East Anglia is a region with a long and macabre history. Battles have been fought amongst its marshes and woods, murders have shocked its inhabitants, invasions have come sweeping from our coast and executions have thrilled and terrified its mobs. With the lands being so rich with the blood of the people, and with most of the area being made up of huge swathes of quiet, rural countryside, it’s no wonder that this place is so steeped in legend. Also take into consideration that Norfolk is the county with the highest concentration of churches in Britain, with their accompanying graveyards and cemeteries, and suddenly you realise that the very ground we walk upon on a daily basis is filled with the bones of those that came before us. Some of those whose bodies lay below are feet are not too happy about our intrusion, as the many ghosts that haunt our lands attest to. In this blog, I aim to give you some of the best and more well-known ghost stories, but also some of those that you would have to travel deep into the countryside to find. Be warned though, some of the stories that follow are not for the faint of heart…
The Famous Ghost of Queen Anne Boleyn
We will start off with one of the most famous ghost stories in Norfolk and one of the most famous figures in our nation’s history. In the quiet woodlands and rolling grass heaths near to Aylsham, at the bottom of an impressive gravel driveway, sits the graceful but imposing Blickling Hall. With its immaculate hedgerows, numerous outbuildings and stunning Jacobean stately home, it very much looks the part it played in our royal history, even if the events that took place did so nearly 100 years before the current building was completed.
Prior to the current building, a tudor hall stood closer to the lake. It was home, in the 15th and 16th centuries, to the Boleyn family. It was believed Anne Boleyn, the fated but brilliant wife of King Henry VIII, was born here however this is something often disputed with Hever Castle. Educated in France and the Netherlands, she grew into a fiercely intelligent and beautiful young woman. She returned to England and became maid of honour to King Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon. It was during this time that the King tried to pursue her, with Anne refusing him at every turn. To free himself of his wife, and to take Anne as his bride, Henry broke England away from the Roman Catholic faith in favour of his new church, The Church of England, that would allow him to divorce.
After his divorce, Henry secretly married Anne Boleyn, and immediately demanded a male heir. Trapped by her position, she gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I but her subsequent pregnancies all ended in tragic miscarriages. Each one diminished her in her husband’s eyes and she became more isolated as a result. Only three years into their marriage, the King was pursuing Jane Seymour and looking for a way to be rid of Anne. On the 2nd May 1536, Anne was arrested on charges of adultery, incestual acts with her own brother and a plot to murder the King. It is widely acknowledged that these claims were baseless and made up as an excuse to rid the King of his wife.
Found guilty in front of a sham court, poor Anne was locked into the Tower of London. She was sentenced to be beheaded. The idea of an English executioner frightened Anne. They were well known to be poor at their job with blunted axes. Rather than a quick death, she faced kneeling at the block with a potentially drunk headsman, hammering away at her neck multiple times with the rusty, bladed implement and then having to finish the job, cutting away the gristle and muscle, with a small knife. In France, Anne had known of the more humane methods of the French executioners. A trained swordsman with a sharpened weapon that could remove a head in a single blow. Through negotiations, Anne managed to request her execution be at the hands of a French executioner and one was sent for.
According to some versions of the story, when Anne was knelt before the executioner and blindfolded, she refused to turn her face away from him, unnerving him. An attendant off to the side coughed, causing Anne to turn away from the swordsman, and he took the opportunity to strike his blow. In a single swing, the sword came round and cleaved Anne’s head from her shoulders. Her body was taken by her weeping ladies in waiting and interred in the chapel on the grounds of the Tower itself.
Since her cruel death, Norfolk has witnessed a ghoulish event, every year on the anniversary of her execution on the 19th May. It is said by locals that, as night falls on the evening of that day, from beneath one of 12 bridges in the area, a carriage will appear. The carriage itself is drawn by horses which, to the horror of the observer, are headless. Their heavy hoofbeat on the stones, the carriage swings around onto the road and reveals the driver. A man, also headless, sits in the seat, his head nestled in his lap. According to those who have seen it, the mouth of the head gapes open and shut and each time it opens, blue flames leap from it into the night. With a deathly screech, the carriage thunders off into the night. It careens down the winding, country roads, crossing 12 bridges around the county before coming to a shuddering halt outside the drive of Blickling Hall. There, at the top of the enormous driveway, the door to the carriage opens and the passenger is revealed. Stepping from the carriage, and carrying beneath her arm her own, dripping head, is the figure of Anne Boleyn. She holds her head to observe her former home sadly, before her form and that of the carriage that bore her there, fade into the night.
