Vampires of Great Britain

by Tom Slemen

  The authorities were concerned because a number of people had gone missing in the area near the cave entrances. Two heavily armed soldiers (possibly Dragoons) descended into the caverns with torches and claimed that they not only found a heap of human bones, they also found the ruins of an ancient church of some unknown denomination. The interior of the church was lit by three large candles and grotesque gargoyles formed part of an altar. Throughout the exploration of the underground, the soldiers said they felt as if they were being watched, and also heard voices speaking in an unknown language. One report said that a child's head was found in a cave, and also several stone jugs containing blood. Believing this was evidence of cannibalism. Gunpowder was used to seal the caves, and so the riddle of the underground church of Billinge remains unsolved. Sunken churches are to be found not only in Lancashire, but in many corners of the UK. In Lincolnshire, for example, you will find the story of the sunken church of Sancliff in which the whole church and its congregation of habitual sinners were swallowed up by the earth. Then there is the legend of Kirkstanton Chapel, which sank into the ground along with its priest and worshippers. Some modern folklorists believe an earthquake was to blame for the ‘sinking’ of the church. At Fisherty Brow, near Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmorland, a legend has been told for centuries about a church that vanished into the ground with its parson and his congregation. From time to time, phantom bells have been heard at the spot where the church slid into the clay, and many people, upon putting an ear to the ground, have heard the faint ringing of church bells.

  Vampires are said to detest daylight and particularly sunlight, and I sometimes wonder if some of the 19th century’s great eccentrics were in fact, vampiric beings. Take the Fifth Duke of Portland, William John Cavendish Bentinck Scott (1800-1879) who had an extensive subterranean complex excavated under his estate at Welbeck Abbey in North Nottinghamshire that included eight tunnels covering a distance of fifteen miles, an underground ballroom occupying ten-thousand square feet, for two thousand dancers, a billiards room for twelve full-size billiards tables, and even an underground library. All of these rooms were lit by hundreds of gas-jets and painted in a specific shade of pink that was agreeable with the Duke’s eyes. The Duke detested sunlight, and his favourite time was from sunset to sunrise, in fact he had a sunset scene painted on the ceiling of his huge ballroom. When he had to travel during the day, the Duke made his journeys in a black hearse-like carriage with shuttered windows so no light could touch his skin. Direct verbal communication with other people was forbidden by the Duke, and even when he was ill, the doctor was not allowed to see him, but instead had to instruct the valet to take the Duke’s pulse from behind a door. Rumours naturally abounded about the 5th Duke of Portland; some said he was disfigured, or had a gruesome-looking skin disease, but a rare photograph he had taken of himself at the time of his self-imposed isolation shows him to be a pallid man with bushy side-whiskers and dark shrewd-looking eyes. Still the rumours flew about the Duke: he obviously had wild orgies going on in his underground lair, for why would a reclusive lonely man want a ballroom for two thousand dancers? Other people thought he had made some pact with the Devil, for why did the Duke only walk in the grounds of Welbeck Abbey in the dead of night? And what of the Duke’s bizarre taste in food? All he ate each day was a freshly killed chicken. In 1879 the Duke died and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in North London. Not long after the burial, strange rumours circulated about the Duke. Some believed he had been leading a double life at Welbeck Abbey, and this intriguing rumour had its origins in the extraordinary claims made by a widow of Baker Street, London, named Anna Maria Druce. Mrs Druce asserted that the late Duke had been her husband Thomas Charles Druce, shop-owner of a popular store called the Bake Street Bazaar. Thomas Druce had died in 1864 but Mrs Druce claimed the burial had been bogus, as the coffin had been filled with lead. This had been staged by the Duke because he had tired of his alter ego, Thomas Druce, and had wanted to return to his reclusive life at Welbeck Abbey. Thomas Druce’s grave in Highgate Cemetery was opened, and it did not contain lead at all, it contained the bearded decomposing corpse of Mr Druce. The case brought to court by the scheming Mrs Druce collapsed. That is not the end of the matter though, for months after the 5th Duke of Portland was laid to ‘rest’ his ghost was seen prowling Kensal Green Cemetery. This ghost wore a long black cloak and a dark green velvet suit. Was this merely the phantom of the Duke? Or was the man who went out of his way to avoid daylight a vampire? We may know more one day.

