The Forgotten ghosts of Shropshire

 

Shropshire is truly a ghost ridden place. I can think of no other county that compares, no other place where its rich history can be witnessed through its ghostlore. Every quiet corner seems to hold the potential for a haunting. Some of Shropshire’s ghosts tear across the pages of history even reaching infamy, whilst others are just whispers now, but are nethertheless as important.

Nearlyknowledgeable is a home to all spirits, all ghosts have value here. Shropshire’s spirits are conduits, distinct in their purpose, inhabiting a landscape that they have come to shape. Ghosts are fascinating things; they are so much more than they are given credit for. They serve as mouthpieces for the attitudes and fears of a particular time or place, the dominant mindsets in a culture and in this case, a gateway into a history that has been left untold. I think that when looking at such stories, it is as important to ask why apparitions are remembered, as it is to question their validity. After all these years, why do we continue to tell this story, and why was it told in the past? Questions such as these thrill me.  We tell these stories because they mean something to us, they help us understand and often, in my experience those who subvert societies expectations, the lost or unloved souls become ghosts, it’s a way in which their legacy can continue, even if the memory of their life fades into the ether.

 I think this gives us even more of a reason to retell these tales. You see, our ghosts deserve to be remembered, and to do so we must look beyond the narrative, to the human behind the phenomena, even if they seem inaccessible, or lost to the ravages of time, we can truly learn from these stories. I want to turn to some of Shropshire’s lesser-known ghost stories now, journeying through the county via the stories we tell. I implore you to sit for a while and listen, to the stories that have defied the centuries, truly they wish to be told.

So let us go beyond the veil, to Shropshire we travel, to seek an audience with the restless dead.

We begin our journey in Hodnet. Its Bronze Age inhabitants are still here and watch curiously as we enter the area. Their burial site was discovered in 2002. Perhaps the Saxons stand nearby, Hodnet was known as Odenet in their day, and comprised of a chapel and small settlement. It came to be held by Edward the Confessor and later Roger De Montgomery after 1066 after his support for William. They watch us as we head to ‘The Bear Hotel’ which has served the community for over 500 years. It stands opposite the Norman church of St Lukes and near Hodnet Hall.

The building itself has a colourful history and includes a maze of tunnels and ancient cellars where rebellious monks once hid from the oppression of church officials. Perhaps, they’re still hiding down there.  Furthermore, folklore states that it once held a bear pit where local folk engaged in the barbaric practice of bear baiting, where hunting dogs would be set upon a brown bear, to see how long the creature would last. The Bear hotel is also home to an interesting ghost story, which recounts the fate of poor Jasper.  Its worthy of note that there are a few versions of this tale, one in which the spirit ‘Jasper’ is of Scandinavian origin, however I have chosen to retell the one I am most familiar with, where Jasper is actually a Welshmen.

 Our story takes us back to the 1680’s where Jasper, a Welsh merchant would often frequent the Bear hotel. He would stop there on his journey to Shrewsbury, where most of his trade was and enjoy its warmth and hospitality. Jasper was a well-liked and jovial fellow, who was quickly accepted at the inn due to his sense of humour and proclivity to pay handsomely with gold. Whenever he visited the inn he would buy locals drinks, chatting to them and the landlord until the early hours, finally returning to his quarters after a hearty night of merriment. His visits became so frequent that the locals grew to love jasper and waited in anticipation for his next visit. However, one trip would prove to be his last.

It was a dark winter night when Jasper entered the inn looking dishevelled and greatly upset. He explained that he had walked from London, which had took many days. He’d lost his fortune making risky choices on the stocks, and thus had nether gold nor silver to his name. Instead, he just had the thin coat which lay on his back. He begged the landlord for a nights lodging and a little hot food to help him on his journey back to Wales. He reminded the landlord of all the times he had paid well and given him more than what was due. Jasper claimed that he considered the landlord a good man and had greatly enjoyed his company on previous visits. He was truly down on his luck.

