Hampshire and Isle of Wight Folk Tales

by Michael O'Leary

  In a time past, but maybe not so long past, an albino badger had its sett in a copse at a bend in the lane. Strange objects were always being dug up in the fields around the lane – objects that suggested the area had been inhabited for thousands of years – and talk was that this strange beast, with the red eyes, was the soul of some ancient Briton. Doesn’t the badger have that feel about it? In his poem, ‘The Combe’, Edward Thomas describes the badger as ‘That most ancient Briton of English beasts’. In this poem, Thomas also describes how the badger was dug out, to be baited. This is exactly what happened to the albino badger of Sandy Lane.

  Maybe the awe and reverence in which this beast was held was a provocation to the cruellest and shallowest of men – as the desire to desecrate a church, or wilfully destroy a work of art, can be an impulse in those who have a need to show that they can do what they like. So it was that a group of men set forth to dig that badger out for baiting.

  In the copse, in the dead of night, they succeeded in digging him out; but they were unable to secure him for the dogs. Badgers are tough creatures, but this one, with its grinning teeth and red eyes, was impossible to subdue. They beat it to death with their shovels. Then a terrible dread enveloped them, like a fog, and they tried to flee the copse. It was only a copse, yet they found themselves lost, as if they were in a forest. Finally, they stumbled and tumbled out into Sandy Lane, where they heard the sound of hooves and the rattling of a cart.

  ‘Hold you there, boys,’ hissed the carter, in a voice that sounded like the scraping of bones against a stone wall, ‘I’m here for you.’ His eyes shone red from under a black cowl. ‘Come up on my cart, my dears, we’re bound for Clewer’s Hill.’

  One man was hauled up onto the cart, never to be seen again; another fell under the wheels; one went stark mad; and the fourth, with his hair turned white, was left to tell the tale.

  I heard that on wild nights, the cart can still be heard rattling along the lane.

  THE WALTHAM BLACKS

  Sandy Lane leads to Waltham Chase, and Waltham Chase leads to Tyburn and the gallows; at least, it did for Henry Marshall, Richard Parvin, Edward Elliot, Robert Kingshell, Edward Pink, John Pink and James Ansell. They were the Waltham Blacks.

  The resentment of the people when not allowed to hunt deer has been a motif throughout English history, as we’ve already seen in the New Forest. In the eighteenth century, gangs of men would blacken their faces with gunpowder and go poaching in the parks of the nobility and gentry. The following act was consequently passed; note that it specifically refers to the blacking of faces:

  After the first day of June, 1723, any person appearing in any forest, chase, park, etc., or in any highroad, open heath, common or down, with offensive weapons, and having his face blacked, or otherwise disguised, or unlawfully and wilfully hunting, wounding, killing or stealing any red or fallow deer, or unlawfully robbing any warren, etc., or stealing any fish out of any river or pond, or (whether armed or disguised or not) breaking down the head or mound of any fishpond, whereby the fish may be lost or destroyed; or unlawfully and maliciously killing, maiming or wounding any cattle, or cutting down or otherwise destroying any trees planted in any avenue, or growing in any garden, orchard or plantation, for ornament, shelter or profit; or setting fire to any house, barn or outhouse, hovel, cock-mow or stack of corn, straw, hay or wood; or maliciously shooting at any person in any dwelling-house or other place; or knowingly sending any letter without any name, or signed with a fictitious name, demanding money, venison or other valuable thing, or forcibly rescuing any person being in custody for any of the offences before mentioned, or procuring any person by gift, or promise of money, or other reward, to join in any such unlawful act, or concealing or succouring such offenders when, by Order of Council, etc., required to surrender, shall suffer death.

  Despite this, the aforementioned group of men went forth one night to poach deer in Waltham Chase. They found themselves being confronted by the keeper and his assistants, and it was Henry Marshall, a hard man ‘distinguished by his skill in the vulgar science of bruising’ (according to The Newgate Calendar, a lurid eighteenth-century book descibing the lives of executed felons) who shot the keeper dead. Strangely, after the gang was apprehended, Henry Marshall lost the use of his voice – right up until the day of the hanging. They all met the drop at Tyburn.