The Warning Screams of the Phantom Cockler of Stiffkey
Between Wells, and Blakeney on the North Norfolk coast, sits the beautiful village of Stiffkey (pronounced Stew-Key.) An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it sits nestled amongst extensive salt marshes, filled with wild birds, reeds and low scrub that becomes covered in white flowers in spring. Idyllic as it sounds, life was not always easy for this small community of people who, for many centuries, lived as well as they could off of the land. In the 18th Century, women from the village would have to go down to the mudflats that stretched out to sea, to harvest the famous blue cockles – shellfish that sold for decent money.
One of these women was Nancy. She lived in a small stone house in the village and, with her fellow cocklers, would brave the freezing morning air each day to head down to mudflats and pry the stubborn shellfish from the sands with her small knife and rake. On one such winter morning, she awoke to the frigid air which nipped at her fingertips and settled in her joints. Dragging herself from her bed, she stumbled through the darkness to her hearth and coaxed the fire to warm her fingers and provide her with the warm, watered ale that she would drink to give her the strength to face the weather outside.
Her face set and, swaddled in her many undercoats, jackets and scarves, she picked up her shucking knife and hide bag from by the mantle and a small piece of bread and salted herring wrapped in a rag that she had prepared earlier. Stuffing them into her pockets, and looking forward to her small meal later in the morning, she slung her bag over her shoulder, took up her sand rake, pushed open the wooden door and stepped into the pale morning darkness.
Her breath puffed away into the shadows as she sought her fellow cocklers in the low light, gathered at the top of the track through the marshes to the salt flats, talking in hushed tones with the occasional cackle of laughter. She was met with smiles and jokes from her neighbours, and now, all gathered together, the group shuffled under the stars that fought to be seen through the increasing daylight from the East. They wound their way through the scrub, listening to the sharp calls of early morning birds until they were down on the salt flats and the sounds of the marshes were replaced with the roar of the sea. At their destination, the women spread out and started to pick along the rocks to look for the telltale signs in the sand of their quarry.
Apart from the screech of the seabirds and the constant thrumming of the sea, the only sounds that could be heard were the scraping of the sand rakes as they searched and the occasional snatched conversation. Nancy’s muscles burned against the cold as she scraped at the sand, her eyes darting over every inch in search of the shells. Recent months had seemed leaner in terms of their harvest and she was worried that if she could not get a full bag to sell this morning, that she may not be able to pay for a new shawl, as her current one, full of holes, let in the cold. For a good couple of hours the women toiled, but the tide started to rise, filling the small muddy creeks with an increasing amount of water. What’s more, a thick fog was rolling in from the sea, muffling sounds and obscuring the paths that ran like lifelines back to the village.
Seeing this, the women started to call to one another to finish up and head back inland. Nancy looked down at her bag. It was only half full. She needed far more cockles than this to get the money she needed. She called to her companions to go on ahead. She was going to stay a little longer and gather as much as she could. Some of the older ladies in the group told her to leave with them, warning her sternly against staying in the incoming fog and tide. Nancy waved away their warnings and said she was only going to stay a little longer and urged them to go on their way. Once the sounds of their talk and laughter melted away into the thickening air, she looked back to the sand and continued to tease it with her rake. Time passed, at a speed unnoticed by Nancy, and it was only when the first wave pushed up to just around her feet from out of the fog that she realised she had remained there for too long.
