Ghost of Littledean Hall

Dean Hall is one of the oldest houses west of the River Severn; there is ample evidence of Roman occupation there, and its name is derived from the Dene family, who were Lords of Dene from 1080 until 1319.

It is the most haunted house in the most haunted village in the Forest and it boasts the only poltergeist of the area. Often, if white flowers are arranged in the dining room they will be flung to the floor, or scattered on the stairs.

For 250 years the Pyrke family owned the Hall. Over the fireplace in the dining room is a reproduction of an earlier portrait which formerly hung there, of Charles Pyrke and his silver-collared black servant, painted when they were both still boys.

In later years, when Charles was twenty three, he was murdered by his servant, who is said to haunt the scene of his crime, both audibly and visibly.

Years ago, after the original portrait was taken down, a country scene was put in its place, which repeatedly fell to the ground. In despair of this it was fastened with a chain, but to no avail; it was found on the floor again, this time with the chain broken.

The text above is from:
                “Ghosts of the Forest of Dean”
                by Sue Law
                publisher: Douglas McLean 1982

Christ is a Weeping

Before the second world war there was a natural rock formation in a hole at the side of an incline at Wigpool that was referred to as ‘Christ is a Weeping’ or ‘Jesus is a weeping’. Etched in the limestone appeared to be a representation of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Brian Waters, in his book ‘The Forest of Dean’, wrote about this local shrine and its eventual destruction, in a fit of envious pique, by its self-appointed guardian. (2016 – EH)

Christ is a Weeping, only a few yards from Nancy’s Farm, is an open incline as large as a road. This was improvised as a cinema by the United States Army during the war, and Wigpool cottagers, who had never had so much as a village shop of their own, went to many a free cinema show. Wooden seats were fitted, then the before the Americans left, to the disgust of the commoners, they burnt the seats. Wigpool would not only have liked to make use of the timber, but the fire blackened and blistered the patina of the rock formation which they greatly admired.

Christ is a Weeping was mutilated a number of years earlier. To see it you had to creep through a narrow hole in the incline, and there, in carbonate of lime upon the rock, was a natural bas-relief that the locality took to be a representation of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Christ is a Weeping was, however, unusual, and in a Roman Catholic country it would no doubt have become a place of local and minor pilgrimage; as it was people from time-to-time came to look at it, and as it was hard to find and one needed a candle and matches, a man named Hale, who lived in the nearest cottage, earned a few sixpences and shillings by showing it to visitors. He later moved house to a cottage on another part of the common, and the new occupier of his old home became the unofficial guide in his place. Unreasonably annoyed at seeing his successor inheriting the tips that had once been his, Hale took a stick of dynamite and in the dead of night blew up the bas-relief on the rock.

The above text is from The Forest of Dean by Brian Waters (publisher: Dent)

The Story of the Blue Mound at Lydbrook

How the men of Lydbrook created the Recreation Ground

During the working life of a coal mine a copious amount of waste is produced and the Lydbrook Deep Navigation Pit was no exception. In its operational years from 1838 to 1933 the mine produced a staggering 30,000 tons of the stuff. This redundant slag had no value and was dumped close to the entrance of the mine creating a man-made hill between the Church of Holy Jesus (built in 1851) and the main road. This hill became known as the Blue Mound. It was an eyesore and a danger to health and safety in the village.

Every day, in the school set on the opposite bank across the main road, Sydney Miles, the headmaster would sit at his desk and stare out of his window at this pile of of waste with growing irritation. At the same time he could hear the reasuring sound of the children laughing and playing in the school yard only partially mitigating his indignation. Then, one sunny day, he had a flash of inspiration: why not remove the Blue Mound and create a green playground for the miners’ children to use for generations?

Sydney Miles was a man of influence in Lydbrook. He had been instrumental in the building of the Lydbrook Memorial Hall in 1926. He immediately called a meeting to consider moving the Blue Mound by voluntary labour. The motion was carried and work began on the site in July 1934 and the foundation stone was laid by the Duke of Kent in November 1934.

To remove this menacing heap, the men of Lydbrook, mainly miners, constructed a mini railway in a spiral pattern up to the top, and ‘bogey’ carts were used on it to bring the material down. The work was carried out entirely by pick and shovel and pit carts. Once the mound had been flattened, they grassed it over and put in a football pitch (a home for Lydbrook AFC) and a recreation ground for the children of Lydbrook.