  Strange Slayings

  In November 2001, Mabel Leyshon, a lovely old lady of 90 years of age, was stabbed to death at her home in Llanfairpwll on Anglesey. Her killer was a 17-year-old named Mathew Hardman – Mrs Leyshon’s former newspaper delivery boy - and this youth not only stabbed the deaf pensioner twenty-two times, he also mutilated her body and placed two pokers at her feet in the shape of a cross. The dead woman’s excised heart was found next to her body wrapped in newspaper in a saucepan. Of this macabre ritualistic crime, sickened policeman Detective Superintendent Alan Jones told reporters: ‘The injuries are the worst I’ve seen in my career.’ The police subsequently discovered that the teenaged killer had drunk some of the blood of his elderly victim in an effort to acquire immortality. Before Mr Justice Richards ordered that Hardman should be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure (a life sentence), the prosecution told how the accused had been obsessed with vampires and the darker side of the Occult, and how, two months before the horrific murder, Hardman had accused a 16-year-old German exchange student of being a vampire. He tried to persuade the girl to bite his neck so he could also become a vampire, and when she refused, Hardman allegedly forced his neck against her mouth and the student had to shout for help.

  Hardman denied that he was obsessed with vampires and claimed his curiosity regarding the nocturnal bloodsuckers was merely a “subtle interest”.

  Justice Richards told Hardman that the attack on Mrs Leyshon had been planned and carefully calculated, then told him, “Why you, an otherwise pleasant and otherwise well regarded young man, should act in this way is difficult to comprehend. You had hoped for immortality. All you achieved was to brutally end another person's life and the bringing of a life sentence upon yourself."

  The jury took four hours to reach a verdict in a trial which was so graphically gruesome, journalist had great difficulty reporting the gory details of the case. When the verdict was announced, Hardman wept in the dock at Mold Crown Court and his mother screamed. What had driven a seemingly normal teenager to smash his way into a pensioner’s home to stab her twenty-two times before slicing open her chest to pull out her heart? Hardman had, in the words of the prosecution, believed in vampires, but this was not a unique case. In his book, The Anatomy of Crime, the celebrated Superintendent Robert Fabian of Scotland Yard, one of the most hard-boiled logical and scientific detectives in the history of criminology, wrote a curious paragraph about one particular murder case that he never solved:

  I advise anybody who is tempted at any time to venture into Black Magic, witchcraft, Shamanism - call it what you will - to remember Charles Walton and to think of his death, which was clearly the ghastly climax of a pagan rite. There is no stronger argument for keeping as far away as possible from the villains with their swords, incense and mumbo-jumbo. It is prudence on which your future peace of mind and even your life could depend.

  In his warning to the idly curious, Fabian was referring to the baffling case of the 'Pitchfork Murder', which occurred in 1945 in the village of Lower Quinton, just a few miles south of Stratford-upon-Avon. Before we look into the murder mystery, we must go back in time to 1662 to understand why the area around the scene of the crime is steeped in witchcraft.

  In the spring of 1662, a Scottish witch named Isobel Gowdie was burned at the stake for using a team of harnessed toads to pull a miniature plough across a field. In Celtic mythology, the toad had always been associated with witchcraft, sorcery and curses and blights, and t
his symbolism was carried on into Christianity. In Greek lore, Amerindian legend, and even Chinese mythology, the toad was also regarded as a magical creature identified with the powers of darkness, so nobody in 17th century Scotland thought it was strange to put an old woman to death for employing toads to pull a toy plough. Throughout the rest of Britain, the toad was a much-maligned yet respected creature. In the English Fens, for example, a peculiar Roman tradition is still extant there; the practice of using a toad as a compass. This custom dates back to the days when the occupying Romans would lay a dagger on a toad's back, then watch the creature move around slowly until it stopped when the dagger pointed due north.