Cursing her own lack of awareness, she took up her bag and tools and started heading in the direction of the track. As she looked up though, she realised that the fog was now so thick, that she could see no more than a few feet in front of her. Muttering, a sense of panic starting to claw at her stomach, she marched on, searching in vain for a sign of the track back through the marshes. During her fumbling around she stepped down into a creek and was terrified to feel freezing water come up to her thigh. She stepped back fearfully and saw the water rushing inland. Walking up and down the bank, she tried to find a way to cross but now the water was starting to wash up around her ankles. Throwing her rake down, she realised the only way to cross the water was to wade through it. Stepping into the icy stream, Nancy started to shout out to anyone who might be nearby, maybe one of the other cocklers who might be lingering in the marshes. Her voice seemed to be muffled by the fog but she pressed on, shouting and screaming until her lungs burned and gingerly pushing deeper into the middle of the stream.
Back in the marshes, a few of the other ladies, worried about their associate. Had remained nearby to the shore. They heard Nancy’s panicked screams coming from the fog and tried, without success, to see her. One of the ladies was sent back to the village to gather the fishermen, who launched their smallest vessels a little further up the coast and tried to navigate the thick fog, sandbanks and rocks to find poor Nancy. Her desperate screams became peppered with curses and swearing. They heard her curse the roke, the tide and finally, God. Despite everyone’s best efforts, soon the sound of Nancy’s cries disappeared and she was lost.
The next morning, the cocklers made their way down to the shoreline and there, caught in some nearby shrubbery on the flats, was the body of poor Nancy. She had drowned. A look of fear and anger was frozen on her face and she still clutched the small shucking knife in her hand. Solemnly, the women carried her body back to the village and she was laid to rest in the churchyard.
Since her death, it seems as though Nancy has tried to ensure that no one else meets the same fate as her. Cocklers, fishermen and later dog walkers and locals, say that if you are to go down to the salt flats on a cold, foggy morning, you may hear her. Through the thick fog, coming from the waters, people report hearing the terrified screams of Nancy. They float through the air, carrying a warning to any people thinking of walking out onto the flats, that the only thing you will meet down there is death. So if you find yourself walking near Stiffkey during a good sea fog, listen out for Nancy, and heed her warning well.
The Shrieking Monk Of St Benet’s Abbey
St Benet’s Abbey is a beautiful and unique ruin situated in the middle of The Broads near Ludham. It’s easily recognisable for the 18th Century mill which protrudes from the ruins. Its history is long, pre-dating the Normans and, as a Saxon monastery, of course has its roots entangled with those of the Viking invaders of the early middle ages. It was home to a large number of Saxon monks and became the centre of a Shipsoke, an area of taxation used to build fighting ships for the Saxon navy. Indeed, there is a chance that Harold Godwinson’s own personal fighting ship was produced here! In more modern times, however, the quiet, crumbling, stone walls in their isolated area have become the centre of several myths and ghost stories. The most famous of these stories is that of the shrieking monk.
For the origin of this story, we need to go all the way back, nearly 1000 years, to 1067. It was a time of enormous upheaval for England. The Battle Of Hastings was over and the last Saxon King, Harold Godwinson, had been butchered. His successor was the new, conquering Lord, William of Normandy, later known as William the Conqueror. The existing Saxon lords were either pledging fealty to William, or were hunted down and slaughtered by his soldiers, followed by any non-noble supporters of the old Saxon reign.
In East Anglia, the Abbot of St Benet’s was known to be a supporter of the old King Harold and so William ordered his forces to march through the marshes to find them and bring them to heel. St Benet’s, at the time, was a large and impressive monastery, with mighty walls and its own water supply. The monks were aware of the Norman forces in the area and, as a result, brought their livestock inside the walls. When the Normans finally arrived, they found a fortress-like structure with the defenders well equipped to wait out a prolonged siege. The monks were no strangers to having to defend their home. They had been attacked on numerous occasions by marauding Danes and Scandinavians, hoping to plunder the Abbey for its rich treasures. Likewise, the location of the abbey, on a small peninsula on the river, meant that it was protected by the waters on multiple sides.
As a result, after four months of siege, the Normans had failed to even take a foothold on the monastic land. The morale of the monks inside was high. They were better fed, warmer and safer than the Norman soldiers outside and they were fairly certain that William would have a better use for his soldiers than harassing a single monastery. They fully expected the troops to be called back to London soon. And well they might have been were it not for the actions of two people, the Norman commander of the siege and the doorkeeper of the abbey. The name of the doorkeeper differs depending on the source. Some say his name was Brother Veritas, others Brother Essric but the stories, regardless of the name, are very similar.
