eyed hellhounds – eager for any chance to snatch his soul and carry it back to the infernal regions.

As he laboured – lashed by moorland gales and tormented by storms – Jan suffered terribly. On windy nights, his screams and moans resounded around Dozmary Pool and echoed across Bodmin Moor. But such tortures were preferable to those awaiting Tregeagle back in Hell.

One night, however, as an especially savage storm thrashed Dozmary Pool, Jan Tregeagle could stand it no longer. He dashed from the tarn and the demons and hellhounds set off after him, their shrieks mixing with the howling winds. As the devils and their hounds couldn’t pass over the pool, they had to go around it, giving Tregeagle a head start.

Jan made for Roche Rock – a granite outcrop, near the village of Roche, crowned by a 14th-century chapel dedicated to St Michael. Desperate for refuge in this holy sanctuary, Jan tried to crash through one of the chapel windows, but became stuck, unable to slither through the narrow arch. Though his head was safe in the chapel, the demons and hellhounds clawed at his body.

Roche Rock, where Jan Tregeagle fled after escaping Dozmary Pool. (Photo: themagicofcornwall)

Jan’s screams and groans alerted the priest who’d set him to work in Dozmary Pool. With the help of two saints, the priest transported Tregeagle to Gwenor Cove. Here he was given the task of weaving a rope of sand from the beach, which he was then commanded to take to Carn Olva. As each day the tide destroyed Jan’s work, this job – like his labours in Dozmary Pool – appeared unachievable. But the crafty spirit found a way to complete the chore – one cold night, Jan poured water over the rope and it froze solid. A group of exorcists and holy men, however, ordered him to weave another rope – and this time forbade him to approach water. It’s said that on dark nights, you can still hear Jan Tregeagle’s howls of frustration mingling with the wind.

Another version of the legend states that the people of Padstow became so disturbed by Jan’s wails that they called on Saint Petroc. The saint bound Jan with a huge chain and set him to work carrying sand from Berepper Beach across the Cober Estuary to Porthleven, ordering him to continue until only rock was left at Berepper. This task was also impossible because whenever the tide came in, it replenished the sand.

One day, however, as Tregeagle was carrying a bag of sand across the estuary, a demon tripped him, making him drop his load. The sand fell into the river, forming the shingle barrier known as Loe Bar. The water trapped behind the bar became the freshwater lake of Loe Pool, rendering the town of Helston’s harbour useless by cutting it off from the sea. This so infuriated the locals and their priest that they banished Tregeagle to Land’s End.

Did Jan Tregeagle create Loe Bar, separating Loe Pool from the sea? (Photo: CornwallLive)

It’s said that Land’s End is still haunted by Jan Tregeagle, whose task is now to sweep sand from Porthcurno Cove into Mill Bay. You can still hear his wails of anguish among the shrieking gulls, the crashing waves and moaning winds.

Are the cliffs, rocks and coves around Land’s End haunted by the restless spirit of Jan Tregeagle? (Photo: Chris Combe)

What Could Explain the Strange Legends Attached to Dozmary Pool and the Demonic Tales of Jan Tregeagle?

Perhaps there’s something about Dozmary Pool’s situation – as an isolated oasis in bleak moorland – that’s encouraged legends to affix themselves to it. One legend, we can say, is false – the pool isn’t bottomless. Cattle can be seen wading in Dozmary Pool, even close to the centre, and the lake dried up completely in 1859 and 1976. Also, during these droughts, no tunnel to the sea was revealed.

The story of Jan Tregeagle echoes common motifs in myth and folklore. Tregeagle’s pact with Satan for worldly wealth and success mirrors legends of other soul sellers like Faust, the violinists Giuseppe Tartini and Niccolo Paganini, and the blues musician Robert Johnson.

The – seemingly – impossible tasks Tregeagle is set recall the Labours of Heracles and punishments imposed on wicked mythological characters. In Greek myth, King Sisyphus was forced to spend eternity pushing a boulder up a hill only to see it roll back down. For killing their husbands on their wedding nights, the Greek Danaids had to spend the hereafter attempting to carry water in sieves. In English folklore, one of the murderers of Thomas a Beckett – William de Tracey – is, like Tregeagle, condemned to weave ropes of sand, in his case on the beach at Woolacombe, Devon. Whenever his rope is finished, a black dog with a ball of fire in its mouth appears and breaks the rope up.

Perhaps the Jan Tregeagle legend also stems from shadowy memories of some Celtic god that loomed over the landscape. And Tregeagle does seem a personification of brute natural forces – the winds that bellow over Bodmin Moor, the storms that lash Dozmary Pool, the dangerous tides and waves of Cornwall’s craggy coast. In an isolated farmhouse or coastal cottage, as the wind wails, as thunder reverberates and waves smash, one could suspect the spirit of Jan Tregeagle is tearing around outside, chased by shrieking demons and howling hellhounds.

The Jan Tregeagle legend may also be linked to the folklore of giants. The activities of giants were used to explain mysterious structures like stone circles, burial mounds and Roman roads as well as natural oddities like Loe Bar. Cornish giants were apparently responsible for constructing the tidal island St Michael’s Mount. The large boulders around the island in Mount’s Bay were rumoured to have been left after a fight between two giants. A giant is said to have built the ‘rocking stone’ at Zennor – a huge boulder balanced on a small outcrop – to lull himself to sleep. Robert Charles Hope refers to Tregeagle as ‘a grim giant’ who ‘has been connected in Cornwall with a real person, the dishonest steward of Lord Robartes at Lanhydrock, where a room in the house is still called Tregeagles.’

The island of St Michael’s Mount and rocks in Mount’s Bay – the work of giants? (Photo: Amateur with a Camera)

The hellhounds recall the legend of another wicked south-west bigwig – the squire Richard Cabell, whose spirit is said to roam Dartmoor at night, accompanied by black, red-eyed dogs: a story that inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles. Legends of black dogs with glowing eyes are common throughout Britain, in tales of creatures such as the Barghests of Yorkshire and East Anglia’s Old Shuck.

The Tregeagle legend could also be a Cornish version of the Wild Hunt, a phenomenon during which a mythological figure leads a brigade of phantom huntsmen and demonic dogs across the sky. Those said to lead a Wild Hunt – usually as a punishment for some sin – include Odin, the Devil, Cain, King Arthur, Herne the Hunter and Sir Walter Raleigh.

As for the holy men and priests of the Jan Tregeagle story, their miraculous powers may reach back to legends of Catholic and Celtic saints, which Cornwall – like Brittany across the Channel – is especially rich in. Perhaps their powers even recall those of earlier magicians – the druids and shamans of pagan times.

As Robert Charles Hope suggests, existing legends – of giants, demons, black dogs and wonder workers – could have coalesced around a notorious real-life figure. What began as a ghost story or morality tale may have become more outlandish as the years passed.

The myths attached to Dozmary Pool might reflect its importance to humans and nature. A post-glacial lake, Dozmary Pool feeds the River Fowey and both pool and river have long been vital water sources. Today, Dozmary Pool’s waters also supply the massive Colliford Lake reservoir. At the end of the 19th century, Sabine Baring-Gould described Dozmary Pool as ‘abounding in fish’ and being surrounded by the remains of Stone-Age flint workings. When the pool dried up, Neolithic arrow heads were discovered, suggesting the site has been a centre of human activity for centuries. Dozmary Pool’s bed and margins provide a home for rare plants and it’s an important site for migratory birds. Dozmary Pool forms part of the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Perhaps the Arthurian Lady of the Lake is an echo of a nymph or water goddess that once personified this crucial body of water.

Unusual or vital features of the landscape can inspire the strangest tales and this certainly seems the case with Dozmary Pool. This attractive tarn may well continue to act as a mirror for human hopes, terrors, desires and needs for some years to come.

(This article’s main image, showing Dozmary Pool, is courtesy of Paul)

The post Cornwall’s Dozmary Pool – King Arthur’s Sword, Damned Souls, Witches & Hellhounds appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

There it is, a little battered, but looking as if a knowledgeable practitioner of magic could soon get a fire going and start brewing a potion in it. Authentically aged and well-used, it’s just the sort of cauldron you could imagine the Weird Sisters cackling around on Macbeth’s blasted heath.

But what’s an item many would associate with witchcraft doing in a place of Christian worship? Unsurprisingly, many legends have grown up around this incongruous object – a heap of intertwisted tales involving a chaotic collection of characters.

The cauldron has been linked to the Devil, Saxon chieftains, Celtic and Norse gods, a witch’s cave, burrowing monks, fairies, broomsticks, rustic peasant knees-ups, prehistoric burial mounds, healing waters and sacred wells. Let’s try to unknot this convoluted mass of myth and find out why this cauldron stands in St Mary’s Church, Frensham.

