Take a trip to a beautiful countryside castle with some dark secrets
Our look at day-trips and adventures round these parts takes us to a hidden part of historic Somerset where, as Eugene Byrne explains, a catalogue of horrible deaths lurk behind some lovely countryside and pleasant villages.
IF what’s left of Farleigh Hungerford Castle loomed on some lonely moor or was perched atop a bleak northern crag, it would be famous as one of the most haunted, cursed places in all of England.
Amateur and professional photographers alike would lurk at dusk and dawn competing to see who could take the most spookily atmospheric pictures of the ruins on account of generations-old tales of superstition and murder once told by the local peasants and now lovingly conserved by the jolly pensioners running the local history society.
But as things stand, Farleigh Hungerford is in beautiful, lush countryside in the middle of one of the most affluent parts of the region. Maybe this is why tales of curses and ghosts are thin on the ground despite the spectacularly gruesome history of the place including the fact that it was owned for a while by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III.
The history of the castle is long and violent. Originally built by Sir Thomas de Hungerford (d. 1397), it passed down the family through people like Sir Walter Hungerford, who fought at Agincourt, who added new buildings, including a chapel.
All went well until Robert Hungerford was captured by the French during the 100 Years War. In the manner of the times, he was released by the French, but only after the family paid a ruinous £10,000 ransom.
Robert got back in time for the Wars of the Roses, in which he found himself on the (temporarily) losing side. He was captured and executed, as was his eldest son Thomas, and the castle given to Richard of Gloucester. Thomas’s execution, in front of King Edward IV, is said to have been spectacularly horrific.
Sir Robert’s youngest son Sir Walter Hungerford, chose the winning side, though, putting in an
appearance at the Battle of Bosworth, which put Henry VII on the throne, and got him the family castle back.
Now things started to get interesting. Sir Walter died in 1516 and his son Sir Edward was one of the big-shots at the court of King Henry VIII, though only briefly as he died in 1522 leaving the castle to his second wife, Lady Agnes.
Lady Agnes had previously been married to John Cotell, Sir Edward’s steward, the manager of his business affairs. But John Cotell died and she married Sir Edward. But it now emerged that she had, with the help of two Wiltshire gentlemen, William Matthew and William Inges, strangled her first husband and had his body disposed of in the ovens of the castle kitchens.
This had freed her to marry Sir Edward and move up in the world. But when he died, leaving her as the sole beneficiary of his will, people started asking questions. It is likely that she and Sir Edward had been lovers while John Cotell still lived, and possible that Sir Edward had also known of, or had even played a part in, the murder.
In any event she was convicted and hanged at Tyburn in 1523 and
the family never talked about the episode afterwards. Lady Agnes was even edited out of the family tree.
Edward’s son Walter inherited the castle instead of Agnes. Walter was in the thick of court politics at the time, being a sidekick of Henry’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell.
The problem was that his fatherin-law was on the opposing side politically, and for this reason (and maybe others) Walter wanted to be rid of his wife Elizabeth.
He had her shut up in one of the castle towers for several years, and she later claimed that he had tried to starve her to death and had made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to poison her. At one point, she claimed, she was so thirsty that she had to drink her own urine.
All this ended happily for her when Cromwell fell from power. A Privy Council investigation uncovered Elizabeth’s story and looked into claims that he had employed a witch to see when the king would die, which (if true) was treason. It also looked into her hints that Sir Walter was homosexual.
He was executed on Tower Hill for treason, witchcraft and buggery on the same day as Cromwell and both of their heads were displayed on spikes on Tower Hill.
Farleigh Hungerford Castle was once again confiscated by the crown, but Walter’s son, another Walter, later bought it back.
The soap-opera continued, though: Walter’s second wife was a Roman Catholic, and so the marriage ended over religious differences. During the Civil Wars of the following century, the then-owner Sir Edward Hungerford was a Parliament supporter. He may have been an ardent puritan, but he was a terrible soldier and the castle was taken without a fight by his Royalist half-brother Colonel John Hungerford, who supported the new castle garrison by pillaging the surrounding countryside.
Sir Edward got his castle back at the end of the wars, but he died not long afterwards; you can still see the elaborate tomb that his widow Margaret made for the pair of them.
It’s from this period that the castle’s famous lead coffins date; the remains of four men, two women and two children were encased in these, though they would originally have been inside wooden caskets.
We don’t know who these people are, but lead coffins were very expensive at the time, and so presumably they are various members of the Hungerford family.
The castle passed out of the hands of the Hungerford dynasty in 1686 after the then-owner, another Sir Edward, was forced to sell because of his massive gambling debts - the recurring nightmare of every landed family throughout English history.
The castle’s story since then has been altogether less colourful. It went through various periods of ruin and restoration at the hands of a succession of owners until it became the responsibility of English Heritage in 1983.
Farleigh Hungerford Castle is a grand outing, possibly even more so if you have children in tow. The open air parts of the site is currently open to visitors (advance booking necessary), with indoor areas due to have re-opened (face masks required) on May 17.
