Are you ericophobic?

Half-hidden, on the outskirts, marking the boundary of the familiar, verging on civilisation, it’s no wonder heaths have served as fertile ground for scary stories, the better to keep children from wandering, and keep a healthy suspicion of outsiders topped up. Not far away in Blythburgh is Toby’s Walks, a parcel of heathland named for Tobias Gill – a friendly dragoon drummer in the 18th century. But he was also a powerfully-built black man who liked a drink – and was found laying next to a dead woman on the heath in June 1750. He was hanged by gibbet for her murder on the very same spot, despite protesting his innocence – the coroner later admitting he could find no mark on the woman to suggest a violent death. Thus Toby joined his mythical peer Long Lankin (who may be familiar from the Steeleye Span song of the same name) among those most frightening of villains, the rootless killer whose approach goes unnoticed since he emerges from the limbo of the heath. If you find these places eerie, more lawless than liberating, you share a condition with many of the 18thcentury gentry called ericophobia, a fear of heathland – from the Latin family name for heather, Ericaceae.