by Sylvia Kent
Rayleigh
In the mid-1960s, a young girl was riding on the back of her brother’s motorbike on the main road from London to Southend. As they were approaching the Rayleigh Weir junction, there was an accident in which the girl was thrown from the bike and killed. The following year, a young lad was having a spin on his motorbike. Approaching the lay-by on the approach at Rayeigh Weir, he saw a girl dressed in motorcycle gear hitching a lift. He picked her up and as they sped along she gave him her name and address. When the lad stopped at the first set of traffic lights, he realised that the girl was no longer on the back of his bike. He travelled back as far as the Weir junction but there was no trace of her. He phoned the police, who sent an officer to the address given by the girl. He was amazed to learn that she could not have been on the Southend road that night because she had been killed at Rayleigh a year previously.
Weeley
Stately homes and manor houses can usually boast a ghost or two, perhaps an aristocratic lady or a knight with a suitably historic pedigree. But others find that their particular apparition may come from below stairs, and rather than drifting aimlessly along the battlements or causing cold draughts in the great hall, ghostly servants have sometimes been known to make themselves useful. The Manor House at Weeley has long enjoyed the services of a very helpful ghost. One past resident was surprised and pleased to find that while he was out, his room had been mysteriously tidied up. Even more amazingly, a complete dinner service was once moved from the kitchen dresser, cleaned and returned. Not content with this, the ghostly housekeeper had given the whole kitchen a good spring clean.
Colchester
The Essex County Hospital at Colchester seems an unlikely place for a ghost story, especially in the children’s ward, but a local man has never forgotten what happened when he was a patient there as a child. He was in bed one night when he saw a nun in a black habit coming towards him. She spoke kindly to him and give him a toffee from a brown paper bag she was carrying. Surprised, he popped it in his mouth and watched as she walked on down the ward and couldn’t believe it when she then just disappeared in front of his eyes.
Danbury
Betty Puttick, Essex ghost-hunter extraordinaire, visited Danbury church a few years ago and came across the intriguing tale of a visitation by the Devil. On Corpus Christi Day in 1402, during evensong, there was a violent storm which broke part of the steeple and damaged the chancel. At the height of the tempest, the Devil himself was seen ‘in the likeness of a Friar Minor, who entering the church, raged insolently to the great terror of the parishioners ... the top of the steeple was broken down and half the chancel scattered abroad’.
Theydon Mount
Sir Thomas Smith, an eminent nobleman during Queen Mary’s reign, managed to lead a quiet life during the religious ferment of the late Tudor reign. He rebuilt Hill House, the lovely manor house at Theydon Mount, Epping. Among the owners who followed him was a family with a beautiful daughter. Seven brothers courted her but she could not make up her mind and suggested that they fight a seven-cornered duel for her hand. The girl watched every one of the brothers fight to their death. It was said that bloodstains marked the walls and door of the room where they died. The remorseful girl, dressed in bridal finery, committed suicide and every so often her ghost appears in the grounds of Hill House. The house is now in the care of English Heritage.
Little Baddow
Little Baddow near Chelmsford is believed to be haunted by the Devil. Set in the north wall of Little Baddow’s fourteenth-century church is an unadorned entrance known as a Devil Door. To medieval Christians, the north side of the church was the province of Satan. It was on the left-hand side facing the altar and Christ had said that he would set ‘the sheep on His right hand and the goats on His left’. Because of this, baptisms were performed in the south porch of the church. If an infant cried after being christened, it was traditionally thought to be a sign that the Devil had been driven from its soul and the north door, which was left open during the ceremony, allowed Satan to escape ‘to his own place’.
Billericay
The old Billericay Union Workhouse in Norsey Road was built in 1840 and served twenty-six surrounding parishes. In 1898, St Andrew’s Hospital was built and the orchards and gardens of the old workhouse were used to build wards and an extension. Both patients and nurses reported seeing a small lady dressed in grey walk through the wards during late evening. When the hospital was demolished to make way for a new housing complex on the site, one of the roads was called Grey Lady Place.
