THIS WAS JUST STRANGE

The other day we were in the graveyard of the little church at Lewtrenchard in west Devon; the manor once owned by the seminal British folklorist Sabine Baring-Gould. We were there because our dear visitors Naomi West and her mum (plus her husband Ritchie, but he doesn't come into this part of the story, so we shall ignore him for the moment) had read a novel in which Baring-Gould (who is actually a minor hero of mine) was the main protagonist.

There is a family connection for me with the Baring-Goulds, albeit a tenuous one. When I was a boy my father had a friend - Crd. Roger Rowe - who was considerably older than him. However, they were beer buddies and until I became old enough to call him by his Christian name he was 'Uncle Roger'. He, apparently, was Baring-Gould's godson, and it was interesting to note the number of people called Rowe who inhabited the churchyard.

However, I digress (like I so often do on Fridays).

Lewtrenchard Manor is heavily haunted by a number of ghosts, and - of course - there are stories of ghostly black dogs in these lanes as well. However, I have not yet been able to uncover any stories about ghosts in the church or churchyard. But after we had paid our respects at Baring-Gould's grave, Corinna (as she so often does) was fossicking around the churchyard when she found something uncanny.

She found a small tomb that had been built on pillars above the ground. This often implies that the person inside had committed suicide, or died in such a manner that he or she could not be buried in consecrated ground. If they had been a person of no importance they would be buried at a crossroads like poor Kitty Jay, but if they were the scion of a noble family they would be interred within the churchyard, but above ground, neatly circumventing Ecclesiastical law and preserving social niceties (the most famous example of this being that of Richard Capell in Buckfastleigh Churchyard).

On top of this stone tomb was the decomposed corpse of a black bird (probably a jackdaw), and a piece of smooth bone several inches long. They looked as if they had been 'arranged' there, rather than dropped by a predator, and the whole tableaux was rather unsettling.

I don't know what this means, or even if it means anything. But it is yet another unsettling tale from the winding Devon lanes, which though picturesque and beautiful, are nowhere near as civilised and sedate as they may at first seem....