A landscape of woods and heathland surrounds the village of Frensham, which lies near the towns of Farnham and Guildford in Surrey’s commuter belt. (Photo: weesam2010)

Some Say the Frensham Cauldron Once Belonged to the Fairies

Near Frensham are three hills known as the Devil’s Jumps. A person climbing the highest of these – Stony Jump, formerly also called Borough Hill – would have once encountered an outcrop of rock crowning its summit. A deep crack scarred this rock and – if you whispered down into it – it was apparently possible to make contact with a colony of fairies that lived inside the hollow hill.

These fairies seem to have been a reasonably benevolent and human-friendly variety of the little folk, because they loaned out utensils to anyone who needed them. All you had to do was scale the hill, knock on the rock, whisper into the crack and tell the fairies what you wanted to borrow. A voice would then issue from deep within the hill, telling you when and where to collect the object and when it should be returned.

One day somebody asked to borrow a cauldron. He duly found the cauldron waiting at the appointed time and in the designated spot, but made the error of bringing it back late. Enraged, the fairies refused to accept it. They announced they would never again lend any implements to ungrateful humans and that night ‘the people saw a great fire’ though they later found no evidence any heathland had been burning.

The fairies inflicted a special punishment on the cauldron’s borrower. They cursed him to be followed by the cauldron wherever he went. The stands of its tripod morphed into legs and it pursued the man everywhere.

Driven into anxiety by having his every movement dogged by an animated cauldron, the man’s mental and physical health crumbled. He eventually sought sanctuary in St Mary’s Church, where he collapsed and died. The cauldron had, of course, followed him in there and so it remained in the church.

St Mary’s Church, Frensham, Surrey, said to house a ‘witch’s cauldron’ (Photo: Edward Simpson)

As the historian Keith Thomas shows in his Religion and the Decline of Magic, fairy lore was widespread in England in the early modern period and Middle Ages. And there are certain things about the Frensham area that may have especially linked the local landscape to fairies. Though fairies were often thought to inhabit the insides of hills, they were also frequently believed to live in burial mounds. Four such mounds stand on Frensham Common. In addition, Neolithic arrow heads are often found around Frensham. Known as ‘elf bolts’, such artefacts are seen as weapons of fairies in folklore.

Fairy legends associated with the burial mounds on Frensham Common may at some point have transferred themselves to Stony Jump (Borough Hill) or intermingled with existing tales connected to that landmark. One version of the cauldron story has the borrower knocking on ‘a great stone lying, of a length of about six feet’ across the mouth of a cave on Stony Jump. Though such barriers are a widespread feature of burial mounds, there’s no evidence such a stone has ever existed on Borough Hill. Local folklore also claimed that ‘some have fancied to hear music’ coming from the Borough Hill cave and music issuing from barrows is a common characteristic of fairy legends. Even the name ‘Borough Hill’ suggests a possible connection with burial mounds and therefore fairies. The term ‘borough’ can refer to burial mounds as well as to hills, ancient earthworks (also considered places of fairy habitation) and human settlements.

Round barrows on Frensham Common, Surrey – could they have contributed to local legends of fairies and cauldrons? (Photo: Simon Burchell)

Perhaps the fairy lore around Frensham was used to explain why such a strange object as a cauldron was kept in St Mary’s Church. We know this link had been made as early as 1673, when the antiquarian John Aubrey recorded the belief that ‘an extraordinary great cauldron or kettle’ in Frensham Church had been transported there by the fairies long ago. This idea seems to have persisted down the ages. It’s mentioned in Nathanial Salmon’s Antiquities of Surrey, published in 1736. A 1985 article in The Farnham Herald – entitled Condemned to Be Chased by a Three-Legged Cauldron – has a man recounting a version of the legend he heard in his 1920s boyhood.

But, alas, anyone wishing to climb Stony Jump today to whisper to the fairies would have little success, even if the fairies were still inclined to help us humans out. Stony Jump is now private property, its rocky outcrop has been flattened and a house has been built upon it. How the fairies have reacted to this indignity is not known.

The Frensham Cauldron, Mother Ludlam’s Cave, a White Witch and the Devil

According to some legends, it wasn’t the fairies who were responsible for placing the cauldron in Frensham Church, but a local ‘white witch’ – or folk healer – called Mother Ludlam. Mother Ludlam’s home was said to be Mother Ludlam’s Cave, located in a sandstone cliff above the River Wey in Moor Park, near Farnham, Surrey.

Mother Ludlam, like the fairies, lent out utensils to her neighbours. One version of the story claimed that anyone needing to borrow an item had to go to Mother Ludlam’s Cave at midnight, turn round three times and three times repeat their request. They also had to promise to return the article within two days. (The fairies were more liberal, sometimes allowing people to keep objects for a year.) Another take on the legend said people merely had to go to the cave and drop a coin into Mother Ludlam’s cauldron, after which they could borrow whatever implement they desired.

Mother Ludlam would sometimes even loan out the cauldron itself, the cauldron she used to brew her potions and cook her concoctions of healing herbs. In the simplest version of her legend, Mother Ludlam became enraged when somebody borrowed her cauldron but didn’t bring it back. The offender – terrified by the witch’s fury – took refuge in Frensham Church, which is where the cauldron stayed.

More elaborate accounts bring the Devil into the scenario. One story states the Fiend visited Mother Ludlam’s Cave in disguise and asked to borrow her cauldron. Mother Ludlam, however, spotted his hoofprints in some sand and refused his request. The Devil stole the cauldron and the witch set off in pursuit – according to some tales – bestride her broomstick.

As Mother Ludlam chased him, the Devil made three great leaps. Each time he touched the ground, he kicked up some earth, forming a small hill. These hills, the Devil’s Jumps, can still be seen today. The Devil dropped the cauldron – or kettle – on the last of these hills, which is why it’s called Kettlebury Hill or just Kettlebury. As the Devil fled, he landed one more time, forming the natural amphitheatre known as the Devil’s Punchbowl, a small valley close to Gibbet Hill.

The Devil’s Jumps, near Frensham, supposedly created by the Devil as he fled with Mother Ludlam’s cauldron. (Photo: Peter S)

After recovering her cauldron, Mother Ludlam placed it in St Mary’s Church, where it would be protected from Satan’s grasping claws.

The Mother Ludlam legend is recorded in an account written down in 1869 and also from an interview with a local lady who lived until 1937. Though the Mother Ludlam legend likely stretches back earlier than these dates, it seems the version with the fairies is the more ancient one and that later stories then linked the cauldron to Mother Ludlam. Could Mother Ludlam have been an interesting local character and herbalist whose fame later appended itself to an older tale?

The Devil’s Jumps and the Norse God Thor

There’s an alternative account as to why the three hills are known as the Devil’s Jumps. Apparently, the Devil would amuse himself by leaping between their summits. He did this so often he annoyed the Nordic god Thor, who hurled a huge stone at the Fiend, which became the rocky outcrop on Stony Jump.

It’s possible that the introduction of Thor into this whole tangle of myth is a romantic, early 20th century addition, but a nearby village does have the name of Thursley, suggesting a local connection with the god.

As for the Devil, tales of him adding features to the landscape and leaping around are commonplace in Britain. The Colwell Stone – a large chunk of limestone in the centre of Colwell, Cornwall – was apparently put there by the Devil. The Fiend is also said to have created the whole of the Cotswolds by tipping a wheelbarrow of earth upon the land. With regard to his leaps, he’s reputed to have sprung down from the spire of Newington Church, Kent, leaving a smouldering 15-inch footprint on a stone near the churchyard gate. At Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, he jumped down from the church before joining some lads in a game of leapfrog. A hole in the ground opened into which they all leapt and they were never seen again. Perhaps the Devil’s leaping abilities have lived on in later folkloric characters, such as the Victorian London demon Spring-heeled Jack. In Victorian times, the Fiend also got the blame for the Devil’s Footprints: a miles-long trail of hoofmarks in single file left in the snow across Devon in 1855, a trail that appeared to have been made by a hopping demon.

Unusual landscape features – like boulders dumped by glaciers and oddly shaped outcrops – often attract strange tales. Another one from Frensham states that there was once a boulder on one of the Devil’s Jumps that a person in need of any object – even a yoke for oxen – could approach. The person just had to touch the boulder, pray and promise to return the item. One day someone requested a cauldron, but – as the loaned implement was then kept in Frensham Church for too long – it couldn’t be given back and the boulder’s lending capabilities ceased. It’s not clear if this ‘boulder’ was thought to be the same chunk of rock Thor hurled.

Mother Ludlam’s Cave, Holy Wells and a Long History of Healing Waters

Mother Ludlam’s Cave, once home to her famous cauldron? (Photo: Weydonian)

The name Mother Ludlam’s Cave (also known as Mother Ludlum’s Cave and Mother Ludlum’s Hole) may have interesting origins.