Another haunted place is not far away in Billericay High Street, where Burghstead Lodge, a lovely Georgian building, stands. Several ghosts have been reported here and a woman dressed in a long green gown is supposed to haunt the second floor. In her book Yesterday – A Childhood in Billericay, Edith Sparvel-Bayly states that while she lived in the Lodge as a child, she and her two sisters often saw a white lady wandering the shrubbery bordering Brentwood Road. The police station now stands on the site.
Maldon
The legendary Black Shuck once roamed the villages around Maldon. The word ‘shuck’ is said to derive from the old English scocca, which translates as ‘demonic’ and ‘terror’. This hellish hound, in the form of a huge black dog with fiery red eyes, was reported to have been seen as he roamed the coastline of Maldon. He is said to have sailed with the Vikings to our coast in AD 991, in one of the most famous invasions of our coastline – the Battle of Maldon, where Byrhtnoth was defeated and killed.
Burghstead Lodge, which is haunted by two women.
EIGHT
TELLING TALES
Tell me the old, old story.
Kate Hankey (1834-1911)
Everyone loves a tale and this is the natural way that much folklore has been passed down through the generations. With the advent of television and all the high-tech communication that surrounds us, the art of storytelling seemed in danger of being lost. Happily, Jan Williams of Brightlingsea founded the Essex Storytellers in the early 1990s. The group then comprised of Jan, the late Peter Maskens and Carl Merry. Andy Jennings joined them in 2004. They have successfully revived a collection of carefully researched stories from Essex and they enjoy telling the tales at festivals, schools, theatres, libraries and folk clubs, not only in the county but throughout East Anglia.
The Essex Storytellers. From left to right: Carl Merry, Jan Williams, Andy Jennings.
Mersea Island is the setting for one tale from the Essex Storytellers. The island lies between the Colne and Blackwater rivers and is linked to Colchester by a causeway known as the Strood. A Roman burial mound lies unnoticed on the road to East Mersea, its original height decreased through time and erosion. However, for those aware of its existence, it has provoked romantic but ghostly tales.
The Mersea barrow was excavated in May 1912 by the notable archaeologist Samuel Hazzledine Warren (1872-1958). He considered the barrow had been built between AD 60 and 96 for a person of great importance, maybe a local ruler. A 12ft-wide central shaft was built, connecting with a short passageway. At first, disappointingly, it exposed nothing but fragments of pottery, flints and oyster shells, then, after a month, a tomb was revealed containing a beautiful green glass burial urn in a lead box. Amazingly, this Roman urn, which was removed from the tomb, transported to Colchester Castle by car and taken from its tight-fitting casket, was found to be without a single scratch. It is impossible to tell if the cremated bones within were those of a man or a woman. After the excavation, the shaft and tunnel were filled in and a tunnel dug to make it possible for visitors to see the tomb chamber at the barrow’s heart. Hazzledine Warren came to the curious conclusion that there was a ghost but ‘not a ghost possessing any notable or distinctive personality’. The Essex Storytellers know better.
Nonsense Tales
People moving to the town of Coggeshall are intrigued when they hear the term ‘Coggeshall jobs’ – the famous nonsense tales from the past. Local folk obviously have a grea
t sense of humour and rarely take offence at the inferred stupidity. Alison Barnes, in her book Coggeshall Jobs, describes thirty such tales, which poke harmless fun at the fictitious antics of the villagers trying to fish the moon out of the river Blackwater, thinking it was a ball of gold; putting their clocks forward to make summer come round more quickly; placing a rope across a meadow to stop the spreading of a flood; or shutting the turnpike gate to keep out smallpox. Unlike fables, Coggeshall jobs have no real moral and their chief purpose is simply to amuse – which they do!
The element of fantasy contained in the tales stimulates the imagination and opens up unusual new vistas to the mind. In the early 1600s, many classic ‘noodle’ jokes appeared in English jest books and spread widely throughout the country. Noodle tales are related in England to the Men of Gotham in Nottinghamshire and the Carles of Austwick in Yorkshire, but similar tales can be found in the folklore of countries all over the world.
The Essex Calf
The term ‘Essex calf’, which seems to have originated in medieval times and is referred to in Aphra Behn’s Restoration plays, refers to the tale of an Essex farmer’s prize calf. One day, it jammed its head between the bars of a five-barred gate. Up rushed the locals, who stood scratching their heads, trying to work out a way of releasing the poor trapped animal. One bright lad, a little more astute than the others, thought of a way and soon the calf was free – he had struck off its head with an axe. Hence the nickname ‘Essex calf’, which was once well known.
