Wandering church

Thanks to Rob Gandy for recognising Lincolnshire’s rich fortean potential [ FT401:32-38]

– though as one of my relatives uncharitably remarked, the true horror of Ruskington is surely having to live there (inter-village rivalry clearly runs deep). I am also grateful to Edward Parnell for pointing the way to Lincolnshire and the Fens – among other haunted landscapes – in his excellent Ghostland (2019). Aside from Lincolnshire’s magnificent fenland and coastal vistas (“where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet” in Larkin’s famous line), the county is steeped in history and tradition. It was a great place in which to grow up in the 1970s and 1980s, where

school bookshelves were dominated by the likes of Alan Garner, John Masefield, John Gordon, Susan Cooper, E Nesbit, and Lucy Boston; most villages had a “grey lady” or two; May fairs, harvest festivals and bonfire nights were magical events but also rather sinister; and there was plenty of wild and sometimes rather bleak countryside to roam about in.

• After reading Alan Murdie’s brilliant feature on moving stat

ues [ FT398:32-39], I would like to draw attention to a Lincolnshire example on a larger scale – a church that moved in the village of Dorrington. This was a well-known story when I was at school. Janet and Colin Bord included it in their Atlas of Magical Britain (1990, p.130).

The church of St James and St John occupies a hilltop position, especially striking when approaching the village from the north, but the (local) legend goes that the Devil moved it there during its construction. Of course, it is difficult to get to the root of this story, but something strange must have happened, as the church was intended for the village rather than the hilltop, but the efforts of the builders in the village were stymied, night after night, when their materials and initial efforts at building were repeatedly moved uphill by some unseen force. Whether diabolic or not, it also eluded the frustrated builders’ attempts to keep watch at night.

Eventually the builders gave up their attempts to construct the church in the village and hence the hilltop became its location. There was no more trouble after that, but folktales about the church remain to this day – running widdershins around the church at midnight is not advised. Incidentally, Dorrington’s southerly neighbour is dear old Ruskington, so living in the latter village must have its compensations, not the least of which is surely that it is some sort of fortean hotspot.

Andrew Mitchell

Bourne, Lincolnshire