According to Legend, the doorkeeper was hailed one evening by the Norman Commander. Speaking through a small slit in the wall, the commander tried to convince the monk that it was in his best interest to open the doors to the Abbey and allow them to take control. He said that, if they were to continue to try and hold out against the Normans, then the Normans, once inside, would murder the monks in imaginative and cruel ways. This did not really have the intended effect, as the monks were used to threats, so the commander changed tactics. He implied that, if the doorkeeper were to open the door, that he personally would be held as a hero, and his reward would be to be instated as Abbot of the monastery in the current Abbot’s stead. He would also avoid any necessary bloodshed.
After taking some time to think about the offer, Brother Veritas/Essric, decided that his own personal ambition was worth more than the defence of the Abbey and, one night, he decided to open the heavy main doors and allow the Norman soldiers inside. What followed was a massacre. The Normans poured into the Abbey, storming from building to building, they caught the monks in their beds, unaware of the traitorous actions of their brother. They were hacked apart in their rooms, blood seeping into the old flagstones and screams and smoke filled the air. When all was done, the Normans raised their flag above the walls and the doorkeeper was sent for.
Excited to finally be in a position of power, Brother Veritas/ Essric, made his way from his hiding place, down to the commander in the abbey grounds. Moving through the hard-faced soldiers who watched him with murderous eyes and trying to ignore the twisted and bloodied corpses of his fellow monks laying all around him, he presented himself to his new master. The commander smiled in appreciation and called the monk to his side. In a booming voice, he announced to his soldiers to hail him as the new Abbot and had the previous Abbot’s robes, mitre and sceptre brought to him, the blood of their previous owner wiped from them. They were presented to Brother Veritas/Essric with great ceremony and he was dressed the part and anointed. With increasing confidence and pride, he took to the platform and smiled at the gathered soldiers, his newfound position apparently making him blind to the hard stares and glinting weapons. He was now Abbot, as the commander had promised, but for how long?
He soon got his answer when suddenly, a rope was thrown around his neck. To rousing cheers from the Normans below, he was dragged from his feet onto the ground by two soldiers, who started to pull him to the nearby bell tower. The commander grinned at the panicking, struggling new Abbot and announced that a traitor is a traitor, no matter who they fight for, and all traitors should be punished accordingly. Despite his squeals and protests, Brother Veritas/Essric was taken to the third floor window of the tower and thrown from it with the noose tied off inside. There was a snap and his body twitched a few times and then was still. His eyes bulged from his head in surprise at his punishment and he was left, hanging from the rope around his neck as a warning to anybody else who thought about turning traitor.
According to legend, on the anniversary of his execution on the 25th May, onlookers may see the abbey change form and fix itself to its former glory, and before them, the scene of Brother Veritas/Essric’s execution plays out. A local doctor and his friends were taking a leisurely boat trip around the rivers nearby when they moored alongside the abbey in 1928. The group described watching in amazement as the walls of the abbey seemed to rematerialise in front of them and how, in a mixture of horror and fascination, they watched the poor monk being dragged to the tower by the Normans and his body cast, screaming in fear, from the window.
Other than the ghostly monk, St Benet’s Abbey is also supposedly home to the ghosts of battling Vikings and somewhere underneath the Abbey is said to be a big chamber that is home to a dragon that once terrorised Ludham!
The Death and Martyrdom of King Edmund I
In 865, an enormous army made up of Danes, Norsemen and other Scandinavian people appeared just offshore from modern day Lowestoft. Unprecedented numbers of Viking longships filled the horizon and the haunting calls of their horns floated towards the terrified Anglo Saxons on the shore. England had been dealing with raids from the Vikings for decades at this point but an army the size of the one now bearing down on them was something from their darkest nightmares.