  Over two centuries after the execution of Isobel Gowdie, another old woman who was suspected of being a witch was also put to death. She was 75-year-old Ann Tenant of Long Compton in Warwickshire, and the man who slayed her was a mentally retarded youth named John Heywood, referred to locally as the village idiot. Heywood was convinced that Miss Tenant was a member of a coven of witches who held their sabbats in the countryside around the village of Long Compton. Some said the old woman also used toads to blight crops by black magic rituals. At the murder trial, Heywood confessed, "Her was a proper witch. I pinned her to the ground [with a pitchfork] before slashing her throat with a bill-hook to carve a cross." Local gossip at the time of the trial had it that Long Compton was becoming the epicentre of witchcraft in the region, and an old saying of the day was: "There are enough witches in Long Compton to draw a wagonload of hay up Long Compton Hill." Strangely enough, just south of this village stands a circle of Neolithic or Bronze Age stones, known as the Rollright Stones which have been associated with pagan rituals for centuries. Even today, modern witches and occultists still gather within the circle of stones to conduct esoteric rites.

  About 15 miles north of the Rollright Stones, the picturesque village of Lower Quinton sits in the shadow of Meon Hill. Even today, Lower Quinton has a spooky aura about it after dark, and is surrounded by eerily-named places such as Devil's Elbow and Upper Slaughter. In a thatched cottage at Lower Quinton in the 1940s, there lived a 74-year-old man named Charles Walton, and his unmarried niece, Edith. In his younger days, Walton had worked as a ploughman, but now in old age he was plagued with stabbing rheumatism, and eked out a living putting in a seven-hour day for one shilling and sixpence an hour hedge-cutting for local farmers. He was a familiar figure in the village with his double-pronged hay-fork over his shoulder and his slash-hook in his hand, always hobbling to work up Meon Hill. Outwardly there was nothing to suggest that the old hedger and ditcher was anybody out of the ordinary, but Walton had quite a sinister reputation in the village, where it was common knowledge that he bred huge toads and was once a legendary horse whisperer. Horse whispering is an ancient, and now largely forgotten art of being able to control a horse from a distance without any word or command, but with a slight gesture of the hand to make the horse stay, run, canter or gallop. Walton's horse whispering ability seemed nothing short of witchcraft, as his power over animals allegedly extended to cattle, toads and birds. What's more, it was said that Walton had been seen on many occasions imitating the songs of the nightingale and chirping to other species of bird. He openly professed to be conversant in the aeolian language of his feathered friends, for they seemed to obey his requests to refrain from eating the seeds sown in the fields of his little plot.

  On the morning of 14 February 1945, Charles Walton left home and hobbled up Meon Hill to attend to the hedges that formed the border of Alfred Potter's farm, about a mile from Walton's cottage.

  At six o'clock that evening, Edith began to worry about her uncle. He still hadn't returned, and he was usually back before four o'clock. She felt something had happened to him, and suspected that the old man had collapsed, as he'd recently been complaining about the unbearable rheumatic pain that was crippling his legs. Edith sought out her neighbour Harry Beasley, and they both hiked up Meon's Hill to Potter's farm - known as 'The Firs' - with a mounting sense of trepidation.

  Farmer Potter told Edith and Harry that he had seen someone in the distance earlier in the day who appeared to be cutting hedges, and had assumed it had been Walton. However, Potter thought that Walton had long gone home. He fetched a flashlight and took Walton's niece and her neighbour over the fields to the spot where the old man had last been seen.

  The spotlight of the torch revealed the whole horrific scene. Under a willow tree on Meon Hill was the spread-eagled body of Charles Walton. Potter glanced at the corpse then shielded Edith from the gruesome sight with his arm and took her home. He then summoned the police. Meanwhile, back at the scene of the crime, Harry Beasley stood guard over his murdered neighbour. He saw that Walton had been impaled with his own pitch fork. The twin prongs of the tool had been driven through his neck with such force, they penetrated the ground to a depth of six inches. Crosses had been carved on the cheeks, neck and abdomen, and the bill-hook that had been used to cut out the symbols was still wedged between Walton's ribs. Near to the body lay the old man's walking stick, covered in blood, because it had been used to bludgeon his head. The face of Walton was frozen in an expression of sheer terror.