However, our Essex calves were perhaps not as foolish as they seemed. A plain country fellow born in Essex, coming to London for the first time, was intrigued by the bell-pull with its bright shiny handle that hung outside the door of a merchant’s house. Never having seen such a thing, he wondered what it was and, taking it up in his hand to examine it, he accidentally rang the bell. The merchant, a somewhat pompous man, came to the door and asked him what he wanted. ‘Nothing, sir,’ said he. ‘I was just looking at this pretty gadget that hangs at your door.’ ‘What countryman are you?’ asked the merchant. ‘An Essex man,’ replied the other. ‘I thought so,’ said the merchant, ‘for I have heard say that if a man beat a bush in Essex, there presently comes forth a calf.’ ‘It may be so,’ rejoined the countryman, ‘and I think a man can no sooner ring a bell in London, but out pops a donkey!’
A 1906 postcard telling the tale of the Essex calf.
Thomasine Tyler
Great changes occurred in the growing hamlet of Brentwood following the Reformation. Much of the land in the area had been held by the Church. When the monasteries were dissolved, the manor of South Weald came under the jurisdiction of Sir Antony Browne, who lived at Weald Hall. Following his death, his great-nephew, Wistan Browne, inherited the estate.
Ten years later, Wistan decided to stop paying the chaplain and close the chapel. The people of Brentwood became angry and a petition was sent to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, complaining that the new lord had closed their chapel. With an armed guard, he had removed the pulpit, pews, church bell and clock. Parishioners also complained that they were now forced to travel long distances to South Weald to attend church.
Wistan should have realised the strength of feeling of the townsfolk, who loved their chapel in which local folk had worshipped for 300 years. It was all too much for Thomasine Tyler, wife of a property owner in the town. One day in August 1577, she and twenty-nine other angry women marched down the High Street. They were armed with ‘pitchforks, bills, a piked staff, two hot spits, three bows, nine arrows, one hatchet, one great hammer, hot water in two kettles and a great sharp stone’. The furious women pulled schoolmaster Richard Brooke from the chapel, beat him and barricaded themselves inside.
Eventually, Wistan and his men were able to arrest Thomasine and the other women, carting them off to prison, and the protest ended suddenly and ingloriously for the brave women. Wistan Browne was ordered to appear before the powerful privy council and told to refrain from pulling down the chapel. He was also ordered to release the women from prison on bail. The women were fined fourpence and Wistan was forced to restore the chapel to Brentwood.
Anne Boleyn’s Head
From the time that Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, was executed on 19 May 1536, after just 1,000 days as Queen of England, there has been conjecture as to the whereabouts of her head. Arthur Mee, in his book Essex, first published in 1940, suggests that Anne’s head was taken to East Horndon church, on the southern edge of Thorndon Park, not far from Brentwood. Standing high upon a windswept hill, this ancient church is associated with generations of the Tyrell family, whose ancestor Ralph Tyrell is believed to have slain William Rufus in the New Forest in 1100. Historians have long thought that Anne’s body had been dumped in an old chest used for storing arrows and buried in the grounds of St Peter’s church at the Tower of London.
Essex historian Norman Gunby feels that Anne’s sister Mary – who had retired to Rochford Hall, the childhood home of the Boleyn family – retrieved Anne’s head from the executioner in an attempt to take it to Rochford, to prevent the indignity of it being stuck on the end of a pike on London Bridge. During repairs to East Horndon church in 1876, a skeleton was discovered which, according to examining experts, was of young woman. Anne Boleyn was just twenty-nine at her execution but if the skeleton had been hers, there could have been no mistaking it, as Anne was born with six fingers on each hand. Yet another Essex village, Horndon-on-the-Hill, lays claim to being the resting place of the unfortunate queen.
Essex Serpents
For centuries, dragons have been a recurring favourite theme for the storyteller. Although they are supposedly mythical creatures, they are mentioned in the Bible and Shakespeare often included them in his plays. On St George’s Day, the cartoonists have a field day sketching variations of flame-snorting monsters being slain by England’s patron saint.