 It was true that the landlord had enjoyed Jasper’s light hearted company when he was a paying customer, but this was to change when his pockets were empty. For the landlord was an incredibly hard-hearted man, motivated only by money.  He quickly refused Jasper, telling him if he couldn’t pay, he would have to leave the inn, denying him basic Christian charity. Though Jasper begged, the landlord had made up his mind, and refused flatly, casting poor Jasper out into the snow.

A few hours past, and the mood in the bar was low. The few regulars that had stayed, were ashamed that they’d not stepped in, or offered to help the Welshmen. The landlord left the bar, telling them he was just heading for the cupboard to get something, a seemingly mundane occurrence. However, after a few moments a blood curdling scream filled the bar, and the landlord came staggering backwards back into the area. He was pointing in horror at the cupboard, breathing desperately. Suddenly he clutched at his chest and fell down dead.

The customers checked his body for signs of life, but he was gone. A few brave men gingerly checked the cupboard, but it lay empty except for barrels and an owd sweeping brush. A physician was summoned who checked the corpse and informed them he was dead.

The next morning was bitterly cold, and the folks of Hodnet gathered for a funeral. Whilst the procession fanned out from the inn, they discovered a second corpse. It was poor Jasper, lying dead in the hedgerow. He’d tried to seek a little shelter from the cold, only to freeze to death. The strangest thing about the whole affair was that on his face lay his familiar, warm smile, though his open eyes were tinged with sadness. Soon theories began to develop about the two men’s deaths. Had Jasper returned to the landlord after death, as a frittenin’ to guilt him for his actions? Had he been sent to claim his soul? Perhaps Owd Scratch had something to do with it. Whatever the cause, the village buried the two men that day, in the churchyard, not far from each other.

Though the landlord slept peacefully, Jasper has not rested. He is a continual presence In the village of Hodnet, as well as in the Bear inn. He appears throughout the building, but he is most active on the upstairs corridor dressed in his dated finery. He doesn’t appear to be a bitter spirit, but as jovial as he had been in life. One person reported during the 1990’s that he was a merry soul. It’s also interesting to note that after his death, Jasper’s spirit visited each of his living relatives in turn.

Jasper’s story is important for so many reasons. It reminds us of the importance of kindness, charity and standing up for those who truly need our help. It also is a reminder of the hostilities that ran could still be found between Welshmen and Englishmen across the border. I am not sure if Jasper was a real person, or his story is inspired by a someone who met a similar fate, but its lovely to know that his jovial spirit hasn’t been dampened by death.

Let us travel to Morton Corbet Castle now and visit its spirits. The skeleton that still remains whispers of the sites once former grandeur. In 1086 the site belonged to two Anglo Saxon thegns, Hunning and Wulfgeat who were living in the area. The 11^th century manorial building complex was later replaced by the Toret family, an Englishmen who came to own the site. The building was transformed into a 3-story square keep with a triangle moat. By the middle of the 13^th century, it was under the control of the Corbet family. In the late 16^th century, the Corbet Family undertook large renovations to transform the castle into an ambitious Elizabethan mansion. This was badly damaged during the English Civil war, and our ghost story dates from around this time.

Morton Corbet Castle is haunted by the ghost of Paul Holmyard a puritan who had befriended Sir Vincent Corbet, who owned the castle. They were neighbours, and Holmyard took kindly to the blooming friendship, the pair often meeting up to discuss the affairs of the day, and the growing discontent in the country. Though they differed in religion and opinion, the two got on handsomely.

The situation was to change when Paul Holmyard’s house, along with all of his belongings were seized by officials in London. At first, Vincent Corbet gave Holmyard a place to stay, providing him with a sense of security. However, Holmyard grew more and more fanatical by the day, and his puritan religious zeal began to frighten Corbet. The last thing he wanted was to draw attention to his own estates, and have his property taken from him. So, exasperated by his friends erratic behaviour, he cast him out, leaving him with only a few items of clothing, a little money, and some food.

