Christmas Ghost Story
In the real world things are never quite as they seem, but cross the border into the supernatural and everything turns mercurial, deceptive and illusory. However, it could be that there’s a wafting and ephemeral frontier-land where those two worlds meet - a place where you can never quite know what is truth, and what is not.
Here is a West Country example of the phenomenon - one that came to me as I was shopping the other day in a supermarket, which happens to be in the workaday Somerset community of Wellington…
The area is dominated by one massive needle of an obelisk which is one of the most famous structures in the South West, but the town also plays host to another historic, albeit lesser-known, stone structure. Both are related in a most sepulchral and spooky way to this story.
Every reader will know Wellington Monument, the great triangular stone skyrocket that points heavenwards on the Blackdown escarpment high above the M5 - it announces to motorists travelling south that they have at last reached the West Country-proper.
Way beneath - in Wellington’s large, red sandstone, St John the Baptist Church - is an elaborate tomb that supposedly contains the remains of Sir John Popham who left this mortal coil aged 72, in 1607.
I say ‘supposedly’ because legend has it that the illustrious Englishman who was, in in his career, Speaker of the House of Commons, Attorney General and Lord Chief Justice for James 1st, isn’t in the tomb at all.
Nevertheless, our story begins with these two very concrete and worldly factors: a famous and mighty monument perched up on a hill, and the tomb of a great man.
Concrete and worldly maybe, but the nether-world of the supernatural nothing is as it seems - both these solid structures hide an altogether more ethereal tale…
Wellington Monument casts a shadow over a dark secret that comes in the form of a gloomy hidden pool that is countless times deeper than the pinnacle itself. The rank pit is said to stretch downwards all the way to Hell.
If you believe the local legend, it is this pool that plays host to the remains and the soul of our long lost Lord Chief Justice, not the splendid tomb in Wellington churchyard. Go there in a few days time on New Year’s Eve and you might actually see the old rogue come back to Earth for a second or two.
For that, it seems, is what Sir John really was. The nation’s most upright and respected citizen - the man who presided over the trials of Mary Queen of Scots, Guy Fawkes and the other Gunpowder Plotters - was, according to legend, a thoroughly nasty piece of work.
His story goes something like this… When young, Sir John was anything but a law-abiding fellow. Born in Huntworth, near North Petherton in 1531, he apparently neglected his studies and - as he turned from boy to man - preferred the “profligate company” of criminals, with whom he “was wont to take a purse”.
According to writer John Aubrey in his book Brief Lives, drinking and gambling with ne’er-do-wells was the order of the day for Sir John as he grew up at a place called Wellington Court.
However, it seems the young waster must have eventually hitched up with a girl who was more persuasive and influential than his criminal friends. His wife managed to turn him to the more serious and upright business of practicing in law.
And so, after the age of 28, he began a career which was to see Sir John rise and rise to the highest legal seat of office in the land. He served as MP for Lyme Regis in 1558 and was a Justice of the Peace in Somerset. After that he was promoted to sergeant-at-law and appointed solicitor-general in 1579. In 1581 he was elected speaker of the House of Commons and later that year appointed attorney-general. In 1592 he became Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, retaining the position until his death.
Furthermore he was credited as being a kind of lynchpin who “maintained the stability of the British State”, and is said to have been one of the “real colonisers” of the British Empire. He funded and organised communities in the New World - one, located at the mouth of the Kennebec River, in Maine - was called the Popham Colony.
An illustrious career indeed… But there was something about the Somerset man that always created shadows.
“He was widely considered to have been both cruel and corrupt in his judgements,” says one history book, which goes on to state: “There were scandalous rumours that he had unjustly enabled his cousin ‘Wild Will’ Darrell to escape a charge of murder, in exchange for being made heir to the latter’s estate at Littlecote House in Wiltshire.”
One thing is certain: Sir John Popham amassed a large fortune by the time his life was suddenly cut short on June 10 1607. As well as Littlecote, he owned estates at Publow in Somerset and Hemyock in the Blackdowns.
This wealth is apparent in the elaborate tomb at Wellington church - there are stone effigies of himself and his wife, surrounded by figures representing his parents, six daughters, three maidservants, his only son and his wife and their 13 children. An inscription reads: “Sr John Popham Knighte and Lord Chief Justice of England and of the Honorable Privie Councell to Queene Elizabeth and after to King James, aged 76, died the 10th of June, 1607 and is here interred.”
But as we reach the subject of Sir John’s death, we begin to enter that nether-world I was speaking of earlier…
Here is the first clue that not everything was quite as it seemed in the great man’s life. After he passed away Sir John’s estate was held in Chancery and his descendants - for reasons that have never been known - were barred from grabbing their inheritance.
One relative who believed he was about to inherit a fortune was so furious he changed his name to Smith, and so severed his links with the Pophams forever.
But it is the actual death of Sir John that brings us to the ghost-story. He was killed while riding to hounds up in his beloved Blackdown Hills - probably on lands owned by his Hemyock Castle estate.
His horse stumbled while galloping across the area upon which Wellington Monument now stands - and, in the tumble, Sir John rolled down into a gully, and into the aforementioned pit or pond.
The hunt servants ran to his aid but - pull and tug as hard and as energetically as they could to get him out of the ooze - down, down, down went the great man.
Not surprisingly, there was a great to-do - and that determined and persuasive wife of his took to praying and beseeching. She may have suspected that the Devil had claimed his own - but she wanted her husband’s soul to stand some chance of repentance.
Legend has it she eventually had her way. Either the Devil, or perhaps God himself, at last delivered judgement on the soul whose earthly counterpart had sent so many to the gallows during his own judging career…
The deal was - or is - that Sir John Popham can come out of the bottomless pit which now bears his name and make his way back to the more holy and respectable resting place in Wellington churchyard. But he can only do it by taking “one cock’s stride” in distance, just once a year.
This tiny step is undertaken each New Year’s Day. As the journey is over three miles in length, it’s going to take the old ghost from now until kingdom-come.
Some local people believe Sir John is actually proceeding at this impossibly slow pace down a tunnel - an idea that has been corroborated by the fact that the residents of one farmhouse situated in a direct line between Popham’s Pit and Wellington Church had to call upon the services of a white-witch to rid the place of terrible knocking sounds that rose up through the floors.
Added to this, an article in the local newspaper, The Wellington Weekly News, on 23 June 1090, gave further substance to the legend when it was reported that some local woodmen working in the area had refused to chop down an oak tree “which uttered pitiful groans” every time they struck it with an axe.
The woodmen concluded Sir John’s ghost must be sheltering somewhere deep within the tree and decided to leave it standing for a few years “to give him time to move on”.
The old ghost’s course will take him right across the M5 motorway - and if you happen to be driving along that section this or any other New Year’s Eve - I’d advise caution.
You never know if, or when, the man who put Mary Queen of Scots and Guy Fawkes to death and caused 100s of others to be hung, drawn and quartered might appear in some gruesome on the central reservation.