  It was after these events that the gang was given the name ‘Waltham Blacks’; the news sheets of the eighteenth century could give out romantic names in just the same way our tabloids do now. There is no record of where Henry Marshall came from (maybe it was Sandy Lane), but most of the gang came from Portsmouth. Which brings us to the next chapter – let’s cross the bridge to old Pompey!

  Four

  PORTSMOUTH

  Portsmouth has been excommunicated!

  In 1449 or 1450, Adam Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, arrived in Portsmouth to do a little bit of tax collecting. A gang of sailors there were unhappy about not receiving their full wages and provisions, and they murdered him during a service in Domus Dei Church. The Pope seemed to think that this was a bad thing and put the whole town under ‘The Greater Excommunication’, which wasn’t lifted until 1508.

  One of the various theories as to why Portsmouth has the nickname Pompey is that an evangelist, who was attempting to conduct a religious revival in Portsmouth, threw his hands into the air with despair and exclaimed, ‘This whole city deserves the fate of ancient Pompeii.’ I may not believe this theory, but I like it.

  Most of Portsmouth is on an island – Portsea Island – and there is a wonderful view of all Portsea Island from the top of Portsdown Hill. This view stretches across old Pompey to the masts of the Victory and the Warrior, a view that takes in Portchester Castle and Gosport, a view that stretches from the New Forest to Sussex, and shows a great swathe of the Isle of Wight.

  I’m rude about Portsmouth because I come from Southampton, and that’s what we do – but actually I can probably alienate everyone by saying that I prefer Portsmouth to Southampton. I love its vitality, its rough edges, its character – the sweep of the motorway as it enters Portsmouth over a lagoon. I love sitting in the Still & West pub in Spice Island, watching the Brittany Ferry sail out of the narrow gap between Portsmouth and Gosport, the self-deprecating, rough humour of the people in Hilsea and North End, the rough seas that race the gap between Eastney and Ferry Point as the little ferry chugs across to Hayling Island. I could go on, though I might not include Fratton Park, the Pompey FC ground. Saints supporters may point out that Fratton Park spelled backwards is ‘nottarf krap’ – but then I’m not a follower of the not-so-beautiful game, so I wouldn’t dream of being so rude!

  SPICER’S SKULL

  The folklore of Portsmouth is as rough and ready, and full of humour, as the city, though Henry Spicer wasn’t a very humorous man – he was a pirate. Mind you, in the fifteenth century most sea-farers were, when the opportunity presented itself. Spicer, though, was not at all fussy about the nationality of the ships he attacked. This was what brought him before the King’s Court in 1403. Spicer made a case for himself as a representative of Portsmouth, no doubt managed to grease the right palms, and got away with it. Later, he decided to attack a French ship that was bigger than his own, the French ship sunk him, he was drowned, and that was the end of Captain Henry Spicer. Whilst some say that the area of old Portsmouth called Spice Island got its name because of the spices brought from faraway lands, others say it got its name from Henry Spicer.

  Drowned he may have been, but his spirit missed old Pompey and decided to return. The spirit of Spicer haunted Domus Dei Church – a church which, since the Reformation, has been called the Garrison Church. None of the priests and prelates in Hampshire could shift him from the church – and it was only his fish-nibbled skull that seemed to do the haunting, gnashing its teeth (what teeth it had) and screaming profanities. This drove out the evensong congregation, and two members of the midnight mass congregation perished from
shock.

  One evening, a tailor was drinking with a group of sailors. This was not a great idea for the tailor, because his capacity for drink was nothing like that of these sons of the sea, and there was no way he could match their stories. With his head spinning, and his desperation to impress the sailors becoming more urgent, he heard himself say, ‘I am afraid of nothing.’

  Oh dear me – silence – then raucous laughter – then the taking of bets.

  ‘If you ain’t afraid of nothing, you ain’t afraid of spending the night with old Spicer’s head,’ said one of them, though I’m sure he said it in fifteenth-century parlance. And there was the befuddled little tailor agreeing. Oh, sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph help him. The very next night, he was installed in Domus Dei Church with cloth and needle and thread.

  ‘SCRAWNY LITTLE TAILOR,’ screamed the skull as it rocketed into the church, trailing seaweed and sea worms, ‘GET OUT OF MY CHURCH!’

  The poor tailor, gibbering with fear, bent his head to his stitching and carried on.

