Hidden East Anglia:

Landscape Legends of Norfolk & Suffolk

Home

Gazetteer

Landscape Features

Themes

Santon:

St. Helen's Well

"It is said that a man who was working in the harvest field suffered from extreme heat and expressed his intention of going to St. Helen's Well to get some water to drink. His companions endeavoured to dissuade him from drinking icy-cold water in his heated condition, but he was obstinate, went to the spring and drank till he died. His spirit thereupon haunted the pit in which the spring was situated".

The well (marked as a spring at TL842875) is about ½ a mile from All Saints church, and known in the 18th century as Tenant's Well, then Tenant Well, then Tanner's Well. St. Helen's Oratory (the site of a Saxon chapel here till the 16th century) is close by.

Source:

W. G. Clarke: 'In Breckland Wilds' (Robert Scott, 1925), pp.102, 172.

The silver bells

"A tale as to the burial of three silver bells is also associated with Santon". Unfortunately, I can't find any more details about this.

Source:

W. G. Clarke: 'In Breckland Wilds' (Robert Scott, 1925), p.165.

Sculthorpe:

The golden cradle

A 'golden cradle' is said to be buried in or near the village of Sculthorpe.

Source:

The 'East Anglian Magazine', Vol.27 (Nov.1967-Oct.1968), p.107.

Sheringham:

The cock crow stones

A tale has been told of two stones lying outside a Sheringham barn that are said to rise up and run across the road when they hear the cock crow.

Source:

W. A. Dutt: 'The Ancient Mark-Stones of East Anglia' (Flood & Sons, 1926), p.19.

The haunted heap of stones

Sometime in the 19th century, tradition says the bodies of twelve sailors were washed ashore here, after a huge gale in which their ship sank. Rather than being given a Christian burial, they were thrown together in a ditch at a gap in the cliffs, and covered over with a great heap of stones and shingle. They say that if anyone visits the heap at night during a storm, they'll hear the 'ill-omened sound' of stones being cast onto the grave, just as they were more than a century ago.

Source:

A. Campbell Erroll: 'A History of the Parishes of Sheringham & Beeston Regis' (private, 1970), p.111.

Shouldham:

The Silver Well

W. B. Gerish records of the Silver Well here a similar tale to that of the Callow Pit at Moulton St. Mary, where men tried to wrestle a treasure chest out of the Devil's hands.¹

"Formerly a noted chalybeate spring, called the Silver Well, existed here, and Roman urns and coins have been found near".²

Sources:

1. W. B. Gerish: 'Norfolk Folklore Notes' (unpublished, 1892.)
2. 'Kelly's Cambridgeshire, Norfolk & Suffolk, 1925, p.466.

Southburgh:

The Bloody Water Dykes

"He wur an old man of 76 when he died, and he call to mind right well how when he help his father cut down trees at (Letton) Hall, they used to take bullets out of the trees, and they said they were the remains of an old war in Norfolk. His father too used to tell about the old dykes at Reymerston and Herdingham, how they were the remains of that same war. My old gentleman's father died at 97, and he told how there were traces of blood in those dykes, and in certain rains they ran coloured. They called them there about 'the bloody water dykes'".¹

"With reference to certain dykes at Reymerston and Hardingham....A woman now living in South Bergh (Southburgh) received from her mother the tradition that South Bergh church tower and the moated house (now known as 'the Moats') close to the boundary of the parishes of South Bergh and Reymerston, were both ruined at the same time, a time of war".²

There are now just a medieval moat and fish ponds marked on the map, actually in Reymerston parish (TG007056).

Sources:

1. 'The East Anglian, or Notes & Queries', New Series Vol. 4 (1891-2), p.332.
2. As above, p.363.

South Creake:

Bloodgate

A vanished ring of earthworks (TF848352) approximately 1½ miles south-west of the church was said to be the scene of 'dismal slaughter' when the Saxons fought the Danes. Dead bodies were piled up to the height of the defences, both the earthworks and the road running by coming to be known as Bloodgate.

Source:

Rev. Thomas Cox: 'Magna Britannia-Norfolk' (E. Nutt, 1720), p.260.