For years, Paul Holmyard lived in the nearby woods. He carved out a subsistence, but he never truly forgot how he was betrayed. He told the birds and the gnarled trees of Vincent Corbet’s treachery. As the years passed, he grew older, and weaker and felt the need to return to Morton Corbet Castle. He knocked on the large doors, and soon enough, the servants had taken him to his former friend. No sooner than he’d locked eyes with Vincent Corbet, he was cast away again, with Vincent wanting no part in the man’s life.

Enraged by his second betrayal, Holmyard laid a curse upon Vincent, and the curse went something like this:

‘Woe unto thee, hard hearted man,

The lord has hardened thy heart as he hardened the heart of the pharaohs.

To mine own destruction.

Rejoice not in thy riches nor in monuments of thy pride.

For neither thou, or thy children, nor thy children’s children

Shall inhabit these walls.

They shall be given desolation, snakes, vipers, and unclean beasts.

Shall make it their refuge and thy home shall be filled with doleful creatures!’

 

Vincent Corbet stood aghast. Before he could comment, Holmyard withdrew into the dark, laughing as he went.

The following morning, Paul Holmyard was found dead, huddled under a hedge not far from the castle. To this day, the ragged figure of Paul Holmyard has been seen wandering the ruins of the castle, perhaps trying to ensure they are never returned to their former glory, and that they remain a ruin.

Let us turn to Ellesmere now, which by all accounts is a very haunted place. Indeed, it has been a sight of settlement since the ancient Britons, so one can imagine there are a number of spirits left behind. We are going to journey to an area known as Hampton wood, which is nearby, where tradition states a terrible event occurred, which resulted in a strange haunting.

T. F. Thiselton Dyer wrote of the events in 1893 in his ‘The Ghost World’, though they come from earlier folklore.  The story states that there lay a house in Hampton wood where six illegitimate children were murdered by their parents. These poor children were buried in the garden, cast away like broken things and never spoken of again. Soon after this horrific event, the ghost of a large man began to wander the grounds and the local area. Sometimes the man was headless, and sometimes he haunted the stables, where he would interact with the horses, even riding them to water. He also spoke to several people, including the waggoner. He seemed to be an omnipresent reminder of the crime that had been committed in the area. One day the spirit appeared to a young woman who was passing on horseback, riding alongside her for some distance. Eventually locals couldn’t take the spirits presence any long and called for the minister. The minister sought to ‘lay the ghost’ by trapping it in a bottle. This practice is prominent in Shropshire ghost lore, and a number of our spirits have ended up encased in glass.

The minister began the exorcism, which was a terribly arduous process. It took 3 days of battle and constant prayer. On the third day he managed to shrink the ghost into the size of a cat, then smaller and eventually trap the ghost in the bottle. The poor minister was so exhausted by his task, that he dropped down dead.

As for the Hampton Wood Ghost, when contained in the bottle, it was locked in three iron chests, and buried under the barn, to remain for 99 years (which suggests that it is probably free now, and up to mischief). I love this story for so many reasons, most notably the intrigue. Who was the spirit of the man, and how was he connected to the murdered children? Was he serving as a protector of them, ensuring their spirits couldn’t be harmed in death as they’d been in life? Or was he a reminder of what had happened? Perhaps he wasn’t even connected to the event, but an entirely separate entity. It certainly poses some questions.

I love a good medieval haunting, especially when the medieval haunting involves a monk, and that is why we are going to head to Bridgnorth now, to visit one of my favourite of them all, known only as ‘Owd Mo’.

There is little information available about the development and history of Bridgnorth’s Franciscan friary, without even a solid date of its founding being available. It is generally agreed to have been founded after 1224 when the Franciscans first came to England but before 1244 when Henry III ordered a payment of 40s to the friars of Bridgnorth towards the building of their church. Unfortunately, there are no reliable records of their founder, though it was claimed by later friars to be Ralph Le Strange.