Essex appears to have gained something of a reputation for attracting exotic creatures of this nature. Herbert Tompkins, in his book Companion Into Essex, told his readers about a flying serpent that one day appeared in the village of Henham. He tracked down a pamphlet, dated 1669, which was written by Peter Lillycrap, owner of a printing press in Clerkenwell Close. The title page is intriguing in itself, declaring:
The flying serpent or strange news out of Essex, being a true relation of a monstrous serpent which hath diverse times been seen at a parish called Henham-on-the mount within four miles of Saffron Walden, showing the length, proportion, the bigness of the serpent, the place where it commonly lurks and what means hath been used to kill it.
This was prefaced by enigmatic homily that ‘guests, fish and news grow stale in three days’ time’. The Henham creature was ‘eight or nine feet long, the smallest part of him about the bigness of a man’s leg, or the middle as big as a man’s thigh’. It was apparently seen on 27 May 1669 by several Henham villagers, including the churchwarden, the constable and John Knight, overseer of the poor. The fearsome creature had large, piercing eyes, two rows of very white, very sharp teeth and two wings ‘about two handfuls long’, which were not strong enough to make him airborne. The pamphlet ended with a postscript that the neighbours intended to keep a constant watch upon it. The serpent disappeared thereafter and was not seen again until the Second World War, when, cashing in on their history, stallholders at the Henham Fair sold miniature dragons and a local brew called Snakebite.
Another tale collected by the late Peter Laurie and included in his book The Great Serpent of East Horndon tells of an ‘imported’ creature that seems to have escaped from a ship in medieval times and made its way through the boggy marshes to East Horndon, finding a home among the tombs of the local churchyard. It came out at night and terrorised the villagers, whom it attacked and devoured. Sir James Tyrell, who owned the local manor of Heron, was a brave and wise man. The parishioners of East Horndon approached Sir James for help. Realising that the creature was more powerful than him, Tyrell knew great cunning was neede
d to conquer it. Everyone knows that serpents are vain, so the noble knight strapped a looking-glass to his chest. When he approached the serpent, the creature prepared his attack him but paused first to admire his reflection, whereupon Sir James seized his opportunity and killed the monster, bringing the creature’s head home to his wife as a gift.
Saffron Walden in the seventeenth century saw yet another, much smaller, serpent or cockatrice, which had been annoying the villagers. Described as being only 1ft long but with red eyes and a sharp head, its flaming breath could kill anything in its path. No plant could grow where it lived and the rumour was that it had killed many townspeople. Again, to the rescue came a knight wearing a ‘coat of crystal glass’ which reflected the creature’s image. Apparently, the purity of the crystal was so repugnant to the nasty little cockatrice that it curled up and died. The knight became a hero and his sword was hung in the church, where a brass effigy of the cockatrice was also placed.
Story of a Bridge
An interesting folktale from Stratford, once part of Essex, concerns Bow Bridge. Stratford stands at the boundary of London and Essex, straddling the Roman road to Colchester. Its name comes from the Roman street that fords the Lea, and its location at the river’s shallowest crossing made Stratford a convenient gateway from London into Essex. The ford there had existed since Saxon times. Local legend tells us that one day when Matilda Maud – who was also Abbess of Barking at the time and wife of Henry I – was crossing the Lea at Old Ford, she slipped and got her feet wet. As a consequence, she persuaded Henry I to build a bridge over the Lea.
The construction of the bridge marked an important step in communications. Although there had been bridges across streams since early times, this was the first stone-arched bridge in England. Earlier bridges had been simply timber planks thrown across at narrow points. Even the famous London Bridge, mention of which dates back to Saxon times, had been entirely constructed of timber. The bridge consisted of seven stone arches sweeping across the river in a gentle bow; this is the probable explanation for the name it has borne ever since – Bow Bridge. It stood for 700 years under the care of two parishes, one half in Essex and the other in Middlesex. By 1827, only three of the seven arches were visible, the others being incorporated in the cellars of houses that had been built on it. In 1835, a single-span bridge in granite replaced it, but by 1905 even this graceful successor proved inadequate and it was pulled down and replaced by the iron bridge we see today.