Southery:

The Magic Stone of Southery

Described as a large, blue-coloured stone, the so-called 'Magic Stone of Southery' supposedly appeared in a deep hole one night at Halloween 1642 after a violent thunderstorm. A mighty bolt of lightning supposedly struck the earth near the old mill. The local parson found the hole next morning, but a fierce fire raged in it for several days afterwards until quenched by torrential rain. Locals believed the hole to be a tunnel straight to Hell, and called it the 'Way In.' The parson became quite unhinged and disappeared the following year. The hole had by then filled with water, later to become known as the 'Wayin Pond', but when it had drained and been cleared out some years later, deep in the mud was found the massive blue stone - and with it the skeleton of a man trussed up with iron chains (who they believed to be the mad parson.)

The stone was removed to the village pound, to act as a seat for the local felons. But its magical properties soon became known, and all manner of superstitions gathered round it. Women ailing in joint or ligament would creep to the stone at midnight and sit naked upon it in the hopes of being cured. The farmers believed it to be a good guide for the welfare of their crops, as it was said to sweat water if rain was imminent. The act of spitting upon it ensured good fortune; and one old man of 80 claimed that he could still father children because, every morning, he drank the dew that collected on top of the stone.

Although visiting preachers were in the habit of using the rock as an open-air pulpit, the (new) village parson objected strongly to the 'pagan' adoration afforded to this boulder, and he promptly declared it to be a meteorite. To reinforce his opinion, and much to the dismay of the locals, he had the stone removed to Stocks Corner on the Kings Lynn-Cambridge road, where it is still said to stand, upside-down and used as a buttress for a garden wall (at approximately TL617945). The Wayin Pond was filled in during the 1940s.

Source:

W. H. Barrett: 'More Tales from the Fens' (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), p.77-81.

South Lopham:

The Ox-Foot Stone

At O.S. map reference TM052809 is the 'Ox-Foot Stone', an oblong slab of weathered sandstone 4 feet long x 3 feet wide x 6 inches high. Although now just outside the door to the house of Ox-Foot Stone Farm, it used to stand in the meadow of the same name. There is supposed to be, on its upper surface, the impression of a cow's hoof print, but the stone is so pitted and wrinkled that all manner of patterns can be seen.

The legend connected with this stone has two well-known variants, the first being that of the fairy cow that came regularly to the village to be milked during a great period of dearth. When the drought was over, she stamped her hoof hard on the stone upon which she had been standing, and then vanished.¹

The second variant employs the age-old folk motif of milking with a sieve, the cow this time a quite ordinary (sic) creature that normally supplied the village. One night a local man drunkenly went to the cow armed with a sieve, and milked her until she gave blood. She then bellowed with pain and kicked the stone so hard that her hoof-print was left behind.² 

Often the villain in this old tale is an evil witch, but a local man's poem of 1893 says that this time it was a passing juggler.³ Another story says that an ox with a large thorn in its foot embarked on a rampage through the village before finally stamping its hoof so hard on the stone that it left a print.

Sources:

1. W. A. Dutt: 'The Ancient Mark-Stones of East Anglia', (Flood & Sons, 1926), p.19.
2. H. P. Styles, in the 'East Anglian Miscellany', 1921, Note 5978.

3. 'South Norfolk News', June 27th 1975.

Stalham:

Secret tunnel

St. Mary's church (TG373251) is just across the road from the Maid's Head pub. This inn was built in 1380 according to the deeds, to house the masons who were constructing the church, and a tunnel was said to connect the two. But as the church guide says, "why anyone should go to that trouble Heaven knows - the traffic in the High Street cannot have been that bad!" Some have suggested they were trying to keep some of the drunken workers out of the public gaze.

Stiffkey:

The Devil's Hole

At the Devil's Hole (TF972426), by the roadside between Stiffkey and Cockthorpe, is said to be a spot where, rain as hard as it may, the ground will never become wet, "owing, as tradition saith, to some terrible crime having been committed in that identical place".