I am proud to say that my Grandfather, George (Mollie) Hunt, took part in this enterprise and can be seen in one of the photographs. He is the short man wearing a waistcoat, the third from the right, in the photograph above.


Postscript 1 (added on 5th December 2015)

The following extract is taken from ‘A Glance Back at . . . Lydbrook’
published by the Lydbrook Historical Society

The Recreation Ground was built on the site of the Blue Mound, seen in the centre of the previous two views, the spoil heap of Lydbrook Deep Level Colliery (1838-1933). Work began on the site in July 1934 and the foundation stone was laid by the Duke of Kent in November. Before work could begin, the brook running across the site was culverted by E.J.Flewelling & Son. This and the building of the surrounding stone walls, was the only paid work, everything else, including the removal of 30,000 tons, being carried out by volunteers. Carts and rails were loaned by Waterloo and Cannop Collieries. Part of the ground was completed in time for the Silver Jubilee on 6 May 1935, and Joys Green and Lydbrook Schools joined for a programme of games and sports, ending with a firework display.
To help appreciate the size of the Blue Mound, from Mr Hall’s (later Evan’s, now closed) shop doorway, Lydbrook Church could not be seen at all.

Postscript 2

The retaining wall to hold back the spoil following the removal of the Blue Mound was recently in the news when cracks started to show following flooding in Lydbrook.

Acknowledgements

I heard this story first from my Mum, Grandad and uncles (Pearl, George, John and Tony Hunt). The photographs are from a CD left to me by my uncle John. The web pages below have been essential to my research and I cannot recommend the wonderful SunGreen website highly enough.The postscript above is lifted directly from ‘A Glance Back at . . . Lydbrook’ published by the Lydbrook Historical Society (2002)

Interesting web pages (please click on link):

          (a) SunGreen: The Blue Mound before levelling

          (b) SunGreen: The Blue Mound after levelling

          (c) SunGreen: The Blue Mound after levelling

Mitcheldean Meend Enclosure Stone

These stones were set up around the Forest of Dean to mark enclosures.
This is the enclosure stone marking “Mitcheldean Meend Enclosure No. 1” set up in 1847.
A.R.P is the area covered: A(cres), R(oods) and P(oles) i.e. 9.5 acres, 0 roods and 0 poles.
Lord Morpeth was the Crown Commissioner of the Woods

See also:

Forest of Dean Enclosures

Mitcheldean Meend – pt. I

Mitcheldean Meend – pt. II

Dean Forest and the Holy Grail

The quest for The Holy Grail proved to be a lethal obstacle course that killed many of Arthur’s knights. Legend says that Galahad and his party of knights discovered and captured The Holy Grail and brought it back to Camelot Castle to Arthur.

The Holy Grail was found in the possession of Anfortas II, the Grail-King, who was relocated to Britain under King Arthur’s patronage, and was given the old iron-age hill-fort at Castell Dinas Bran, at Llangollen, in Clwyd, Wales as his estate. His family, descendants of Joseph of Arimathea, that is, the “Grail-Kings”, served as the official “keepers” of the holy relic, which was kept in an old Roman temple that was refurbished to house it, the one at Lydney Park in the Forest of Dean about nine miles north-east of Chepstow in Gloucestershire. It is situated on a hill overlooking the River Severn. The temple complex was a hybrid of architectural types. Its basic plan was that of a Celto-Roman shrine with a central inner sanctum surrounded by a portico. The Holy Grail was later returned to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Helyas”The Swan Knight”, epic-hero of the First Crusade 1096-99, the last Grail-King, and, the first Grand-Master of the Knights-Templar, who, upon entering Jerusalem (accompanying his son, Geoffrey of Bouillon, the leader (army-commander) of the First Crusade) placed the Holy Grail himself on the high-altar (1099). The Holy Grail was taken out of Jerusalem to Acre at the time of Jerusalem’s fall to the Muslims either in 1187 and/or 1244, and there remained at Acre until 1291 when it was taken by the Knight-Templar Guillame (III) de Beaujeu to Antioch and entrusted into the care of Tibald de Gaudin, the city’s bishop. The Holy Grail after that disappears from history until 1910 when there was found in the ruins of a church at Antioch, a cup, containing an inner cup, that is thought by able scholars to be the Holy Grail. The inner cup is plain silver, however its container, the outer cup, is exquisitely carved silver with the figures of Christ and His disciples at the “Last Supper”. The outer cup was obviously made to hold the inner cup, as a sacred, precious object older than itself. The artistic style and workmanship is considered to be of first century date. The Holy Grail, now called “The Chalice of Antioch”, eventually came into the possession of the Cloister’s Museum in New York City and is privately owned today by the Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY.

The text above is from:
                “The British Chronicles”
                by David Hughes
                publisher: Heritage Books 2007

St. Briavels

Birth of St. Briavels

Two Forest towns seem to have come into prominence. These were Newnham and St. Briavels. The latter name had been adopted by Little Lydney at some time between 1084 and 1131 when its castle was built, by the simple expedient of taking the first part from St. Briavelstowe, which commemorated the ancient cell of the saint, leaving that village to be known subsequently as “Stowe”.

The castle, built by Milo, Earl of Hereford, became the seat of the Constable who was Warden of Dean Forest, and as an administrative centre had an important, though unromantic, existence, courts being held there through the centuries.

The text above is from:
                “Forest Story”
                by R.J. Mansfield
                publisher: the author 1964

— * —

Legends of St. Briavels

At St. Briavels, in the Forest of Dean, there is a legend that the wife of the governor had, at one time, to ride naked round the town once a year, and that King John, when he visited the district, liked the idea so much that he ordered all the young maidens of the town to do likewise. St. Briavels, today (Gibbings is writing in 1943 – EH), isn’t what it was.

The above text is from:
                “Coming Down the Wye”
                by Robert Gibbings
                publisher: E.P. Dutton 1943

Mining in the Forest of Dean by W. H. Potts

An Extract from “Roaming Down the Wye”

One day I was rambling about the oak woods a mile or so north of Bream near Clements Tump, when I was startled by a quick rustle in the bracken at my feet, followed by the appearance of a length of thick wire suddenly leaping a foot or two in the air, and at the same moment a dull clang of a bell rang somewhere in the distance. Such a contraption being the last thing I expected to find in the middle of the forest, I leapt nearly a couple of feet in the air myself. All kinds of fantastic notions chased through my head during the split second whilst I was returning to earth, such as mantraps, concentration camps, deer-poaching, and what-not, but my lightning review was cut short by a new sound, that of a muffled rumble which seemed to arise a few yards in front of me. I stepped over the now inert wire and walked forward to the edge of a shallow bank, and there the mystery was explained, for a narrow rail-track ran up the steep side of the forest and on it were travelling several small trucks laden with coal, and hauled by a wire rope. Slowly they rumbled and jolted uphill until they passed out of sight. I thought this must be one of the queer little coal mines about which I had heard in the Forest of Dean, so I jumped on to the track and followed it downhill to the mine.

The rails led down into the forest into a cleft where overhanging trees blocked the sunlight, and bracken clung to the damp slopes. Here men were tunnelling and toiling to extract the black remnants of lusher forests of long ago. Owing to the fact that many of the coal seams in the Forest of Dean are inclined, and outcrop nearly at the surface of the ground, it is not always necessary to sink a vertical pit shaft, and a number of mines consist of no more than a tunnel or adit that follows the inclined coal seam into the earth as far as practical or economic circumstance permit. Such a one was the mine I was visiting, the mouth of the adit being about five feet square, which was comfortably large enough to allow small trucks to descend to the working face; when loaded, they were drawn out by a stationary engine that hissed and clattered, almost hiding the proceedings in steam. Another engine somewhere in the woods drew the trucks from the mine to a point where the coal could be loaded into lorries, and the leaping wire and clanging bell which first drew my attention were part of the arrangements for signalling from the mine to the upper engine to commence hauling.

The above extract is taken from
               “Roaming Down the Wye” by W.H. Potts
               Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton, 1949

 See also:

Forest of Dean Free Miners

The Book of Dennis

Goodrich Castle

It was in the courtyard of Goodrich Castle that Wordsworth met the simple child that lightly drew its breath (We are Seven – see the link below).

The poem below, Goodrich Castle, is by Henry Neele, first published in the Literary Souvenir in 1827.

Thou sylvan Wye, since last my feet
Wandered along thy margin sweet,
I’ve gazed on many a far-famed stream,—
Have seen the Loire’s bright waters gleam,
Seen Arveiron from its wild source gush,
The dull Scheldt creep, the swift Rhone rush,
And Arve, the proud Alps’ froward child,
Run murmuring through its regions wild.

But none to my delighted eye
Seemed lovelier than my own sweet Wye,
Through meads of living verdure driven,
‘Twixt hills that seem earth’s links to Heaven;
With sweetest odours breathing round,
With every woodland glory crowned,
And skies of such cerulean hue,
A veil of such transparent blue,
That God’s own eye seems gazing through.

And thou, proud Goodrich, changed and worn,
By time and war, and tempest torn,
Still stand’st thou by that lovely stream
Though passed thy glory like a dream;
Stand’st like a monitor, to say
How nature lives ‘midst art’s decay,
Or, like a spectre, haunting yet
The spot where all its joys were set.

Time hallowed pile! no more, no more
Thou hear’st the hostile cannon roar;
No more bold chiefs thy drawbridge pace
To battle, tournament, or chase;
No more the valiant man thy towers;
No more the lovely grace thy bowers;
Nor bright eyes smile o’er the guitar;
Nor the trump stirs bold hearts to war.

The falling meteor o’er thee shoots;
The dull owl in thy chambers hoots;
Now doth the creeping ivy twine
Where once bloomed rose and eglantine;
And there where once, in rich array,
Met lords, and knights, and ladies gay,
The bat is clinging to the walls,
And the fox nestles in those halls.

— * —

 Here is a link to “We are Seven” by William Wordsworth:

          We Are Seven at http://www.litscape.com

Gold Mining in Dean

Gold in small amounts has long been known in the area, and the Old Red Sandstone rocks resembling the auriferous* blanket of South Africa led to the formation of the Chasten Syndicate in 1906.

The exploratory Bailey Level was driven, but only 6 grains of gold per ton of rock proved.

Without suggesting the promotion was a confidence trick, suffice it to say that such things have been known. In search of iron ore, the level was extended towards Wigpool Mine in 1921, but only 3000 tons were raised. The entrance is now bricked up.

T.F. Sibly

The text above is from:
                “The Old Industries of the Dean”
                by David Bick
                publisher: Douglas Mclean 1980


* auriferous

(Of rocks or minerals) bearing or yielding gold.

GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS

The following excerpts are taken from “Gerald of Wales: The Journey Through Wales / The Description of Wales” translated by Lewis Thorpe (publisher: Penguin Classics 1978).

The journey describes the mission to Wales by Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1188. He was accompanied by Giraldus.

Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales)

The Forest of Dean We went through Caerleon, passing far away on our left Monmouth Castle and the great Forest of Dean, which is across the Wye, but still on this side of the Severn, and which supplies Gloucester with venison an iron ore. We spent the night at Newport.

The Severn and the Wye The Severn, which is a noble river, rises in the Plinlimmon mountains. It flows round Shrewsbury Castle, then by Brignorth Castle, on through the city of Worcester and then through Gloucester, with its iron-works. A few miles from Gloucester it runs into the Severn Sea, which takes its name from it. For many years this river formed the boundary between Cambria and Loegria, or Wales and southern England. It took its Welsh name of Hafren from that of a girl, the daughter of Locrinus, who was drowned there by her stepmother. The Latin aspirate has changed in S, just as happens when Greek words are borrowed by Latin, and so we now say Sabrina, or Severn. Other examples of this are ‘sal’ for ‘hal’, ‘semi’ for ‘hemi’, ‘septem’ for ‘hepta’.

The River Wye rises in these same Plinlimmon mountains. It flows by the castles of Hay and Clifford, through the city of Hereford, by Wilton Castle and Goodrich, through the Forest of Dean, which is full of deer and where iron-ore is mined, and so comes to Striguil Castle*, below which it enters the sea. It forms the modern boundary between England and Wales.

The above text is from:
                “The Journey Through Wales / The Description of Wales”
                By Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis)
                translated by Lewis Thorpe
                publisher: Penguin Classics 1978

* Striguil Castle

Striguil or Strigoil is the name which was used from the 11th century until the late 14th century, for the port and Norman castle of Chepstow, on the Welsh side of the River Wye which forms the boundary with England.