Suggestions for its etymology include a Celtic term meaning ‘bubbling spring’, and the area around the cave is thought to have been home to a spring known as the Ludewell. The name may also derive from a Saxon king called Lud, who is said to have washed in the Ludewell’s waters to heal his wounds after a battle.

But – according to the writer of semi-legendary history Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1095-1155) – Lud (or Ludd or Llud) was a ruler of Celtic Britain and London’s founder. Lud is linked to the mythological Welsh figure Lludd (or Nudd) Llaw Eraint and the legendary Irish King Nuada. Both these characters are thought to have emerged from memories of the Celtic god Nodens, who – among his other attributes – was a god of healing. A temple to this deity is said to have stood near Ludgate in the City of London. (Geoffrey states this is where King Lud was buried. It’s not uncommon in myth for gods to be associated with earthly kings.)

It seems the Ludewell spring was thought to have medicinal properties. It could, therefore, have been regarded as a holy well by pre-Christian peoples and perhaps linked with the healing god Nodens (aka Lud). This association could have survived in the name Mother Ludlam – also a healer – and become mingled with memories of a much later herbalist.

All this is, of course, speculation. Other possible origins for the cave’s name are the Saxon words for ‘meeting place’ and ‘loud’, perhaps in reference to the stream that ran from the Ludewell. But it’s interesting to think that some sort of connection with healing may have lingered around the cave from Celtic times through to Saxon warriors bathing their wounds through to an early modern herbalist brewing her potions in a cauldron.

The cave’s associations with pure and curative waters do seem to have continued into the Christian era. Nearby, on the banks of the River Wey, stand the picturesque ruins of Waverley Abbey. Walter Scott visited the ruins while researching his biography of Jonathon Swift and was enchanted – this experience may have inspired the title of his famous book Waverley. The abbey also inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel Sir Nigel.

Waverley Abbey, Surrey, one of whose monks enlarged Mother Ludlam’s Cave (Photo: Antony)

Founded in 1128, the abbey appears to have relied on the stream issuing from the Ludewell for its drinking water. However, this source dried up around 1218. In response, a monk called Symon searched for a new source, probably expanding Mother Ludlam’s Cave in the process, until he found – according to the Annals of Waverley Abbey – a ‘living spring’. With ‘much difficulty and invention, labour and sweating’ he enlarged it and – through an ingenious system of channels – brought its waters to the abbey. The monks christened the new spring St Mary’s Well. The original Ludewell probably started off in a cavern – a little above Mother Ludlam’s Cave on the cliff – known as Father Foote’s Cave (see below).

The esteem in which the monks held their new well – which probably boasted the same health benefits as the Ludewell – can be seen in the name they gave it (St Mary’s is also the name of Frensham Church). Healing wells in the Middle Ages were often named after saints and some became sites of pilgrimage.

St Mary’s Well had healing associations in quite modern times. The political radical William Cobbett (1763-1835) recalled that in his boyhood Mother Ludlam’s Cave contained ‘basins to catch the little stream’; ‘iron cups, fastened by chains, for people to drink out of’; and ‘seats for people to sit on, on both sides of the cave’. So it seems at that time the cave was a venue for people to imbibe medicinal waters. After revisiting the cave in 1825, however, Cobbett complained it was in a dire condition, with the seats torn up, the basins and cups gone, and ‘the stream that ran down a clear paved channel now making a dirty gutter.’

A depiction of Mother Ludlam’s Cave from 1785

What has all this, we might ask, to do with the cauldron in Frensham Church? The Mother Ludlam story was likely an invention to explain the presence of that unusual object in St Mary’s, but it’s worth pointing out that cauldrons have long had connections to healing, religion and magic. In Celtic times, cauldrons were crammed with votive offerings and left at holy sites. A story of King Arthur has him travelling to the Welsh Otherworld to steal a cauldron that could only be heated by the breath of nine virgins and would never cook food for a coward – a possible early source of the Holy Grail legends. A cauldron possessed by the Welsh hero Bran the Blessed is said to have had the power to revive dead warriors cooked in it overnight, though in the process they lost the ability to speak. In Frensham, can we see some tangled links between mythical notions of cauldrons, religious and magical sites, and caves and springs associated with healing?

The Gundestrup Cauldron (made between 200 BCE and 300 CE) – a silver vessel decorated with Celtic motifs discovered in a Danish bog. (Photo: Rosemania)

Mother Ludlam’s Cave was made into a grotto, probably during the 18th century, and in Victorian times an ironstone arch was added to its entrance, perhaps indicating a revival in the attraction of its medicinal waters after the desolation William Cobbett witnessed. In 1962, a roof collapse reduced the cave’s length from 200 feet (61 metres) to 192 (58.5 metres) and another collapse occurred in 1976. Today the cave is a roost for a number of bat species, with efforts being made to encourage the rare greater horseshoe bat to take up residence. Perhaps Mother Ludlam’s Cave can continue to be a place of healing, but for nature rather than humans.

Father Foote’s Cave

Father Foote’s (or Fooke’s) Cave – a small cave located above Mother Ludlam’s – also has a story attached. An old man named Foote – after staying for some time at the Seven Stars Inn in Farnham – is said to have dug the cave out of the cliff and made it his home. One day in 1840, Father Foote was found lying next to a stream, obviously unwell, and was taken to Farnham Workhouse, where he died. His last words were: ‘Take me to the cave again!’

It’s likely the cave is older than this, however. The cave may well have been the source of the original Ludewell, though it is now completely dry. The cave apparently has side alcoves that look manmade, perhaps suggesting it too was once frequented for its waters. I’m tempted to think that the ‘Father Fooke’ figure might have arisen from a folk memory of a saint or hermit or even water spirit once associated with the cave and the healing waters of Ludewell, whose legend was perhaps grafted onto stories of a much later person. I cannot, however, claim any evidence for such an assumption.

Father Foote’s Cave, a little above Mother Ludlam’s Cave on the cliff and maybe the source of the Ludewell. (Photo: BabelStone)

So Where Did the Cauldron in Frensham Church Really Come from?

As entertaining as the above stories are, I think we can discount the tales of the cauldron being borrowed from fairies or being placed in the church by a white witch after she’d snatched it back from the Devil. The cauldron’s origins are really quite simple and practical.

The cauldron was almost certainly used to brew ale for weddings, church festivals and other social occasions in the Middle Ages. The cauldron is made of hammered copper and is nineteen inches (48 centimetres) deep and three feet (91 centimetres) in diameter – a common design for medieval ale making.

Though it may seem strange today, churches were once venues for drinking parties – festivities known as ‘parish ales’. Parish ales had a number of subcategories – the church ale (which raised money from the sale of food and beer to maintain the church building), the leet ale (which took place on the manorial court day, a kind of village fete), the lamb ale (held at lamb sheering time), the Whitsun ale (held at Whitson) and the bride ale (a wedding feast that raised money for a newly married couple).

In addition to drinking beer, these events included plenty of feasting, as well as dancing, games and sports, activities that took place either in the churchyard or on the village common. Most churches would have had a cauldron to brew the ale and the profits from selling the beer were a vital source of income.

The poet Francis Beaumont (1584-1660) wrote:

The churches must owe, as we do all know,

For when they are drooping and ready to fall,

By a Whitsun or church ale up again they shall go,

And owe their repairing to a pot of good ale.

During the Reformation (1517-1650), parish ales aroused the disapproval of Protestant leaders, who disliked drunkenness and frivolity being associated with the Church. Though parish ales were never banned, they became less common, often being limited to Whitsun. In some places, the custom gradually faded away while in others parish ales continued in some form until quite modern times.

At Frensham, the parish ale custom probably declined, but the cauldron remained in the church. Wondering what the strange object was, locals are likely to have created stories, stories that meshed with existing tales of fairies, witches, the Devil’s shenanigans and healing wells.

The chroniclers who wrote down these legends – while charmed by them – quickly dismissed such yarns. Writing in 1673, John Aubrey could clearly see the cauldron was ‘an ancient utensil used by the villagers in their love feasts.’ In his Antiquities of Surrey (1736), Salmon refuted the suggestion the cauldron had been brought by fairies, insisting the object was ‘used for the entertainment of parishioners at the weddings of poor maids.’

Despite its non-mystical – though I hope not uninteresting – origins, what fascinates me is how such a complex knot of folklore has been woven around the Frensham cauldron, pulling in tales from various eras, cultures and traditions. Around this kitchen implement stories of Nordic gods, Saxon heroes, sacred wells, Victorian paupers, folk healers and Celtic myths have all been entangled, as well as – of course – legends of the Devil and his fondness for landscape architecture. It’s incredible how such a humble device has managed to get enmeshed in such diverse tales, in such a ravel of imagination and myth.

