(being a short narrative of actual events)
The Combe
Now that we are all sitting around the campfire, gather closer, for a curious tale needs to be told this witching hour. About a strange and secretive place. A romantic faerie-like glen of great beauty, hidden in forgotten woods. Unease greets the wanderer as they walk amongst dense ancient yews that cut them off from the outside world so effectively, along a broad rutted track so little frequented, it is quite possible to visit here without meeting another living soul during the day. But, in the dead of night, when the Combe is darkened by the shadows of the great rocks and tall trees with their overhanging limbs across the pathways whispering to each other, begrimed with grains of poison in the bark and gleaming like witch dust, all around, a sepulchral silence, broken only by the occasional hooting and wailing of night birds, the flutter of a leaf, the creaking and crunching of undergrowth beneath the tread of some four-footed prowler, the rustling of foliage by birds, scared at your approach, overgrown with brambles and rank vegetation, that you could not proceed fast for fear of stumbling. The place assumes a different character. Dark shadows flitting in the distance, but never really seen. A place with decaying air and stifling atmosphere, providing the perfect abode for those who worshipped the darkness rather than the light.
The year is 1776, James Stevens, squire of Chelvey and a gentleman of independent means who had amassed considerable wealth before he retired from business in the city of Bristol enjoyed his walks that he took alone in the glen whilst listening to the birds singing, lightening his heart.
Today, St: Nicholas’ Church clock solemnly sounded from its pinnacled tower as the squire entered the glen dressed in his finest dark blue frock coat, underneath he wore a white linen shirt, yellow waistcoat and buff breeches with boots, a white wig on his head with a plain black cocked hat, an agreeable negligence in dress typical of the English country gentleman, walking on along the rutted track. Remembering the church with its long pointed arches, flying exterior buttresses, stained-glass windows and ribbed vaults. Then, letting his thoughts wander back to the other day. He had walked this way then, when he heard the sound of a loud scream. Thinking that it was a fox, but unlike any that he had ever heard before, he had walked on. Enquiring when he arrived home in the village of what he had heard, he was told that it was an apparition known as the ‘Phantom Girl’ and it was thought to be that of a young woman who had killed herself by jumping off of Eagle Rock in the Combe after a love affair ended in tragedy. He had also been told about a ‘ghostly hunt in full cry’ led by a headless huntsman that had been seen in the Combe, which reminded him of the ‘Wild Hunt’ in the south of the county, where spectral riders and hounds are abroad on Winter nights and wondered if this was not in fact just a reinterpretation of the same tale. Stevens had also heard another paranormal tale when visiting Ye Olde Sun Inne at a near-by village, where loose tongues would relate the story of a group of children who went picking primroses in Goblin Combe where airy grasslands above contrasted dark woodlands below and the sea wind sweeps up from the Channel. The track winding down the valley is an illusion, a goblin path that leads you straight into faerieland. One little girl, who wandered away, found herself alone and lost. Crying, she banged her head on a rock and the rock opened and faeries came out and gave her a golden ball, then dried her tears and led her home. There was much amazement in the village and one old conjuror, thinking of getting a golden ball himself, gathered some primroses and made his way to the rock. The hollow hill opened for him, but he was taken and kept by the faeries. Because it was not the right day, or the right number of primroses and he was not a dear little soul.
He also knew about the ‘witch rites’ on Cador’s Mump, where some of the local women danced skyclad at May Eve and Midsummer and that the flat rock on the approach track was called The Devil’s Stone. Then there was that poor fellow Lukins who had been possessed by demons these past sixteen years and was known as ‘The Demoniac’ by the locals. He had, of course, heard of Maria Stevens, who it was said that her trial at Taunton Castle in 1707 for bewitching Dorothy Reeves was one of the last in the county. She had escaped ‘Stonegallows’ which stood at the boundary of the parishes of Bishop’s Hull, Trull and Wilton. Richard Hunt, JP had personally led a zealous hunt for eight years as the county’s ‘witch finder’. There had been many witch trials throughout the county over the years, many were poor old women with a bad reputation, who were accused by their neighbours. Although the ‘Witchcraft Act of 1735’ had finally concluded prosecutions in England for alleged witchcraft. People in the villages were still very superstitious, he thought to himself.
