Discover: Folklore of the Broads
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Date posted: 30/09/2024
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Time to read: 10 minutes
Take a walk on the weird side – where strange folklore still thrives in the Broads
The Broads and East Anglia have a rich history of dark, haunting tales where witches, ghosts of monks and demon dogs roam the lands. Discover the stranger side of the Broads, and the terrible tales of past that are still told and celebrated today.
Black Shuck - legendary demon dog
Black Shuck is an apparition of a huge black dog, who is said to prowl the countryside of Norfolk and Suffolk. In the Broads in Norfolk, there are tales of sightings from Reedham, Coltishall, Potter Heigham and it is said that the creature stalks the ruins of Burgh Castle. While some call it a terrible hell hound, others say it is harmless and protects lost travellers and lone women, but the legend of Shuck began in the market town of Bungay, Suffolk. Shuck is described as a big black shaggy dog with bared teeth and huge burning red eyes (or in some folk tales, just one eye).
Each year on the first weekend in August, visitors from far and wide flock to Bungay. For three days the whole town is gripped with Shuck fever that involves a costumed parade, music, puppetry, poetry and coracle racing, to commemorate the day that Black Shuck is said to have terrorised two Suffolk churches on 4 August 1577, during a terrible storm.
On that fateful night, Shuck is said to have burst through the church doors at Bungay’s St Mary’s Church and killed a man and a boy before running into the night. As lightning hit the Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh, the steeple was struck and collapsed on the entire congregation. In the total darkness, and lit only by the lightning from above, the terrifying image of Shuck is said to have appeared. As it ran out of the church, Shuck left claw marks burnt onto the north door (known locally as the devil’s fingerprints) which can still be seen today at the church.
In her book Bogie Tales of East Anglia, Margaret Helen James describes “an uncomfortable sort of ghostly terror, in beast form, that haunts villages on the borders of the two counties [Norfolk and Suffolk] known as the ‘Hateful Thing’.
“I allude to the churchyard or hell-beast. This charming creature generally takes the somewhat indefinite form of a ‘swoundling’, i.e. swooning shadow. Whenever it is met in any locality, it is a sign that some great and unusually horrible wickedness is about to be committed, or has just taken place there.”
At this year’s Shuck festival, local legendary East Anglian storyteller Hugh Lupton, told rich folklore of the region, linking Shuck to the death of King Edmund the Martyr in 869, at the hands of Vikings. The black dog has been appearing to people all over East Anglia for centuries and its wicked reputation is not held by everyone. It is also seen as a giver of warnings and of reassurance and protection. Rather than being confined to the tales of old, what’s notable about Shuck is how present the beast still feels in the lives of many Bungay folk.
A recent exhibition by Suffolk photographer Alexander Ward, featured locals who say they’ve had a close encounter with Shuck. The aim of the project was to show the people, places and objects which engage with the folklore and how they have been changed by the black dog’s presence.
The Shuck festival also featured Shuck-themed poetry and music, and typically, a life size black shuck terrorised and ‘killed’ a few members of the shrieking audience at Bungay’s St Mary’s Church. You can follow the festival at @blackshuckfestivalbungay
Walk in the footsteps of Shuck
It’s easy to pick up the trail of the Black Shuck in Bungay – from the black dog weathervane in the marketplace to the tapestry hung in St Mary’s Church. If you’re very (un)lucky, you may spot the beast along the Bigod’s Way, near the ruins of Bigod Castle (the dog is said to appear in the mist to lone walkers), which passes Bungay Castle.
The witch’s leg of East Somerton
Another dark tale is the story of the witch’s leg at the ruins of St Mary’s Church in East Somerton Village in Norfolk.
The Church is said to have been ruined when, during the height of the witch trials that were sweeping Britain, a woman believed to be a witch was put on trial there and subsequently buried alive in the church.
It is said that she was buried in the woods and the church built around her to contain her evil, or that she was taken to the abandoned church by villagers and her grave dug on consecrated ground.
According to legend, to enact her revenge she willed her wooden leg to sprout up as an oak tree and bring the church crashing down above it.
You can still visit the ruins today, tucked away in a mysterious woodland area in East Somerton. At twilight, it is said that visitors can speak to the witch beneath the earth if they circle her tree three times, gently whispering her name.
Although this tale is folklore, it originates from a particularly brutal era in the region’s history. Between 1645 and 1647, around 250 women were brought before the authorities in East Anglia accused of witchcraft, and at least 100 people were executed, under the watch of the infamous witchfinder-general Matthew Hopkins. East Anglia reported the largest number of accusations that England had experienced in one place over such a short time.
We can only speculate as to whether East Somerton’s witch was one of the accused.
The shrieking monk of St Benet’s Abbey
As a foggy mist rolls along the river at night, a fearful scream carries across the fields of Ludham in Norfolk. From the ruined gatehouse of St Benet’s Abbey a haunted scene has been recalled by many folk. On an autumn night, when the ground is hard and the air is cold, countless people have witnessed the fate of Essric, the treacherous monk who betrayed the abbey to its enemies in exchange for the title of Abbot.
Once the enemies had seized the church they were true to their word and made him abbot before immediately sentencing him to death as an example to all informers. In the remains of St Benet’s Abbey is an archway, where the ghost of Essric is said to swing and shriek out to this day.
The ruins of the Benedictine St Benet’s Abbey sit on the bank of the River Bure, near Ludham. The 14th-century gatehouse, with an 18th-century mill built over it, is an icon of the Broads.
Jack o’Lanterns
Jack o’Lanterns are strange ethereal lights that appear in the marsh after dark. Whether just a trick of the eye, or apparitions’ lights and ghosts, the long, misty nights in the Broads lend themselves well to such tales.
In 1809, a man named Joseph Bexfield is said to have drowned in Thurlton Marsh after being led astray by a Jack o’Lantern. His ghost is said to still appear each August, trying to find his way home.
Alderfen Broad was once said to be haunted by the ghost of a criminal named Heard, waving his lantern on misty evenings. His ghost was finally trapped in a bottle by three men reading the Bible aloud.
If a mother or child falls sick in any of the isolated marsh cottages around Thurne, it is said that a ghostly lantern shines out at night from the top of Thurne Church tower in an attempt to summon the help of the monks of St. Benet’s Abbey.
Berney Brograve’s bet with the devil
Sir Berney Brograve lived at Waxham Hall in the 1700s , and was said to be a mean-spirited, dishevelled and hard-drinking man. These are perhaps the only facts of this story. In 1771, it is said that he made a bet that he could mow a beanfield quicker than the devil. If Berney won, he would have the rights to drain the local lands to his heart’s content but if the devil won, he could take Berney’s soul.
Berney lost to the devil and rather than accepting his fate, he hid and locked himself in Brograve Mill, near the village of Horsey. All night the devil pounded on the door with his cloven hooves. He was gone by morning but when Berney opened the mill door, it was pitted with hoof prints and tilting gently westward.
The story does not end there. Berney’s ghost is said to haunt the local area of Waxham and Horsey. Strong men have been rumoured to have half died of fright on encountering his ghost as he rode across Brograve Level, his horse snorting flame from its nostrils. It is also said that a necromancer, a type of wizard lived in the mill.
The mill ceased to be used in around 1930, has been derelict for many years and is now mostly a look out point for weary cormorants. It stands eerily on its own along Waxham Cut but can only be accessed by canoe, small boat, or viewed from the bank opposite which is reachable by a footpath.