(This article’s main image – showing Mother Ludlam’s cauldron in Frensham Church, Surrey – is courtesy of BabelStone)

The post The Strange Cauldron of Frensham Church, a White Witch & the Devil appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

The day seems to darken. You wonder if – instead of stepping on springy turf – you’ve stepped through some portal out of the 21st century and back into a more gruesome epoch. Because there – on a hillock next to a quiet B-road – you can make out a gibbet.

There’s that gallows shape – that grim, almost archetypal structure – like a signpost pointing the way out of this existence and into the afterlife. A shape long feared by our forefathers and foremothers, a bleak reminder of the powers of the Establishment and State, a power that even intruded into the remotest regions.

Hanging from that gibbet is some kind of rope, chain or bar and attached to that is the unmistakable outline of a human head. As you come closer, you hear a groaning, a creaking, as that head sways in the wind – a sound that’s somehow burned onto the ancestral memory, a noise evoking images of the bodies of malefactors suspended in cages or chains.

Though such a sight is unusual, it’s not the only one. Scattered around England are reminders of our nation’s grisly past: the gibbets, the gallows, the memorials that mark the places where – across the centuries – the State delivered the ultimate penalty to its more wayward subjects.

A gibbet can simply mean the apparatus of execution – a term that includes gallows (where people were killed by hanging), guillotines, the executioner’s block or even the scaffold upon which such implements stood. To gibbet means to extend the punishment beyond death – to wrap the corpse of the wrongdoer in chains or put it in a cage and then display the body publicly by suspending it from a tall gallows-like structure (also known as a gibbet).

The rotting corpse would dangle – sometimes for years – as a warning to any tempted to stray down the same path. There it would hang, a banquet for maggots and crows, wafting its stomach-turning scent as the chain creaked in the breeze and the cage knocked against the gibbet’s wood. Gibbeting was seen as a horrendous extra punishment in an era when ideas were widespread about the destiny of the soul being intertwined with the body’s fate.

Below I’ve listed ten places in England where you can still see some indications of these brutal histories – perhaps a replica gallows or gibbet, a noose, the rusting remnants of a cage, or an eerily decaying post. Read on to learn about cursed chairs, skulls in town hall attics, murderers’ ghosts, the grim punishments that awaited pirates and mutineers, England’s only guillotine, and the strangest ever cures for toothache and rheumatism.

Number 1: Steng Cross Gibbet, Northumberland

Steng Cross Gibbet, Northumberland, England (Photo: Phil Thirkell)

The description above is of Steng Cross Gibbet – also known as Winter’s Gibbet – in Northumberland. Northumberland – being close to Scotland and a hangout of cattle rustlers and cross-border raiders – was a popular place for gibbets, but this particular relic has nothing to do with Scottish interlopers or livestock thieves.

Steng Cross Gibbet – located on bleak moorland next to the B6342 about eight miles (12.87 kilometres) east of Otterburn – is an 18-foot (5.48-metre) replica of the gibbet that once suspended the corpse of William Winter.

Winter – a wanderer and highwayman – had crept up to an isolated cottage near Whiskershield Common one rainswept blustery night in 1791. Urged on by two sisters – Jane and Eleanor Clark – Winter knocked on the door and begged the cottage’s sole occupant, an elderly woman, for shelter. The lady beckoned him in and Winter repaid her kindness by beating and kicking her, slitting her throat and escaping with her possessions loaded on a donkey.

Winter and his two accomplices felt that – in such a lonely spot – it would take a while for the victim to be discovered, giving them plenty of time to get away. But the gang were seen by a shepherd boy, who recognised a knife Winter was using to peel an apple as belonging to the old woman. The boy also took note of the patterns on the soles of Winter’s boots, enabling the authorities to track the robbers via his footprints in the mud.

The three were arrested, tried in Newcastle and condemned to death by hanging. The judge ordered that Winter’s body should be suspended in chains. (The bodies of the sisters were given up for dissection – gibbeting was a punishment almost exclusively reserved for men.)

The site chosen for Winter’s Gibbet was significant. Due to the stench and risk of contamination, it was preferable to locate gibbets away from populated areas, but – to have a deterrent effect – they needed to be where people would see them.

Roadsides were often, therefore, used, as it was hoped the gibbets would have an invigorating influence on the morals of those passing by. Winter’s Gibbet is located on the highest point of an important road along which Scottish drovers herded their cattle to English markets. This point was once marked by a stone Saxon cross – the base of which only now remains – hence the name Steng Cross Gibbet.

The head suspended from Winter’s Gibbet, Northumberland, England (Photo: Phil Thirkell)

Winter’s body hung on the gibbet until it rotted away. After that, his bones were scattered, though his skull was sent to a Mr Darnell in Newcastle. Winter’s ghost is rumoured to haunt the surrounding moorlands. His phantom is fond of causing sudden thick fogs and of appearing at a nearby cattle grid.

An interesting superstition is linked to Winter’s Gibbet. It’s said you can cure toothache by cutting a splinter off and rubbing it on the offending tooth or gum. Objects associated with executions were long believed to have magical or healing properties. Pieces of a hanged man’s clothing or skin were prized as talismans. Burglars believed the preserved hand of an executed felon – known as a Hand of Glory – could trap their victims in a profound sleep. The fact the current Winter’s Gibbet is just a replica doesn’t seem to have weakened its reputation for curing dental distress.

The head suspended from Steng Cross Gibbet is a concrete one. Once there was a whole concrete body, but as people kept using it for shooting practice or stealing it to play pranks, the body was removed, with only the head remaining.

Number 2: The Busby Stoop Inn, North Yorkshire

A noose hangs from a mock gallows outside the Busby Stoop Inn, Yorkshire, England (Photo: David Rogers)

If you were driving towards Sand Hutton Crossroads, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, you might be surprised to see a noose dangling from a gallows beside a white building.

That building is the Busby Stoop Inn and the noose and gallows recall a sinister legend connected with the pub.

The landlord, Thomas Busby, was a notorious drunkard and criminal. One day in 1702, he quarrelled with his father-in-law. Some say it was because the older man was trying to rescue his daughter from Busby, others that the argument concerned a coin counterfeiting gang they were involved with. Anyway, Busby lost his temper and bludgeoned his father-in-law to death.

Busby was sentenced to be hung on the other side of the crossroads from his inn, after which his body was gibbetted and left for years to sway and creak in the wind on the same spot. Before his execution, however, Busby was permitted to have one last drink in his pub. He sat in his favourite chair and – when he got up to face the rope – he is said to have cursed the seat, warning that anyone who sat in it would meet a premature and violent death.

Over the years, a number of people have been unwise enough to sit in Busby’s chair, and all have – apparently – succumbed to his curse. A young labourer – tricked by his colleagues into sitting on the seat – the same day fell through the roof of the house he was working on and split open his skull. Some Canadian airmen, stationed near the Busby Stoop Inn during the Second World War, dared each other to sit on the chair. Shortly afterwards, their plane crashed, killing everyone on board.

One of the pub’s landlords, disturbed by such stories, hid the chair in the cellar. But one day a man delivering beer spotted the seat and decided to take a rest. A few hours later, his lorry crashed, killing him. The chair is now kept in a museum in the nearby town of Thirsk, hung high on a wall so no one is tempted to test whether the curse is true. There’s some dispute about this chair, however, with some claiming its style – with machine-turned spindles – would date it to after Busby’s lifetime.

The infamous cursed chair of Thomas Busby (Photo: TheHauntedPalace)

Thomas Busby’s ghost has long been said to haunt the inn as well as the site where he was hung and gibbeted. Crossroads were a popular location for gibbets and gallows. As they were often busy junctions, it was hoped the sight of the gibbeted corpse would be a powerful moral reminder to travellers going by. Crossroads could also be places of burial: the remains of criminals might be interred beneath the gallows they’d been hung from while suicides – a stake driven through their hearts – were sometimes buried at such junctions. Many believed this meant the vengeful or disturbed ghosts of these tragic individuals – confused by the choice of four ways – wouldn’t wander off to haunt nearby settlements.

The pub later renamed itself the Busby Stoop Inn, stoop meaning gallows in the local dialect. Perhaps this – in addition to the mock scaffold and noose outside – was an attempt to cash in on Busby’s legend. Busby’s chair also featured on the pub sign – until recently, that is.

The Busby Stoop Inn is an inn no longer. It’s been converted into an Indian restaurant called Jaipur Spice. There’s no evidence, however, that this change of function has caused Thomas Busby’s ghost to disappear. Perhaps he’s developed a taste for biryani and balti.