  ‘GET OUT OF MY CHURCH!’ screamed Spicer’s skull, hovering in front of the poor tailor, covering him with putrid breath, and with rather unpleasant-looking parasitic marine worms goggling out of the eye sockets.

  ‘I’m just doing my work,’ whispered the quaking tailor.

  ‘AM I HANDSOME? HANDSOME? HANDSOME?’ screamed the skull.

  ‘Yes Sir,’ muttered the tailor, ‘yes, you are Sir.’

  ‘THEN MAKE ME A HAT.’

  ‘I’m a tailor, Sir, not a hatter.’

  ‘MAKE ME A HAT.’

  ‘Yes Sir, yes Sir.’

  And a fine cloth hat the tailor stitched together. Terrified as he was, and as off-putting as the noisy, hovering skull was, he was a good tailor and at heart as brave as a sailor.

  ‘YES, YES – PUT IT ON ME, NOW, NOW, NOW.’

  And the tailor pulled the hat onto the skull, and of course didn’t he pull it right over the skull and tie the ends together? And didn’t he take it down to the dockside, followed by an ever-increasing, lantern-carrying crowd of Pompey Polls, and screaming children, and curious sailors? And didn’t he batter it against a capstan till it was all smashed to pieces, before he hurled it as far as he could out into the water?

  It never returned to the Domus Dei and the little tailor won the bet fair and square.

  This really should have brought good luck to the Domus Dei Church, and maybe it did, but it didn’t bring good luck to Adam Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, when he was done to death there only a few years later!

  A PORTSMOUTH WELCOME

  In 1714, John Carter decided to do a Dick Whittington in reverse and set out from London Town to seek his fortune. Being a Londoner, he must have known that the streets of London weren’t paved with gold – but why on earth did he decide to go to Pompey? Neither legend nor history tells us whether he was in full possession of his marbles, but off he strode. He was still walking through the jostling streets of London, when all the bells began to toll, and the news was shouted through the streets, ‘Oh yez, oh yez – the queen is dead, the queen is dead!’ Queen Anne was dead.

  Now, at that time, there was within the land a ferment of Jacobitism. This was the movement that, for a variety of often contradictory reasons, wanted to restore the Stuart dynasty to the throne. The Jacobites wanted James Stuart to be king, but George, Elector of Hanover, had been declared Anne’s successor.

  John Carter wanted a new life;

  James, George, King and Crown

  John is marching to Pompey town

  So it was all the same to him. His pack was on a stick, the stick was over his shoulder, and his feet were on that dodgy road to Portsmouth. He braved the footpads and cutpurses of the Surrey heaths and Eashing Bridge, he risked the highwaymen of Hindhead Common and the Devil’s Punch Bowl; indeed, he may have passed the tarred body of a highwayman dangling on a rope at the top of Gibbet Hill. He trudged the narrow valley between Butser Hill and War Down, between thickly forested hills inhabited by inbred robbers, until eventually he reached Portsdown Hill and a breathtaking view over the Solent. The ships were a-bobbing at anchor, he saw the long ridge of the Isle of Wight, and all of Portsea Island was beneath him.

  John Carter reached the sentry at Ports Bridge and announced, as seemed only proper for one from the capital, ‘Queen Anne is dead.’ The news reached Sir John Gibson, the governor. Now, rumour had it that the governor had Jacobite sympathies; maybe Sir John thought that to pay attention to a dust-covered lunatic fresh into town, making dangerous announcements, would be to draw suspicion on himself, or maybe he was just applying a traditional Portsmouth welcome. Either way, he had John Carter flung into jail.

  It wasn’t so long afterwards that an official messenger arrived with the news, and so Carter was released. This is Pompey, though, and everyone likes a good wind-up. Throughout the rest of Sir John Gibson’s governorship, officials would love to whisper – loudly – ‘Pray, is Queen Anne dead?’ and watch him turn apoplectic.

  As for John Carter, he married Susanna Pyke and became a successful merchant, and also a Rational Dissenter who refused to belong to the Church of England. His son, also called John Carter, became nine times Mayor of Portsmouth, and also played a key role in diffusing the crisis caused in 1797 by the great naval mutiny at Spithead.