The friary itself was typical in position, on the outskirts of one of the poorer areas of Bridgnorth confined to a strip of land near the west bank of the River Severn. It was surrendered on 5^th August 1538, to the kings men. The king’s commissioner reported that Bridgnorth Friary was the poorest house that he’d ever seen in the whole land, with ‘all the houses falling down’. By 1860, nothing remained of the building.

The spirit of a monk known only as ‘Owd Mo’ once resided in the friary. He was a jovial fellow, but preferred to spend his time in the town, indulging in more carnal vices than stick to his vows. Indeed, despite his brother monk’s desperate pleas, Owd Mo often spent the night drinking and cavorting with women of the night. He would then stagger home, singing songs to the fading moon. When he returned, he would be confronted by his fellow monks. He would simply laugh off their concerns and then sleep till the afternoon.

One night he returned home particularly drunk, and when he was getting his usual telling off, he began to laugh in the monks faces. One of the problems with Mo was that he didn’t take anything seriously and believed that life was for living rather than praying it away. Something snapped in one of the younger monks, who set about Owd Mo. The others joined in and soon enough, Owd Mo had been bludgeoned and poisoned to death. (The poison suggests that they’d perhaps been planning to kill him anyway before they beat him up) Mo was dead. The monks then disposed of his body, some stories suggest they burned it, whilst others say that it was thrown in the River Severn and carried on as if it had never happened. When anyone enquired about Mo, they told them that he’d left the friary, and ran off with a harlot to Shrewsbury.

However, Owd Mo’s spirit has never left Bridgnorth. Rather he is frequently seen throughout the town including the former Bridgnorth carpet factory, which was built upon the site of the friary. During the Second World War the factory was roped into the war effort, and Mo was frequently seen in his simple grey habit, wandering the building.  As an interesting side note, when they were building houses on the site in the 1990s, Human remains were found, alongside part of the friary. This seemed to correlate with a spike in activity from Owd Mo, as he seemed to get more active after the houses began being built. Perhaps these were the remains of Owd Mo’s murderers. He is not described as a malicious spirit but seems to have continued to have some of the good-natured, easy-going attitude that he possessed in life. So, whenever you find yourself in Bridgnorth, keep an eye out for Owd Mo.

Stories like Owd Mo’s can tell us so much about attitudes to the clergy during the build up to the reformation. Similar to Buildwas Abbey and Lilleshall, Owd Mo represents a religious institution that has strayed from the light of ‘true Christianity’ fallen into a den of iniquity and sin.  However, far from solving the problem by murdering him, the monks are simply highlighting that they need reform, breaking the commandments and true word of God. I believe that stories such as these are highly symbolic and serve as a mouthpiece for the attitudes and criticisms of the clergy during the later medieval and into the early modern period, and this is wonderful.

The original church of Stanton Lacy was built upon the orders of the king of Mercia, Penda after his daughter Milburga was saved from the ravages of a Welsh prince, who was trying to murder her. Folklore states that Milburga had been chased into small wood at Stanton Lacy, where she prayed for divine intervention, namely that the nearby river would swell up and become unpassable. Due to her devotion God answered her prayers, and she was spared the wrath of the prince. Thus, in honour of this event a church was founded in 680 to honour God. The surviving church has been serving the community since the early 11^th century and it is one of the few churches mentioned in the Domesday book, which highlights both its importance as a religious institution but also the age of the area.

Our story takes us back to the 1600’s, when Cromwell’s men brought war to the county. Our ghost is that of a churchwarden, who in life had been dedicated to the parish and his church, and in death he still frequents the area. One day our warden had been going about his duties, when Cromwell’s men tried to enter the church. They would have stripped it bare, stealing anything of value before setting the building alight, and the churchwarden couldn’t stand back and watch that happen. So, he stood up to the troops, refusing to let the men enter. He told them to leave or face the wrath of the one true God.