Number 3: Execution Dock, Wapping, East London

A gallows near the site of Execution Dock, Wapping, London, England (Photo: Historic UK) 

When the tide is low, descend the Pelican Stairs by The Prospect of Whitby pub, making sure you don’t slip on the mud or moss coating the steps. If you then pick your way along the Thames foreshore and lift your eyes from examining the pottery shards, the old clay pipes, the urban debris strewn over the river’s exposed bed, you’ll see a gibbet rising from the sand, with a noose dangling from a surprisingly short rope.

You’re near the site of Execution Dock, Wapping, where for over four centuries pirates, mutineers and smugglers were hanged. Those executed here had been sentenced by the Admiralty courts, whose jurisdiction covered all crimes committed at sea.

The gallows at Execution Dock were just below the low tide mark of the river – the gibbet, therefore, fell within the Admiralty’s domains. Crimes for which sailors were hung included murder on the high seas, acts of mutiny that led to death, and other offences, such as sodomy. The Admiralty sought to bring all those found guilty back to London, to end their earthly span at Execution Dock.

The convicts were normally kept in Marshalsea Prison, on the south bank of the Thames, though some were held at Newgate, where the Old Bailey now stands. Prisoners destined for Execution Dock found themselves taking part in quite a spectacle. They were placed on a cart and transported in a parade that went across London Bridge and past the Tower of London. The procession was led by the High Court Marshall on horseback, who brandished a silver oar representing the power of the Admiralty.

A chaplain travelled in the cart with the condemned, urging them to make one last confession. Perhaps more curiously, the procession stopped at an inn – The Turk’s Head – where the prisoner was allowed one final quart of ale. Enthusiastic crowds lined the parade route and river banks and people even chartered boats to get a good view of the hanging.

Pirates faced an especially brutal ordeal. They were hanged with a shortened rope, resulting in a slower death through suffocation as the rope wasn’t long enough to break their necks. This process was called ‘the Marshall’s Dance’ because the prisoners’ limbs twitched as they died through slow asphyxiation. When they finally expired, the pirates weren’t cut down but left hanging until at least three tides had washed over their heads.

The bodies of the most notorious pirates were tarred and gibbeted. They were hung in chains, usually either at Cuckold’s Point – on the Rotherhithe Peninsula – or Blackwall Point, near where The O2 Arena now stands. Here the decaying corpses would serve as a grim warning to sailors coming up the river. The infamous pirate Captain Kidd – whose legend inspired Treasure Island and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Gold Bug – died at Execution Dock in 1701. His remains were gibbeted over the Thames at Tilbury Point for three years. The last hangings at Execution Dock occurred in December 1830.

Though the noose flaps mournfully from its replica gibbet between The Prospect of Whitby and the Thames, there’s debate about the exact location of Execution Dock. Some say its site is indicated by a large letter E painted on a warehouse at Swan Wharf; others maintain the spot lies beneath Wapping Overground Station. Three pubs are also in the running for this gruesome accolade, with The Prospect of Whitby, the Town of Ramsgate and the Captain Kidd all claiming to stand on – or very close to – the old Execution Dock.

Another place pirates were hanged was Jacob’s Island, a notorious South London slum situated where the River Neckinger met the Thames. The Neckinger – which now flows underground – apparently got its name from the term ‘Devil’s Neckcloth’, meaning the hangman’s noose. The site of the – long demolished – Jacob’s Island slum is now occupied by the Shad Thames and St Saviour’s Dock areas of Bermondsey.

Number 4: The Halifax Gibbet, West Yorkshire – An Early Guillotine

The Halifax Gibbet, Yorkshire, England (Photo: Atlas Obscura)

In Halifax, Yorkshire, stands a device that looks like it should belong in the aftermath of the French Revolution. First set up in the 1500s – though no one knows exactly when – the Halifax Gibbet was an early guillotine. Such a contraption seems to have been unique in England, where decapitation was usually administered by more straightforward tools like axes and swords.

Halifax was once part of the Forest of Hardwick. Here an ancient custom allowed the local lord to execute anyone accused of stealing goods worth 13½ pence or more, without needing to go through the inconvenience of holding a trial. This custom may have been a relic of the Anglo-Saxon infangthief tradition, which allowed lords to enforce summary justice on thieves caught within the boundaries of their estates.

Not that such things were uncommon in medieval England. In the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), 94 private gallows and gibbets were in operation in Yorkshire, including one owned by the Bishop of York. What was unusual about Halifax was that this custom lingered on into the 17th century, by which time public opinion had decided that the summary beheading of petty thieves was a little over the top.

By the time the guillotine was set up, the decision to execute was made by a jury rather than a feudal lord, but there was still no need for a judge, defence counsel or the taking of oaths. Interestingly, this law only applied in the Forest of Hardwick and the Halifax Gibbet stood about 500 yards (450 metres) from its boundaries. Two men are known to have dodged the blade by sprinting off and getting beyond the forest’s frontiers. Records show that at least 52 men and women were beheaded by the guillotine before its use was outlawed – despite much local opposition – in 1650.

A sketch of the Halifax Gibbet in operation

The decapitation of petty thieves may have continued for so long in Halifax because it was a centre of the production of a type of cloth called kersey. As part of the manufacturing process, the cloth had to be hung outdoors to dry, making it an easy target for the light-fingered.

The Halifax Gibbet was dismantled after it had performed its final executions, but its stone platform was rediscovered in 1840. A full-sized (but non-working!) replica was set up on this base in 1974. The replica includes a blade made from a casting of the original. The original blade can be seen in the Bankfield Museum in Boothtown on Halifax’s outskirts. A plaque close to the replica lists the names of the 52 people known to have been executed by the guillotine.

Number 5: The Caxton Gibbet, Cambridgeshire

The Caxton Gibbet, Cambridgeshire (Photo: Andrew Dunn)

The Caxton Gibbet stands on the important ancient thoroughfare known as Ermine Street (now the A1198), which links London and Huntingdon, close to where it crosses the road (now the A428) connecting Cambridge and St Neots.

The Caxton Gibbet is unusual as local folklore associates it with a particularly gruesome method of execution – the placing of convicts in a gibbet cage while still alive. The prisoner would then die from thirst, exposure, starvation or a mixture of all three.

Local tales speak of a murderer who killed a man named Partridge. Upon being convicted, the criminal was suspended alive in a gibbet cage. A baker who tried to relieve his sufferings by offering him a piece of bread was sentenced to the same punishment.

There are, however, no court or burial records of such ordeals being inflicted at Caxton and live gibbeting seems to have been uncommon in England.

Tales of convicts being gibbeted at Caxton can be traced back to the 1670s and court records show the gibbet was still in use in 1745.

The Cambridgeshire antiquarian William Cole (1714-82) wrote, ‘About 1753 or 1754, the son of Mrs Gatward, being convicted of robbing the Mail, was hanged in chains on the Great Road. I saw him hanging in a scarlet coat. After he had hung two or four months, it is supposed that the screw was filed that supported him and he fell in the first high wind after.’

The Caxton Gibbet seems to have disappeared in the first decades of the 19th century. A replica was set up, probably in the early 1900s. As with the mock gallows at Busby Stoop, it may have been erected to drum up business for a nearby pub, also called the Caxton Gibbet.

Number 6: The Cage of John Breads’ Gibbet, Rye, East Sussex

John Breads’ gibbet cage and part of his skull in Rye Town Hall, Sussex, England (Photo: nerdsonearth)

John Breads – an innkeeper and butcher from Rye – was in 1737 fined by the mayor James Lamb for cheating his customers with non-standard weights. Breads thereafter nursed a hatred of Lamb and – six years later – saw an opportunity to pay him back.

On 17th March 1743, James Lamb’s son John hosted a dinner party on a ship in Rye Harbour. John had invited his father to attend and Breads – having heard about the dinner – hid in a churchyard hoping to surprise James Lamb on his way home. Later that night, seeing a figure pass among the graves, Breads leapt out from behind a tombstone and thrust a knife into the person’s back. But the victim was not James Lamb. Lamb was ill and the man Breads stabbed was Lamb’s brother-in-law Allen Grebel, who’d gone to the dinner in his place.

In the gloom of the churchyard, Breads didn’t notice his error. He excitedly dropped his knife and ran away shouting, ‘Butchers should kill lambs!’ Grebel died of his wounds later that evening.

Breads was imprisoned in Rye Castle and – when he came to trial – he found his intended victim James Lamb was the presiding magistrate. Breads told him, ‘I did not mean to kill Mr Grebel. It was you I meant it for and I would murder you now if I could!’

On 8th June, John Breads was hanged outside the Strand Gate, Rye. His body was then placed in a cage on – the aptly named – Gibbet Marsh, where it was left to dangle for 50 years. The cage and Breads’ skull are now kept in the attic of Rye Town Hall. It’s said his other bones were stolen by old women and used as cures for rheumatism.

A mock cage with a mock skeleton can be seen in Rye Castle Museum, in the very cell where Breads was held. Like Thomas Busby, John Breads was permitted to enjoy a last pint in his pub – The Flushing Inn – before he faced the rope.

Though many of those gibbeted were hung with chains wrapped around their bodies, others – like Breads – were suspended in specially designed cages. For these, the blacksmith would often measure the convict, in the way a tailor might measure a man for a suit.

Number 7: Combe Gibbet, Berkshire

Combe Gibbet on Gallows Down, Berkshire, England (Photo: Andrew Foster)

This gibbet stands high on Gallows Down, near the village of Combe, Berkshire. It’s on the Test Way – an important long-distance footpath – and prominently sited on top of a long barrow.

Combe Gibbet was erected in 1676 to display the bodies of George Broomham and Dorothy Newman and was only ever used for them. The two were having an affair and they murdered Broomham’s wife Martha and son Robert when they stumbled upon the lovers on the downs.

Despite its sinister past, the gibbet now seems a centre of fun activities. It’s a tourist attraction and often surrounded by hang gliders and paragliders. The gibbet is the start of a scenic off-road run – the Combe Gibbet Race – which takes place every year.

Though the current gibbet is a replica – the original was dismantled years ago – a condition in the lease of a nearby farm states the gibbet must be properly maintained. Perhaps there’s a suspicion that someday this grim apparatus may once again come in handy.

Number 8: Brigg Gibbet, Lincolnshire

Brigg Gibbet, which stands on the A18 three miles east of Brigg, Lincolnshire, is unusual in that no wrongdoers were ever suspended from it. It was erected in the early 17th century as a warning, following a fight between two feuding local families, in which members of both clans died. King James I warned the families – the Rosses of Melton Ross and the Tyrwhitts of Kettleby – that any more killings would be treated as murder. The king had the gibbet set up to underline his point.

Number 9: The Bilstone Gibbet, Leicestershire

The remnants of the Bilstone Gibbet, Leicestershire, England (Photo: Ian Rob)

This gibbet post stands outside the hamlet of Bilstone, Leicestershire. The Bilstone Gibbet was erected to suspend the body of John Massey, a hard-drinking – and notoriously short-tempered – farmhand. John was famous locally as a wrestler and known as Topsy Turvey because of his trick of lifting opponents above his head before throwing them.

In 1801, after returning to Bilstone from a drinking session in the Curzon Arms, Twycross, Massey got into a violent row with his new second wife. After assaulting her, he picked her up and flung her into a mill stream. Though she didn’t drown, she died a few weeks later from her injuries. Massey also hurled her 10-year-old daughter – who’d tried to intervene – into the mill race. The daughter clambered out – shaken but unharmed – with the help of the mill keeper and would later give decisive evidence against Massey in court.

Following his trial, John Massey was hung, after which his body was suspended in chains from the Bilstone Gibbet for 18 years. By the time he was taken down, only a partial skeleton was left.

Unlike many of the gibbets in this article, this gibbet post – though eroded and worm-eaten – isn’t a replica but a remnant of the original object. Ancient iron bolts can still be seen in its wood.

Those who have lingered near the gibbet in the late evening have reported an unsettling sensation. Teenagers used to dare each other to walk up close to the gibbet at night, especially on Halloween.

Number 10: The Millom Gibbet, Cumbria

Near the town of Millom, Cumbria, a memorial stands next to a socket in the ground that once secured a gibbet post. As in the Forest of Hardwick, the local lords – the Huddleston family – had the right to execute suspects without all the troublesome hassle of court cases. The socket is all that remains of the gibbet that dispatched them.

The Decline of Gibbeting and Public Gallows

Though favoured by the courts as a theatrical method of deterrent, gibbeting was always a controversial practice. There were frequent complaints about the sight and smell of the decaying corpse and attempts were sometimes made to remove and bury bodies. One reason gibbet posts were so high was to make this difficult and some gibbets had nails sticking out of the wood to discourage any tempted to climb them to cut down the corpse.

The London diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) expressed disgust at gibbeting and such sentiments seem to have grown as time went on. Though the Murder Act of 1751 stipulated that ‘in no case whatsoever shall the body of a murderer be suffered to be buried’ but should instead be dissected or hung in chains, this may well have been intended to reverse a decline in gibbeting.

The practice, however, became less common and objections to it more outspoken. Doubts were also rising about the moral instruction the sight of a gibbeting could impart. In one notorious case, a 16-year-old girl invited a friend to a picnic beneath a gibbet and fed her a poisoned cake, in revenge for her friend taking a job she’d coveted.

The last gibbetings in England were those of William Jobbing, a Jarrow miner, and James Cook, a Leicester bookbinder, both in 1832. Jobbing was soon cut down by his fellow miners and buried decently. Cook’s body was taken down by the authorities after a few days, following horrified complaints from nearby residents. Gibbeting was abolished in 1834.

Public hangings went on. Though such executions were often large-scale events, drawing thousands of onlookers, disquiet about them was also increasing.

Charles Dickens, after witnessing a public hanging, wrote a letter to The Times complaining of the ‘wickedness and levity of the immense crowd … The horrors of the gibbet and of the crimes which brought the wretched murderers to it faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks and language of the assembled spectators.’

Dickens described many of these spectators as ‘thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians and vagabonds of every kind’ who indulged in ‘every variety of offensive and foul behaviour … fightings, faintings, whistlings … brutal jokes’ and ‘tumultuous demonstrations of indecent delight.’

As had been the case with gibbeting, uncertainties were growing about the virtuous effects of public executions on the masses. From 1868, hangings were carried out behind prison walls. The UK’s last ever hangings took place in 1964.

The landscape, however, remembers our brutality. We can see it in our place names – Gallowgate, Gibbet Marsh, Gibbet Lane, Gallows Down. Our cruelties are recalled by those replica gibbets, those flapping nooses, rain-filled sockets and worm-eaten posts that lurk eerily at England’s crossroads and waysides, reminding us of attitudes that have faded and will hopefully never re-emerge.

(The featured image, showing Winter’s Gibbet, is courtesy of johndal)

The post England’s Top 10 Gibbets, Gallows & Places of Execution appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

Then you trudge around the corner of the church building, look up, gasp, blink, look again. Your eyes are not tricking you – in front of you, there really does stand a 25-foot (7.6-metre) pyramid. It rises from the green land, against a background of bare trees; sheep bumble around it; moss patches its stones; its point tears at the mist, but – in this most English of scenes – it’s there: a pyramid, a miniaturisation of Ancient Egypt seemingly transported from the shores of the Nile and plonked down in a British churchyard.

And it’s not the only one. A number of such pyramid mausoleums are scattered across England – brooding in dark stone next to modest churches, crowning green hilltops or rising incongruously from the lush grass of aristocratic estates.

These pyramid tombs are magnets for bizarre legends – tales tell of glass strewn over their floors to repel the Devil, of occupants seated with bottles of wine to await the Resurrection. There are stories of the dead clutching playing cards in the hope of outwitting demons, of attempts to stop people dancing on ex-lover’s graves, of glimpses of tragic ghosts and of desperate schemes to keep family fortunes intact.

England’s pyramid tombs were the product of ‘Egyptomania’ – the passion for all things Ancient Egypt that gripped Europe and North America in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Freemasons became fascinated with the Pyramids’ ‘sacred geometry’ and the esoteric secrets supposedly hidden in their designs. Neo-Egyptian buildings sprouted on European streets; Egyptian themes invaded literature, opera and art; and Egyptian motifs appeared on products as diverse as furniture, jewellery and dinner services.

And, as so much of Ancient Egyptian culture revolved around death, it’s not surprising that pyramid tombs began popping up in English churchyards and beyond. Though England boasts quite a range of wonderful pointy-topped mausoleums, I’ve attempted to compile a list of the ten best. So let’s go for a quick tour and see what we can make of England’s strange pyramid tombs.

Number 1: Mad Jack Fuller’s Pyramid in Brightling Churchyard, Sussex

The pyramid tomb described above is England’s most famous. It was erected to house the body of one ‘Mad Jack Fuller’ – the squire of the hamlet of Brightling, Sussex. The pyramid stands, dark and moody, in the corner of Brightling’s St Thomas a Beckett Churchyard, dominating the gravestones and even seeming to challenge the primacy of the church itself.

Mad Jack Fuller’s pyramid tomb in Brightling Churchyard, Sussex, England. (Photo: Plumbago)

Born in 1757, the famous eccentric John ‘Mad Jack’ Fuller served as a Member of Parliament for Southampton and Sussex. The Fuller family had made their fortune from iron foundries and Jack’s wealth was further boosted when he inherited his uncle’s Sussex estates and Jamaican slave plantations in 1777 at the age of just 20. Fantastically fat and a well-known drunk, Fuller was ejected from Parliament in 1810 by the Serjeant-at-arms after a passionate and alcohol-fuelled denunciation of the government. This incident resulted in public disgrace, effectively ended his political career and even led to Jack being threatened with imprisonment in the Tower of London.

Fuller used his substantial wealth to support scientific developments – including mentoring Michael Faraday, who conducted pioneering studies into electricity and magnetism. Jack also bought and commissioned a number of paintings from J.M.W Turner. But Mad Jack Fuller’s urge to be remembered went beyond sponsoring science and art – like the Egyptians, he wished to bequeath a legacy in stone. He constructed a number of follies on his estates – such as an obelisk, a mock Greek temple and a cone-shaped structure rumoured to have been built to win a bet – in addition to his pyramid mausoleum.

As the pharaohs had, Jack ordered that work should begin on his pyramid while he was still very much alive. The tomb was built between 1810 and 11, many years before his death in 1834. According to legend, Mad Jack Fuller was interred at the centre of his pyramid dressed for dinner, seated on an iron chair and wearing a top hat. On a table in front of him were a bottle of port and roast chicken, so that when the trumpet blast of the Resurrection came he wouldn’t be hungry or suffer thirst. Apparently, Fuller ordered that bits of glass should be scattered over the tomb’s floor – to prick the Devil’s cloven hooves and thereby discourage him from coming to claim Mad Jack’s soul.

Another story says that to get permission for his pyramid mausoleum – which takes up a quarter of the churchyard – Jack had to make serious efforts to persuade the vicar. Local folklore claims Jack even promised to move his pub – the Green Man – from opposite the church, as the tavern’s rowdiness was distressing for the devout. The pub was relocated to a converted barn and renamed The Fuller’s Arms.

When restoration work on the pyramid was done in 1982, the stories about Jack’s interment were found to be false. Mad Jack Fuller was buried rather prosaically beneath the floor of his mausoleum and there were no signs of roast chickens, bottles of port or broken glass. The tale about Jack having to move his pub is also untrue. The parish register states that – to be allowed to build his fantastical monument – Mad Jack Fuller was merely required to erect a new churchyard wall, along with an iron gate and two pillars.

Number Two: Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Pyramid in St Anne’s Churchyard, Limehouse, London

Nicholas Hawksmoor’s pyramid in St Anne’s Churchyard, Limehouse, London. (photo: cosmictigger)

A much smaller – but possibly more curious – pyramid stands in the churchyard of St Anne’s, Limehouse. Green and mossy, this slim structure reaches a height of 9 feet (2.74 metres) and bears the strange inscription ‘The Wisdom of Solomon’ in English and Hebrew.

No one knows the exact purpose of the pyramid. Some suggest it’s a grave marker; others suspect it was intended to decorate the church’s tower but – being surplus to the builders’ needs – was left in the churchyard. The architect of St Anne’s was Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736). Known as ‘the Devil’s Architect’, Hawksmoor was a noted Freemason fond of peppering his buildings with ‘pagan’ symbols like obelisks and pyramids.

Perhaps only Hawksmoor knows why the pyramid is there and what its mysterious inscription refers to, though King Solomon – as builder of the Great Temple in Jerusalem – is revered by Freemasons. Hawksmoor apparently made plans for a full reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple, a monument which – like the Pyramids – was thought to express the universe’s secrets within its geometry. Another of the churches Hawksmoor designed, St Mary Woolnoth, is based on the Temple’s supposedly cubic shape. Hawksmoor’s St Anne’s pyramid is divided into five segments, which is reputedly another piece of Masonic symbolism.

Number Three: William MacKenzie’s Pyramid Mausoleum in St Andrew’s Churchyard, Liverpool

William Mackenzie’s pyramid tomb, in St Andrew’s Churchyard, Liverpool. (Photo: Atlas Obscura)

Another pyramid linked to ‘sinister’ mysteries can be found in St Andrew’s Presbyterian Churchyard, in Rodney Street, Liverpool. The pyramid is the tomb of William MacKenzie (1794-1851), a civil engineer and contractor who worked on some of Europe’s most important railways and canals. According to legend, MacKenzie was a gambler who had a wager with the Devil. To stop Satan claiming his soul, MacKenzie was interred sitting upright in his pyramid holding a winning hand of cards – as the Devil could never beat him, McKenzie hoped his soul would be safe.

The churchyard in Rodney Street is said to be haunted by MacKenzie’s ghost, a shadowy phantom in a top hat and cape that walks through the locked gates of the graveyard before entering the pyramid. A man who ‘saw’ the ghost in 1871 – and shortly afterwards died of fright – described MacKenzie’s face as being lit up with fire and his eyes as black and lifeless.

A slight variation on his legend says that one night MacKenzie played poker with a Mr Madison, who turned out to be the Devil. MacKenzie sold his soul in exchange for a winning streak and went on to request interment above ground in a bid to evade the Evil One’s clutches.

These stories, however, have little basis in fact. The pyramid tomb was commissioned by MacKenzie’s brother 17 years after his death. The inscription on the monument states ‘in the vault beneath lie the remains of William MacKenzie’, suggesting the pyramid’s occupant was interred neither above ground nor sitting up.

Another local legend has MacKenzie – in addition to his exploits on the railways and canals – operating as a body snatcher. He would – apparently – dig up fresh Liverpool corpses, pickle them in barrels and send them by ship to Scottish medical schools. There’s no evidence, however, to suggest that William MacKenzie led anything other than an upright and sober life, driven on by a ferocious Protestant work ethic.

Number Four: The Pyramid Tomb of Dr Francis Douce in Nether Wallop, Hampshire

Dr Francis Douce’s pyramid tomb at Nether Wallop, Hampshire, England. (Photo: Random encounters with the unusual)

At Nether Wallop in Hampshire, a 15-foot (4.6-metre) pyramid can be seen in St Andrew’s Churchyard. Built for the physician Dr Francis Douce (1675-1760) in 1748, the pyramid boasts a flaming torch – a symbol of immortality – on its pinnacle. On the structure’s side are a coat-of-arms and an inscription proclaiming Douce ‘a Doctor of Physick’. In smooth sombre dark stone, this grade-II-listed tomb stands somewhat ominously in front of the church’s tower.

For the Ancient Egyptians, it was vital that the body was mummified and preserved and Douce seems to have had similar concerns. A member of the Company of Surgeons, he was obsessed with embalming, subscribing to a book in 1705 entitled The Art of Embalming Wherein Is Shown the Right of Burials and Funeral Ceremonies, especially that of Preserving Bodies after the Egyptian Method. This book laments the decay of unembalmed corpses – and stresses how easily they can be desecrated by animals and body snatchers – as well as recommending the pyramid as ‘the most durable structure’.

Douce’s will goes into exhaustive detail about how his pyramid should be maintained, and he left money to the parish – to support the elderly and educate poor children – on the condition his pyramid was well looked after. John Blake, the architect of Douce’s pyramid mausoleum, stated of the structure: ‘the area of the vault … is curiously paved with stone: the walls being very substantial … so it is a receptacle or lodging room fit for the remains of a prince … and the doctor’s bones may sleep undisturbed “till the Last Day”.’

Number Five: The Loudon Pyramid, St John the Baptist’s Churchyard, Pinner, Middlesex

The Loudon Pyramid in Pinner, Middlesex, England. (Photo: speel.me.uk)

If you were wandering through St John the Baptist’s Churchyard in Pinner, you might be startled by the sight of a pyramid with a stone coffin thrust through its centre. Legend claims the architectural writer John Claudius Loudon designed this tomb as an ingenious response to a problem plaguing his family.

John was in danger of forfeiting his inheritance as a strange legal clause only permitted the Loudons to keep their fortune for as long as John’s parents ‘remained above ground’. By having the pyramid support his parents’ coffin, John made sure they did indeed stay ‘above ground’ and so their fortune could be passed down to him.

Number Six: Pyramid in St Thomas’s Churchyard, Box, Wiltshire

A small pyramid on a grave in Box, Wiltshire, England. (Photo: Brian Robert Marshall)

A small pyramid-like structure stands on a grave in St Thomas’s Churchyard, in the village of Box, Wiltshire. The tomb bears no legible inscription and no records have been found that can account for its unusual shape. A local legend, however, maintains that the widow of the tomb’s occupant planned to dance on his grave to celebrate his passing. To prevent this indignity, his friends erected a small pyramid over his resting place.

Number Seven: ‘His and Hers’ Pyramids in Staverton, Gloucestershire

The ‘his and hers’ pyramid tombs of the St Clairs, Staverton, Gloucestershire, England. (Photo: BBC)

In Staverton Churchyard, identical ‘his and hers’ pyramids commemorate David St Clair and his wife Elizabeth. Built upon Elizabeth’s death in 1855, the monuments proclaim the St Clairs ‘an ancient family’. For centuries, the St Clairs had been associated with the Freemasons, so this connection may well have influenced the unusual design of David and Elizabeth’s tombs.