Source:

Walton N. Dew: 'A Dyshe of Norfolke Dumplings', (Jarrold & Sons, 1898), p.31.

Stockton:

Stockton Stone

Stockton Stone stands on a grassy slope between a lay-by (the old road) and the modern road, on the west side of the main A146 from Beccles to Norwich, at TM387947. This is an oblong sandstone glacial erratic weighing several tons, 2½ feet x 2 feet x 2 feet high, pitted and riven in several places, but apparently not worked, with the sharp top axis aligned along the road. 

It had a curse upon it that anyone who moves it will suffer dreadful misfortune or death before a year has passed. But in fact it WAS moved in the 1930s during work to straighten the road and, so I gather, one of the workmen involved actually collapsed and died.¹

Photographs in the ' Lowestoft Journal' in February and July 1935 show the stone (6 feet long in total) being lifted under the supervision of Benjamin Edge of Stockton Old Hall, who owned the land, and Major S. E. Glendenning of the Norfolk Archaeological Society. 

Glendenning himself said that the stone had been moved diagonally eastwards about 14 feet, and the disturbance was "regarded locally with some misgiving".² Before the existence of the Geld Stone was more widely known, some had suggested that the Danegeld was paid here (see Geldeston).

According to an informant, the stone was "certainly some form of boundary mark, and maintained by the church; there is an entry in the Stockton church book for 'stulpes', i.e. posts, for Stockton Stone, in 1632".³ The Town Book also records, in 1645, the payment of a small sum for "putting stulps to Stockton Stone".⁴

The author W.A.Dutt considered it to have been a track marker, set up at the point where an ancient trackway crossed the present road. A track through Stone Covert is still evident, but there's nothing to suggest that it's ancient.

Sources:

1. Keith Payne of Stockton, in the 'Waveney Clarion', Vol.1, No.6, p.3.

2. S. E. Glendenning, in the 'Eastern Daily Press', Nov. 4th 1947.

3. Information from Miss Elisabeth Crowfoot of Geldeston.

4. White's 'History, Gazetteer & Directory of Norfolk', 1883.

Sturston:

Hangman's Round

A field on the former Waterloo Farm was known as Hangman's Round, and "there, so the tale runs, a Parson-squire hanged himself from the branches of one of the ancient oaks which still stand."

Source:

'The Earth No Longer Bare and Other Essays', by 'A Norfolk Woman', p.86. (G. R. Reeve, date unknown.)

Swaffham:

Bride's Pit

On the right hand side of the road from Thetford, just before reaching Swaffham, is a place called Bride's Pit (TF821072), after a fathomless pool once to be seen there. The name was actually a corruption of Bird's Pit, but tradition says that a couple returning home from their wedding in a horse drawn coach plunged into the pond one dark night, and the bride was drowned.

Sources:

Ben Ripper: 'Ribbons from the Pedlar's Pack' (Quaker Press, 1972), p.215.

W. G. Clarke: 'In Breckland Wilds' (Robert Scott, 1925), p.167.

Cromwell's Burial Ground

Human remains have been found in a small field just south-east of the church, that has long been known as Cromwell's Burial Ground. This is often linked to the shot marks once found in the church 'roof angels', traditionally ascribed to Cromwell's troops firing blunderbusses in the building. Almost certainly, they were actually caused by locals firing to get rid of troublesome birds, such as happened in 1667.

Source:

Ben Ripper: 'Ribbons from the Pedlar's Pack' (Quaker Press, 1972), pp.17, 50.

Swanton Morley:

The way to St. Martin's Land

"I have heard it said that until quite recently there was a hole in a field beside the Swanton Morley-Bawdeswell road. It was neither an old well nor a drain. It did not appear to have been used by fox, badger or rabbit. Surrounded by coarse clumps of grass and bracken and of unguessed depth, the hole remained a mystery. A whisper spread that it was an entrance to St. Martin's Land where it is always dusk and where the Green Children live. These pixies have always been a constant trouble to the people of East Anglia. The hole was filled!"

St. Martin's Land, in one version of the famous folktale, was the home of the mysterious 'Green Children of Woolpit'.

Source: