The ways of the dead

Richard Mellor investigates medieval Britain’s old corpse roads – routes along which bodies were lugged before burial, under threat of flame balls, ghosts, and witches…

While transporting the coffin of a young man across wild fells, a pony suddenly bolts off from its party into the Cumbrian wilderness. Neither the coffin nor cart can be found. Several months later, that boy’s mother dies, and another small horse begins taking her along the same cross-country route between Wasdale Head and St Catherine’s Church, near Boot. At precisely the same location, it too surges off. This time, a body is eventually found, but it is the son’s; his mother’s remains never reappear. So goes the legend of the Eskdale corpse road — one thereafter supposedly haunted by the mother’s coffin, which appears pulled by a galloping steed, and one that later inspired The Shadow of a Crime, a page-turner by the highly popular Victorian novelist Hall Caine. Such spooky…

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Discover Britain (Digital) - 1 Issue, October - November 2023

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