Number Eight: Pyramid to a Horse on Farley Mount, Hampshire

This attractive white pyramid on Farley Mount commemorates a horse. (Photo: gothisplace)

Not all English pyramids commemorate humans. On Farley Mount, Hampshire, an impressive white pyramid honours a horse that – a plaque tells us – in ‘September 1733 leaped into a chalk pit twenty-five feet deep a fox-hunting with his master on his back.’ Both horse and master survived and the horse went on to win ‘the hunter’s plate on Worthy Downs and was rode by his owner.’

That owner, Sir Paulet St John, was so grateful to his horse for both saving his life and winning him – no doubt – a substantial amount of money that he erected the pyramid. The Egyptians sometimes mummified animals, and creatures as diverse as cats and fish have been found in their tombs. Could the Farley Mount pyramid be a similar attempt to conserve the memory of a beloved non-human companion?

In Leckhampton, Gloucestershire, a more basic memorial – a rough pyramid of large stones – marks the grave of The Continental, a favourite horse that died in 1902.

Number Nine: Memorial to ‘The World’s Oldest Man’, in Bolton-on-Swale, Yorkshire

A pyramid-shaped memorial to Henry Jenkins, in Bolton-on-Swale. (Photo: Tom Courtney)

In the churchyard of Bolton-on-Swale, Yorkshire, there stands a pyramid-shaped memorial to Henry Jenkins, a local man said to have lived to the age of 169. Even after he reached 100, Henry apparently fathered a child and swam regularly across the Swale, England’s fastest-flowing river. 

Supposedly born in 1501, Henry claimed to have helped transport arrows to the Battle of Flodden Field (1513) and to have met the Abbot of Fountains Abbey (closed by Henry VIII in 1539) while working as a butler. Henry Jenkins died in 1670 and his pyramid memorial was erected in 1743. In Ancient Egypt, after 30 years on the throne – and every three or four years thereafter – the Pharaoh would take part in the Heb Sed festival, during which he would run around a ritual course four times to prove his continued vitality and fitness to rule. A pyramid is perhaps, therefore, a suitable monument to Henry Jenkins’s long life and incredible vigour. 

Number Ten: The Earl of Buckingham’s Pyramid Mausoleum, Blickling Hall, Norfolk

The Earl of Buckingham’s pyramid, Blickling Hall, Norfolk, England. (Photo: geoview)

If you wander through the very English gardens of Blickling Hall in Norfolk, you’ll come across a pyramid tomb. An incredible 45 feet (13.7 metres) high, the pyramid contains the bodies of the Second Earl of Buckingham (died 1793) and his two wives. The Earl’s arms are prominently displayed, over an enormous portico. Inside, the pyramid mausoleum boasts a marble pavement and three stone sarcophagi, which were brought by water from London.

The pyramid was commissioned by the Earl’s daughter Caroline – who inherited his estates – and her husband. This display of mortuary grandeur set the couple back by the equivalent of £200,000 in today’s money, a cost met in part by Caroline selling her jewellery. The pyramids of Ancient Egypt were intended as impressively-sized legacies to the pharaohs’ importance that would endure down the ages. Perhaps Caroline’s outlay of cash was made in the hope of similar results for the Earl.

Honourable Mentions

A number of impressive pyramid tombs are scattered around England and – though there isn’t space to describe them all here – I want to mention a few pointy-topped memorials that didn’t quite make the top ten.

In Sharow, Yorkshire, can be found the pyramid of Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900). A professor of astronomy, Smyth became obsessed with Ancient Egypt. Convinced the Great Pyramid held the secrets of the universe, he travelled to Egypt, where he studied its every stone and calculated its every angle. He took the first photos of its interior, using coils of magnesium wire to produce a bright light. Out of all this came several books, most notably Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid. Smyth’s ideas provoked both praise and ridicule though towards the end of his life the mockery outweighed the plaudits. Perhaps as a compensation, Smyth is buried under his own pyramid, with its inscription declaring him ‘a Bright Star in the Firmament of Ardent Explorers of the Works of their Creator.’

The pyramid tomb of Charles Piazzi Smyth in Sharow, Yorkshire, England. (Photo: teessidepsychogeography)

Near Ipsden, Oxfordshire, a dilapidated pyramid lies on the edge of a wood. It marks the place where in 1827 Anna Maria Reade glimpsed the ghost of her son John, who was away working in India. Anna Maria was so convinced her son was dead that she organised a memorial service for him at Ipsden Church. News of John’s passing came the day after the service had taken place.

Pyramid-shaped memorial to John Thurlow Reade, near Ipsden, Oxfordshire, England. (Photo: Britishlistedbuildings)

In the churchyard of Attleborough, Norfolk, is the pyramid of one William Henry Brooke, who died in 1929. Brooke, a solicitor, left a will which – with lawyer-like precision – gave exact instructions for how his tomb should be constructed. The pyramid is six feet (1.82 metres) high and built of white limestone. The Ancient Egyptian pyramids were originally clad in white limestone too, so they would shimmer in homage to the sun.

Lawyer Brooke’s pyramid tomb in Attleborough, Norfolk. (Photo: curiousbritain)

Pyramid tombs seem especially common in the churchyards of Gloucestershire. A three-sided pyramid – in honour of the Holy Trinity – serves as a memorial to the Dunn Family at Woodchester. Handsome pyramids also mark the graves of textile titan Joseph Ellis at Stonehouse, the Dyer family at Prestbury, and the famous stonemason (possibly also a Freemason) John Bryan at Painswick.

The Dunn’s pyramid, in Woodchester, Gloucestershire, is three-sided, in homage to the Holy Trinity. (Photo: BBC)

What Might Have Inspired the Georgians and Victorians to Build England’s Pyramid Tombs?

The English pyramid tombs described above were largely the result of Egyptomania. This craze intensified as the 18^th and 19^th centuries progressed, with explorers and colonialists bringing back more accounts of Egypt and scholars and archaeologists uncovering more of its ancient secrets.

Ancient Egypt especially chimed with the growing Victorian obsession with death. We can see this in the Egyptian Avenue in the grand Victorian necropolis of Highgate Cemetery and in the high society parties during which ‘Ancient Egyptian mummies’ – some genuine, some fake – would be ‘unwrapped’ before a fascinated audience. In one particularly bizarre case, the body of a respectable Manchester heiress even ended up being mummified and displayed in a local museum alongside mummies from Peru and Egypt. It’s not surprising that Egyptomania inspired a number of English people to have pyramids – albeit miniature ones – constructed for their own tombs.

The gate of the Egyptian Avenue in Highgate Cemetery, London. (Photo: John Armagh)

But perhaps the pyramid – though more popular in some eras than others – is an archetype that prevails through the ages, an archetype that represents common human hopes, desires and fears. It seems to me that the whole concept of the pyramid – and the mummification rituals linked to it – is centred on the idea of having things preserved.

This could be people wishing – whether Egyptian Pharaohs or English aristocrats – to have their grandeur embodied by a striking stone monument that will last through the centuries. It could also be people wishing to conserve their wealth, whether we’re talking about an inheritance in Pinner or the treasures discovered in Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, which included ‘strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the glint of gold.’

The pyramid tomb of Joseph Ellis in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire. (Photo: BBC)

There is also, of course, the obsession with resurrection and the fate of the soul in the afterlife. There’s speculation that early stepped pyramids were seen as staircases that allowed the Pharaoh’s soul to ascend to heaven. In addition, pyramids may have been viewed as devices designed to ‘shoot’ the Pharaoh’s spirit into the dark section of the night sky. This area – around which the stars appear to revolve – might have been seen as the gateway to the realm of the gods. The legends attached to England’s pyramid tombs also show a desire for resurrection and concerns over the safeguarding of the soul.

The pyramid of John Bryan in Painswick, Gloucestershire. (Photo: BBC)

The 18^th and 19^th centuries were times of growing individualism and this was apparent in the culture of death. The idea that an individual could ever cease to exist was becoming difficult to deal with. This led to a greater focus on the fate of the corpse. As with Doctor Douce, there was a fixation on the embalming and coffining of bodies, as well as a growth in the number of individualistic tombs. It’s easy to see why the mummified bodies, pyramids and stone sarcophagi of the Egyptians resonated so significantly with the Georgians and Victorians.

All this has left some very special monuments in our churchyards though whether these English pyramid tombs will ever enjoy the longevity or fame of the pharaohs’ mausoleums remains to be seen. 

(This article’s main image – showing Mad Jack Fuller’s pyramid mausoleum – is courtesy of Urban Ghosts.)

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