Strange and unusual tales from Great Linford for Halloween

With Halloween fast approaching, what better time to go in search of the spooky, the bizarre and the just plain unusual at Great Linford. The obvious starting point is ghost stories, but surprisingly for a village of such antiquity, there seem to be few restless spirits to disturb its peace. The website Spooky Isles offers a first-hand account of an encounter with a spectral girl at the Black Horse Inn and I have heard it suggested that The Nags Head has a resident ghost, but this seems to be the extent of any spectral shenanigans in the parish.

Certainly, one might imagine that the centuries old manor house in the park would be a hotbed of paranormal activity; after all, we even have the required elements for a classic ghost story. Thomas Uthwatt was the Lord of the Manor in the 18th century, but was it seems a conflicted soul, who slit his own throat in 1754. However, there appear to be no reports of his tortured spirit haunting the house.

The old rectory on the other hand can definitely be considered a good candidate for unusual goings on, especially as several of its former residents might reasonably be described as occultists, and in fact the Reverend Richard Napier was once accused of being a conjuror by one of his parishioners. Arriving in Great Linford in 1590, Richard Napier largely abdicated his official responsibilities as the parish priest, and concentrated his efforts on becoming an astrological doctor, drawing up complex horoscopes to divine the source of his patients’ afflictions. Among the more mundane aches, pains and sundry maladies he treated, he also encountered cases that suggested satanic powers at work, such as Thomas Richardson, who consulted Napier on July 14th, 1598, telling the doctor that his wife talked much of the devil and must be bewitched. To learn more about cases of witchcraft he treated, visit the Napier casebook website.

Another resident of the rectory was Theodoricus Gravius, who as a refugee from war in Europe had found sanctuary with Richard Napier, and in due course would succeed him as rector of the parish. He was concerned not only with medicine, but was also engaged in chemical experimentation, complaining that he was unable to retrieve his laboratory equipment from Germany. One cannot help but wonder what fascinating investigations were undertaken within the walls of the rectory, perhaps even attempts to transform lead to gold! It is not difficult to imagine residents of the village looking on with suspicion at odd noises and noxious odours emanating from the rectory.

Speaking of odd smells, in May of 1840, the Northampton Mercury reported on the excavation of a well on the estate of Henry Andrewes Uthwatt, where a “copious and permanent spring had been discovered, strongly impregnated with sulphurated hydrogen gas.” The article goes to say that the water could not be used for cooking purposes, “on account of the fetid odour which it exhales.” The article provides a considered scientific explanation for the phenomenon, but one can imagine that had the spring broke forth in Napier’s time, Great Linford might now be infamous as the location of a gate to hell.

With farming being the predominant source of livelihoods in the parish, it is to be expected that odd stories concerning animals can be found. The newspaper Croydon's Weekly Standard of Saturday November 15th, 1884, featured a sad little tale of a curious deformity that had afflicted a piglet.

GREAT LINFORD. STRANGE FREAK of NATURE. On Sunday last. November 9, a sow belonging to Mr. F. Kemp, of this village, gave birth to a litter of pigs, amongst which was one with two heads, each having ears. eyes, ect., perfect. The curious little animal, in consequence of no one being near at the time, was crushed to death by its dam.

The full name of the owner of the piglet we can identify as likely to have been an engine fitter (doubtless employed at Wolverton Works) named Frederick Kemp, with the unfortunate birth having occurred in the vicinity of the Wharf. The reference to a dam having crushed to death the piglet is a word meaning the female parent. Like the previous story of the stinking well, had such a birth occurred in Napier’s time, it would doubtless have been ascribed to witchcraft, but by the 1800s, such notions had largely been dispelled.

​Minor curiosities of nature seemed a popular item for newspapers, such as an account from January 1869, concerning a shepherd named John Mapley, who was reported to have gathered up two mushrooms of unusual size, the largest measuring six and half images in diameter. Clearly a slow news day.

Several newspapers of December 1886 carry a particular gruesome account of a freak accident that befell a Great Linford resident named Jospeh Fennemore, who was feeding his masters horses when one of them turned on him and bit his nose off. A doctor Rogers of Newport Pagnell attended but Joseph’s condition was considered a bad one, as his nose was bitten off level with his face. However, it seems that he must have rallied, as there is no record of a Joseph Fennemore dying at this time. Unhelpfully, there are two Joseph Fennemores who lived in the village in 1886, one who died in 1897, and his namesake son, who passed in 1912, so which of the two men was so hideously disfigured must remain a mystery.

The village was in need of a Pied Piper in January of 1932, when a huge colony of rats was disturbed at Windmill Hill Farm, having been munching their way through a bean crop stored in the barn, perhaps the one still adjacent to the cricket pitch. Hundreds of rats poured forth, with a veritable massacre occurring over the next two days. Described as “the biggest slaughter of rats on one farm that has been known in North Bucks for many years”, the dead numbered in the region of 700, and “presented a gruesome spectacle laid out in rows in the field adjoining the barn.”

Several reports of the calamitous effects of extreme weather in the parish can be found, including a case from July of 1865, when lightning struck a gang of workers and their horses on the construction site of the Grand Union Canal. The blast almost blinded one of the workers, and two horses were mortally injured. Almost a hundred years later, on Saturday March 1st, 1961, a tornado swept across the parish, having touched down at New Bradwell, before roaring through Great Linford, leaving a trail of damage in its wake. A particularly odd aspect of this story is the claim of one witness at New Bradwell that the tornado had been caused by a fireball he had witnessed pass overhead!

Bad weather could also have its benefits. People who happened to be near the Black Horse inn on December 30th, 1926, were treated to a late Christmas dinner when a flock of partridges were caught up in a gale and crashed into telegraph wires, a total of ten birds falling dead to the ground, all of which were swiftly claimed for the pot.

Under the headline, “Workmen’s Strange Discovery” the Northampton Mercury of March 26th, 1937, reported that a nest of “seven furry little animals” had been uncovered in the timber shed at Wolverton Railway Works, and suspecting they were otters, had requested the presence of William Uthwatt of the manor house, as he was master of the Bucks otter hound pack. On attending, he pronounced that they were not otters, but “some species of the fox tribe”, a rather curiously vague pronouncement from a seasoned huntsman. William took possession of the creatures, and no follow up story appears to have been filed that would clear up the mystery.

Great Linford does have one Halloween tradition. For over a decade, the residents of 16 Wood Lane have been providing a Halloween maze experience, with live actors and plenty of thrills and chills. Further information can be found at halloweenscarymaze.com.

​If anyone reading this has any other spooky or strange Great Linford stories to share, please do comment below.