A gallows once stood on Plump Hill, and another less than a mile away at Pingery Tump on the edge of Wigpool. They hanged sheep-stealers from these gibbets, and no part of England, with hundreds of sheep-owners within a small area, offered such a temptation or opportunity to the sheep-stealer as the Forest of Dean.
The last man to be hanged on Pingery Tump was Eli Hatton, and the gallows, until it was dropped, was known as Eli’s Post. By grim irony this sheep-stealer posthumously (if a man can be held to be posthumous while still hanging) brought ruin to Mitcheldean meat market. Mitcheldean by any human means of locomotion seems a tidy step from Pingery, but the spire of the church points up to the forest edge reminding one of its actual proximity, and its distance is nothing to a bird or fly. The flies that had been feeding on Eli’s corpse betook themselves to the fresh carcasses of mutton in Mitcheldean Market. People were becoming squeamish, or were learning the rudiments of hygiene; no one would buy the Mitcheldean mutton and Mitcheldean never hanged another sheep-stealer.
The above text is from:
“The Forest of Dean”
by Brian Waters
publisher: Dent 1951
Historical Reference:
On 4th September 1723, Eli Hatton was hanged at Pingery Tump (Pingry Tump) for the murder of Thomas Twiberville.
Boz's Gaff 