Unfortunately, our brave churchwarden’s life came to an end on a pike. The men killed him, and then ransacked the church, leaving his body bleeding on the floor. Though the years have drifted by, and we are now in safer times, the churchwarden has not left St Peter’s. Indeed, he guards the church much as he did in life. If you approach the church and are a good person, with kindness in your heart he will let you pass unheeded, however, if you are a negative person, or in any way resemble his murderers, he will cast you away, and people have reported feeling a pair of heavy hands on their chest, pushing them away from the building. Others have reported feeling nauseous and giddy at the site.  It must be comforting to know that the church, so loved in life still has a fierce guardian.

I want to turn now to an area very familiar to me, Benthall Edge, which loomed over my childhood like an omnipresent entity. Though picturesque today, Benthall Edge looks very different to its previous centuries. Innumerable lifetimes have played out where the rich vegetation now grows, as Benthall Edge provides the backdrop for the advent of industry in Shropshire. The Ironbridge is well known as being the crucible of the industrial revolution. Industrialisation changed the course of Shropshire’s history, catapulting the population into an age of iron, furnace, and kiln. This was a changing world of opportunity, illuminated by furnace fires that never dimmed but also, It was a world of misery and misfortune. The spirits of Benthall Edge are an imprint of a time when the whole gorge sang the song of industry and remind us of the pain such a world could bring. They speak of a darker time, and the suffering of individuals that society and indeed history left behind. Through these ghost stories we can hear their voices again, and understand how their blood, sweat and tears soaked the landscape. The earth remembers these marginalised poor and implores us to tell their tale.

Let us go then to Benthall Pool, which on certain days of the year is said to turn a violent shade of red. Folklore suggests that this is a reminder of a horrendous crime which occurred at the location one balmy summer day. The crime involved a young woman, who was walking from her small cottage near the edge to Ironbridge, to see her fiancée. She was carefree and was enjoying her walk, with her mind filled with thoughts of her beloved. She was so excited, that she didn’t notice the limestone workers who were approaching her. Sadly, these would be the last souls she would ever see. These workers were violent, unfeeling men and unfortunately, as with so many stories such as this, took their cruelty out on the woman. She was brutally assaulted by them, suffering every way imaginable, before being murdered. She died in a frenzy and was left floating face down in Benthall Pool.

When she didn’t arrive at the Tontine Hotel, the girl’s fiancée began to worry. He was a kind man and loved her dearly. As the worry grew to fright, he began to ask around the bar and the street outside, but no one had seen her that day. He resolved that the only thing he could do is trace the path through the edge and try and find her.

Unfortunately, he did find the woman he loved, but not the way he would have wanted. He found her face down in the waters, clothing torn, and her body covered in blood. What an awful, awful thing to witness. It is said that his screams and pained cries can still be heard today, as he was never able to recover from her death. The woman also haunts the area. She is often seen sat at the water’s edge, bedraggled, and bloodstained, though as beautiful as she was in life. She stairs deep into the waters, confused as to why they are changing from blue to blood red.

Though routed in folklore, stories like this are important. They symbolise the inherent vulnerability of womanhood, and still to this day represent the very real, unspoken fear of being the one that didn’t get away, the woman lost to the unspeakable. This story is so important, as it demonstrates the nightmares of a society being brutalised by the advent of industry. The Lady of Benthall Pool has come to denote the women of Shropshire who suffered unbelievable brutality, forgotten by the tides of time. This nameless woman joins the ranks alongside Mary Way, Martha and Nanny Morgan, Women who are reduced to ghostlore. I simply wish that we knew her name, so we could remind the world of the wrongs enacted upon her. All we can do is tell her story and implore the world to listen.

We have come to the end of our journey now, having travelled quite a far way over land and through the centuries. I want to finish at the Ironbridge, so iconic to Shropshire’s identity. The bridge itself is said to have spirits attached to it, including a loving Victorian couple, who are said to walk arm in arm along the bridge, pausing to kiss at its centre, and a pair of little girls, who play merrily nearby. It’s lovely to think of these spirits wandering around, locked in happier times. They are a whisper of a life once lived, and all of the simile joys life can bring. Though they are small in the great narratives of ghost lore, I find them incredibly human.  Look out for them when you next visit Ironbridge, I am sure they would be happy to see you.