He was not a firm beholder in such matters. But, liked to think he was more pragmatic in life and he liked to keep abreast of the times by reading ‘The Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette’, a four page broadsheet. He was also a keen amateur archaeologist and had been on digs at Cleeve Toot and Taps Combe Camp, both Iron Age Hillforts. Out wandering, he had also visited Wooks Cait, a standing stone that was recorded in 1730 by John Strachey as having a crack down the middle that almost splits it in two and The Water Stone which was the remains of a burial chamber with a hollow in it that collects rainwater. While he knew about the story behind Peak Wina, a cairn which stood close to The Hillfort and had been created by fishermen on their way to tend their nets by throwing a stone onto the cairn and wishing for a good catch. Stevens had witnessed them while out walking that way one day.
He had also drunk from the spring that arose in the Winter of 1763 / 1764 after a period of heavy rain opposite old Master Pigott’s house.and which ran through the field towards his residence. Gentry came from miles around to partake of the clear, cooling waters.
When he had visited St: Andrew’s Church at Congresbury, he was told the story about the remains of the ancient yew tree which stood in the churchyard and was known locally as ‘St: Congar’s Walking Stick’. Stevens had also listened to a story about a nearby 17th: Century farmhouse which, it was said, had two mummified cats in the roof to protect the house from fire. A ‘witches charm’.
All around him was quiet and still. Noticing that the birds had stopped singing.
Suddenly. . . . . .
He heard the rumbling of heavy wheels and the cantering of hooves behind him. On turning around with fear that he was about to be run over, he perceived a hearse-like coach drawn by four black horses with blood red glowing eyes. As the coach drew nearer, his astonishment turned to terror when he recognized that the driver lacked a head. The spectral vehicle suddenly vanished before his very eyes as he jumped out of the way, banging his head hard against a rock jutting from the ground.
The local parish priest, John Hibbertson, was also out walking in the same part of the glen, when he saw the squire in the distance, leap to one side of the track. Nothing was there? What made him jump so? Running to the others aid, he could see that his head was bloody and the poor wretched soul was jabbering something about a ‘Phantom Coach’ driven by a headless man trying to run him down. – The first to have encountered this apparition was a group of Romany Gypsies, camped overnight in the Combe. – Fear filled his eyes. Hibbertson could see that Stevens was terrified from his ordeal and provided means for removing him to his home at Chelvey Court,which had been built between 1618 and 1660 for the Tynte family, who were important in the surrounding area at the time. On the way, knowing that the squire was moneyed he thought up a plan to benefit from this act and was determined to get some of his money.
With that object in view the parish priest took into his confidence an old friend, whom he knew to be as unscrupulous as he was himself. The two rogues paid daily visits to the bedside of Stevens, where during the day he lay with apprehension and at night terror visited his dreams. They both exhibited the deepest concern at his injury and nursed him back to health. They completely deceived him and contrived through their artifices to obtain his signature to a will, drawn up by themselves. That they were his sole beneficiaries and thus cheated the squire’s family out of their inheritance. As soon as the squire had signed the will, Hibbertson promptly murdered him.
Neither Hibbertson nor his friend lived long to enjoy their ill-gotten wealth. . . . . .
It had been long rumoured that Hibbertson, although a parish priest, was in league with the devil and to practise black magic in the Combe at the dead of night. For when he died not long after the murder, a tall, shadowy figure, neither human nor animal, but a terrifying mixture of both, was seen to enter the Rectory – which was a modest building made from local brick and rubble with a Roman tiled roof, coped raised verges and had been recently built – in the village. Shrieks were heard coming from within the priest’s house and it was firmly believed that the Devil or one of his demons had come for his sin-laden soul. His ghost, clad in a long black cloak closely resembling the garment which he wore in his lifetime, was seen in the glen soon after his death and it is rumoured to have appeared there since. Observed, prowling along the old rutted track and shady paths, or stood at the base of one of the trees looking towards the old Manor House in the distance, with its ornate style, characterized by stone facades, a porch with a tympanum bearing the arms of John Tynte and flanked by bunches of fruit, pantiled roof with steep roof pitches, windows and large chimneys.
Chelvey Court
steep sides, bare above
where ash and fir
grip on stony ground,
grey boulders, among tufts of gorse
lie in wait to catch one’s foot
whilst gnarled oaks watch and grin,
walk on to the highway-man’s tree
for the little man
dressed in green,
awaits as guide
along the faerie path.
© Stewart Guy. 2022 & 2023
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