  John Carter Junior was also a Rational Dissenter, and therefore a worthy and sober fellow. A lot of his money seemed to come from running a distillery and being a brewer, but then this is Pompey, and his father had been welcomed to town in a traditional Pompey manner.

  RIOTS AND THE GALLOWS

  In 1782, whilst John Carter Junior was mayor, a Scotsman called David Tyrie was convicted for sending intelligence to the French about British fleet movements out of Portsmouth. The judge ruled that he be taken to the Portsmouth gallows on Southsea Common and be hanged, taken down, disembowelled, castrated, beheaded, and then his body should be quartered. He dangled on the rope for twenty-two minutes; one can only hope that he died during the hanging.

  This is when the Pompey crowd came into its own. Spectators pushed forward so close that the blood from the disembowelling spurted over them, and that’s when the fighting started. Well, everyone wanted a souvenir – a finger would be good for a pipe stopper; a handkerchief covered in treasonous blood would look good hanging on the wall. The military were called and the mob pelted them with stones. This was not a revolutionary mob, this was just a Pompey mob – out for a riot, we want bits of body.

  The body was put in a coffin and buried under the shingle on the seashore. As soon as the officers retired, a gang of sailors dug the body up, hacked it into pieces and distributed the bits all around the fleet as souvenirs. Meanwhile, the head was grabbed by the keeper of the Gosport Bridewell and exhibited in a glass jar on the bar of his pub for many years, until it was stolen by another group of sailors. It may not have looked any more disgusting than many a jar of pickled eggs I’ve seen in various Portsmouth and Gosport pubs over the years. But this is Pompey, and typical of the place – all of which leads me to the story of Jack the Painter.

  THE CORKING UP OF JACK THE PAINTER

  Jack’s story is not dissimilar to that of David Tyrie – only it seems to have generated more folklore. James Hill, alias James Hinde, alias James Aiken, nicknamed Jack the Painter, was another revolutionary Scotsman. His sympathies with the struggles of the American colonists led him, in 1776, to attempt to set fire to the rope houses in Portsmouth Dockyard. These long buildings are still there, in the Historic Dockyard that houses the Mary Rose, HMS Victory and HMS Warrior, and were designed so that, during manufacture, the ropes could be fully stretched out. Ropes and rigging were, of course, vital for the functioning of the British Navy.

  Jack failed in his task. He was eventually apprehended and sentenced to hang from the mizzen-mast of the Arethusa, the mast being placed at Portsmouth Dockyard gates. Jack wasn’t given the benefit of a clean drop – he was hauled up into the air, to dance and c
hoke his life away with a fine view over Portsmouth Harbour, as a warning to others and, of course, as a spectacle for the bloodlust of the inhabitants of Pompey. The body was then flung into a boat and rowed out to Fort Blockhouse, to be tarred and hung up in chains. Fort Blockhouse commands the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour, so, as ships glided through the narrow entrance between Pompey and Gosport, all the crew would be treated to the sight of the punishment for treachery.

  Then, along came another group of drunken sailors – and they climbed up the gibbet, stole the corpse, and flogged bits of the corpse to pubs all over Portsmouth and Gosport. The head ended up on the bar of the London Tavern (the site of the present-day Ship Anson Inn), just opposite the dockyard gates where Jack had met his end. But the London Tavern didn’t just get the head of Jack the Painter; it also got the ghost.

  Now, Jack the Painter had spent so much of his life on the run, that in death he fancied a bit of comfort. So he took to haunting the lodgings upstairs – and ‘lodgings’ isn’t a good enough word, for this was a fine tavern with lodgings fit for naval officers. One room had a grandfather clock, a fine fireplace, and a bookcase full of nautical almanacs. On account of the bookcase, it was known as ‘The Library’. The ghost loved this room: just right. Well, no one wanted to lodge in this room, what with the ghost of Jack the Painter howling at them and jeering that the bloody French had joined in the American War of Independence, so the landlord was losing money hand over fist.

  ‘Get rid of that bloody ’orrible head!’ said the landlord’s wife. So he took it down to the quayside and slung it as far as he could out to sea. Glug glug glug, it sank down to the bottom and came to rest grinning at the skull of Captain Henry Spicer (which had miraculously rebuilt itself) whilst fish swam into one eye socket and out of the other one.