» Farleigh Hungerford Castle is in Farleigh Hungerford on A366, postcode BA2 7RS. For further information and to book a visit, see https:// tinyurl.com/3xyzkrvf
While you’re there..
» Farleigh Hungerford is at the heart of a large area of Somerset/ Bath & NE Somerset between Frome and Bath which includes some very pleasant countryside and historic towns and villages which Bristol residents tend not to explore very much. One possible reason is that getting here takes longer than you’d think; 18 miles from the middle of Bristol as the crow flies, but the best part of an hour’s drive, and longer if the roads are busy or congested. But if you have the time, go on a weekday, and if the roads remain quieter than they were back in pre-Covid times, this is an area well worth exploring for history buffs. And (assuming you can get in) there are some truly wonderful pubs. This is by and large an area where well-todo people live, after all.
Possible stop-offs might include:
» Rode Some will remember the amazing Tropical Bird Gardens that used to be here, though they’re now long gone. Nowadays the place is probably better known as the place where a particularly grisly murder took place in Victorian times.
Back then it was ‘Road,’ not Rode, and Road Hill House was where Samuel Kent lived with his large family. In June 1860 his three-yearold son Saville was found murdered in a privy at the house. The case baffled the local police and one of the country’s top detectives, Inspector Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, was called in to investigate.
Whicher pinned the crime on Constance Kent, Saville’s teenage half-sister, but failed to get a conviction, seriously denting his reputation. Constance later confessed to the crime, served 20 years and emigrated to Australia where she died in 1944 aged 100.
The case inspired Kate Summerscale’s history of the case, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and the TV drama of the same name starring Paddy Considine in the title role, later followed up with Mr Whicher as a Victorian private eye investigating fictional cases. (The real-life Whicher was never a private dick, staying with the force until he retired.)
The place where the murder took place is nowadays called Langham House and is even marked on Google Maps as the murder location (BA11 6PL), but it’s privately owned, so you can’t go in. If, on the other hand, you were to stand outside and gawp, you wouldn’t be the first person to do it.
» Norton St Philip The village has been around since the Domesday Book and would be a lot nicer if it wasn’t for the busy road running through the middle of it.
If you can get in, then the George Inn is definitely worth a visit. It always had a reputation for good food and drink, but it’s also steeped in history.
A former wool store for the nearby priory, it dates back to the 1300s and claims to be the oldest pub in England (there are rival claimants, of course). Samuel Pepys stopped here in 1668, and some years later Judge Jeffreys held one of his Bloody Assizes here, hanging 12 local people for their part in the Monmouth Rebellion against James II.
» Mells One of the prettiest villages in the area, its name derives from all the mills which were there in medieval times. The real interest in this place, aside from the very wonderful Talbot Inn (again, if you can get in) is its resonances from the First World War .
The parish church, St Andrews (again, if you can get in) includes a memorial to Edward Horner, the last surviving male of the family which lived at Mells Manor for generations. He was killed in 1917 and the equestrian statue, sculpted by Alfred Munnings, was designed by family friend Sir Edwin Lutyens.
The nursery rhyme about Little Jack Horner pulling a plum out of the pie is supposed to have originated with an earlier Horner who was an assistant to Thomas Cromwell in the Dissolution of the Monasteries and who was said to have been rewarded for his services with a “plum” piece of property – Mells. This probably isn’t true, mind.
If the church is closed you can still look around the graveyard where you’ll find the last resting place of Great War poet Siegfried Sassoon, along with that of his friend Monsignor Ronald Knox, a catholic theologian and author who in the 1920s caused nationwide panic with a BBC radio broadcast of a fictional revolution supposedly being reported minute-by-minute from the streets of London. This was some years before Orson Welles panicked America with his radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds.
The church and the village war memorial also remember Raymond Asquith, the son of the Prime Minister who took Britain into the Great War. So if you want a glimpse of that affluent, lost world of innocence which the rich enjoyed in that long Edwardian summer, and some indication of the way it was all shattered, Mells is as close as you’ll get.
While you’re there, maybe take a walk by the river to nearby Great Elm and beyond.
» Nunney A nice little village with a small but rather magical castle that looks exactly how castles are supposed to look – four big towers joined by high, flat curtain walls, and the whole lot surrounded by a moat. It was built in the 14th century by Sir John de la Mere, a local knight who made his cash fighting (and robbing) the French in the Hundred Years Wall. It holds a record for longest-delayed reaction to gunfire; it was bombarded with cannon-balls during the Civil War in 1645, but the damaged bit of the wall didn’t fall down ’til 1910. The castle is run by English Heritage and is open admission free at all (reasonable) times. Postcode BA11 4LW.
» Frome Big town, very nice. If you’re thinking of dropping in here, perhaps try and coincide it with one of the market days, especially the huge monthly Independent market. Some small ones have now resumed (Wednesdays and Saturdays 9am-3pm), but at the time of writing we didn’t know when the Independent would resume – watch www.thefromeindependent. org.uk for updates.