  The Warwickshire police force reacted strangely to the crime. They seemed to be reluctant to investigate, and called for a murder squad from Scotland Yard to look into the strange killing. On the following day, Detective Superintendent Robert Fabian and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Albert Webb turned up at the village and they were greeted with what appeared to be a conspiracy of silence. The few locals who did speak merely told Fabian that Walton had been a secretive, strange old man who bred large natterjack toads in the damp undergrowth of his garden. Fabian also learned that Walton had never been over-fond of company, and had bought his cider by the gallon from pubs and preferred to drink it alone by his kitchen fireside. Fabian could not allow his reasoning to be clouded by superstition, yet he felt that Walton had been ritually murdered, so he took the unprecedented steps of consulting Dr Margaret Murray, a witchcraft and vampire expert, and delved into the local history of the area. He was intrigued to uncover a record of the 1875 murder of Ann Tenant, who had practically been killed in the same manner as Charles Walton. Fabian began to suspect that the person or persons who had killed Walton had carried out the murder in order to purge the village of a man who had been regarded as a practising witch.

  The line of inquiry switched to the prisoner of war camp over at Long Marston, where Italian, Germans and Slavonic soldiers were quizzed, but Fabian was confident that the POWs were innocent of Walton's murder.

  Then something weird happened. A black dog was found hanged on Meon Hill. There were hushed claims in the village that the hound had been Walton's 'familiar' - a demon in disguise. Even the secular-minded Fabian was unnerved by the hanged dog, for on the first day of the murder investigation he had climbed Meon Hill to examine the crime scene, and had been intrigued to notice a large black retriever that was seated on a nearby wall, watching him. Seconds afterwards, when a boy walked past, Fabian asked, "Are you looking for your dog?"

  The boy returned a blank stare and said "What dog?"

  Fabian suddenly noticed that the dog had vanished, and the boy, who had obviously been raised by superstitious parents, fled down the hill in absolute terror. He later told the villagers that Fabian had seen the infamous ghostly black dog, which was regarded as a portent of death or bad luck.

  Shortly after the hanged dog was cut down from the tree, another dog was run over by a police car, and there was a spate of inexplicable canine deaths during the murder investigation. As if to underline the relevance of the canine coincidences, Fabian's attention was drawn to a curious passage from an old yellowed book entitled Folklore, Old Customs and Superstitions in Shakespeare Land, which was written in 1930. The text of the passage actually referred to the young Charles Walton:

  At Alveston a plough named Charles Walton met a dog on his way home nine times in successive evenings. He told both the shepherd
and the carter with whom he worked, and was laughed at for his pains. On the ninth encounter a headless lady rushed past him in a silk dress, and on the next day he heard of his sister's death.

  Fabian and Webb learned from several of the more talkative villagers that in early spring 1944, crops had been slow in growing, and there were several fatal accidents with livestock. The harvest was a disaster and even the beer had been unaccountably sour in every local pub. Many thought the source of the widespread bad luck was Walton, so Fabian easily deduced that the old man had been slayed to put an end to his evil magical influences. That person or persons had probably had an intimate knowledge of the occult and planned the murder months in advance. Fabian knew that the date of Walton's death - 14 February - was Valentine's Day, and occasionally Ash Wednesday, but that particular date also had a special relevance to the ancient Druids - they carried out human sacrifices on that day to procure a good harvest.