The aim of the Great Heathen Army, as it came to be known, was to wrestle control of the four great kingdoms of England from their Saxon Kings. East Anglia, Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria were weakened from infighting amongst their own kingdoms and were ripe for the plucking. Some legends say that the army was invading as an act of revenge, for the murder of the semi-legendary Viking ruler Ragnar Lodbroke, at the hands of King Aelle of Northumbria who had had the Viking King hurled into a pit of deadly vipers. Indeed, the army was led by those thought to be his sons, Halfdan Ragnarsson, Ivar the Boneless and Ubba.
The king of East Anglia at the time was Edmund. He had been King for 14 years and had spent a lot of that time trying to find ways to protect his kingdom from the marauding Vikings. He was completely unprepared for the arrival of this massive Scandinavian army and, as a result, and to try and protect his kingdom, he offered to allow them to spend winter in Thetford Forest and gift them with horses. In exchange they were to keep from attacking East Anglia itself and move off into the other kingdoms from spring.
Halfdan, Ivar and Ubba kept their word and they marched out from Thetford in 866 and headed to Northumbria. There they defeated the King, Aella, and he was executed. (Some say he was “Blood Eagled” by the Vikings, which was a horrific form of execution that saw the victim strapped front first over a barrel or stump and, with the sharp end of an axe, the flesh is parted in long lines either side of the spine, the ribs are separated from the spine and the lungs are pulled out from the back and draped over the shoulders of the victim like two huge, folded, bloody wings. (The person then suffocates to death as they cannot breathe.) After the sacking of Northumbria, the army turned back south and continued to sack towns and cities, raiding through all of Wessex and Mercia. In 869, they returned to East Anglia to once more winter in Thetford.
This time around, King Edmund was waiting for them. Angry that the Northmen had such free reign over his own kingdom, Edmund mustered his army and marched on the Viking camp. An enormous battle took place that saw the Saxon army smash against the mighty shield wall of the Vikings over and over. The forest echoed with the fighting until, eventually, the Saxons lost confidence and began to rout. King Edmund was captured by Ivar the Boneless, well known for his hatred of Christians and their beliefs. In fact, Ivar had made sure to have any monasteries or churches encountered by his army burned to the ground. As a result, most of the written documentation of the time is lost.
King Edmund was hauled up in front of the army of Vikings. There, Ivar tried to force the king to renounce his Christian faith but he refused, stating that God could protect his children from any danger, as he had protected St Sebastian from the arrows of the Romans. Hearing this, Ivar ordered his archers to step forward and Edmund was tied to a tree. Asking once more whether he would renounce his God, and hearing that he would not, Ivar ordered his archers to open fire on the King. Many arrows pierced his body and for a short while, he remained tied to the tree and was used as target practice by the northern archers. Arrow after arrow thudded into him, leaving him, for all appearances, like some sort of grisly Porcupine. Eventually, he died from his many wounds.
Their fun over, Ivar then drew his sword and used it to behead the King. His head was thrown into the forest and the Vikings moved on, leaving his headless corpse bound to the tree. According to the Saxons, where his head came to rest, in Thetford Forest, a wolf appeared. It remained in the area, circling the head and guarding it. Eventually the Saxons discovered the desecrated body of their King tied to the tree. From the woods nearby, came a strange voice on the wind calling “Here! Here! Here!” The Saxons followed it and were surprised to find a clearing with a wolf guarding it. As the warriors approached, the wolf disappeared into the shadows of the trees and there in the middle was the King’s head. They took it back to his body and placed it upon his neck, and, to the surprise of all, it miraculously reattached to his body!
This was taken as a sign the King was blessed and, as a result, he was made a saint. He remained the patron saint of England until 1348 when Saint George was made patron saint. There is a calling today by some to have St Edmund reinstated, as St George never even set foot in Britain! His body was buried in an area that was named after this event, Bury St Edmunds, and is thought to still be there to this day. Although we don’t know where his bones are exactly, with the monks hiding them from King Henry VIII during the reformation. Eventually the Great Heathen Army split up to accomplish different missions and were eventually defeated by Alfred The Great, King of Wessex and future King of the Anglo Saxons, at the battle of Edington in 878. After talks, it was agreed that the Vikings would seize control of lands in the East of England, including East Anglia, and the lands became known as The Danelaw.
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