  Fabian of the Yard finally had to concede. Four thousand statements had been taken and painstakingly cross-referenced; twenty-nine samples of blood, skin, and hair were analysed, but to no avail, and the silence in the village was impenetrable to the London policemen. Fabian and Webb reluctantly retreated to the capital, where more mundane crimes demanded their attention. For many years afterwards, Robert Fabian returned to Lower Quinton on the anniversary of the Walton killing and hid himself on Meon Hill to keep a watch on the area, perhaps hoping that the murderer would return to the scene of the crime, but no one ever did. Speaking of the Walton murder to a newspaper in 1976, the then retired Fabian told a reporter: "Detectives deal in facts, but I must admit there was something uncanny about that investigation."

  Was Walton a witch, or even a vampire, as some have suggested? It’s difficult to say after all this time. There is undoubtedly a ritualistic aspect to the slaying, and the ulterior motive seems to lie somewhere in the occult sphere. Someone reading this book may know the truth, and he or she may prefer to keep that skeleton in the cupboard. In the county of Warwickshire where Walton was murdered, there is an old mid-19th century tale about three men who tracked a vicious murderous vampire and tortured it in an effort to get the sadistic bloodthirsty fiend to reveal the whereabouts of its lair, where others of its kind lived. At a secluded place where the River Avon was edged with willows, the vampire – formally a doctor named Paxton – was shot through the head with a crossbow bolt of hawthorn, a wood traditionally used to combat such creatures of the night. Paxton refused to die and attempted to escape the trio of vampire hunters – Matthias Green, Jim Sherring, and a librarian from Stratford named Bindley, who was something of an expert on vampirology. Bindley knew that vampires abhorred water, and so, as Paxton backed away towards the banks of the Avon, the librarian knew the creature was trapped. Matthias Green, a mercenary in the pay of a local committee of farmers, unleashed more bolts from his crossbow and hit the vampire squarely in the chest and neck. The creature howled in agony and slid into the river, where it was lost to sight at one point in the low night mists on the waters. Jim Sherring, a local poacher, dragged the incapacitated vampire out the river and he and Green hanged him from the branch of a tree. By the light of the full moon the three men tried to interrogate the vile fanged freak as to the whereabouts of its lair, but the vampire hissed, spat at them, attempted to claw their faces with his long nails, and emitted spine-chilling shrieks. Bindley directed the mercenary to carry out one of the most horrific acts of torture known to man – the Blood Eagle. This barbaric stomach-churning atrocity was carried out on such historical personages as King Ella of Northumbria in March 867 AD, King Edmund, and King Maelgualai of Munster. Matthias Green slashed open the back of vampire Paxton from the nape of his neck to his buttocks, then calmly pulled open the long gash to reveal the spine of the nocturnal parasite. The vampire screamed for mercy, and a second vampire appeared from behind a tree some three hundred yards away. With blood-slicked hands Matthias loaded a hawthorn bolt into his crossbow and fired it at Paxton’s confederate but the shadowy figure darted away. The mercenary then took a broad-bladed knife and detached the ribs of the hanged but conscious vampire and opened the rib cages so that they resembled the bloodstained wings from which this heinous act derives its name. The vampire squealed and went into convulsions. The poacher Sherring gloated at the death throes of the vampire, while Bindley grimaced as Mr Green pulled out the lungs of the humanoid leech. The vampire made a loud rasping sound before the soldier of fortune decided to show a modicum of compassion by hammering a wooden steak through its heart. The corpse of the vampire was finally dismembered and put on a fire which burned until the dawn. The location of its lair was never discovered and Paxton’s bloodlusting brothers were never captured and destroyed. They allegedly prowled Warwickshire for many years. Bindley the vampire specialist was said to have been killed by a vampiric entity near Aconbury, a small village in Herefordshire. This supposedly took place at midnight on Twelfth Night, when the shocking outline of a man formed in blue smoke that had drifted up from a bubbling well. Bindley rummaged about in his knapsack for a crucifix to repel the partially materialised form of what appeared to be a monk in a cowl. Bindley’s assistant, a fourteen-year-old boy named Wilson, ran off at this point, and when he returned he found the librarian dead with an appalling wound to his neck. The body contained not a single drop of blood. The vampire is said to haunt Aconbury churchyard to this day, and it has been seen lingering close to the tomb of Roger de Clifford for some unknown reason.