Through History

Discover some odd artefacts and weird legends in British churches

Church curiosities from across Britain

David Castleton, author of Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends, is always on the lookout for the quirky and unusual. He’s been on a journey back through British history, combing our churches and churchyards for weird artefacts, investigating the items’ histories and exploring the folklore attached to them.

His book features such oddities as ‘witches’ cauldrons’, ships’ figureheads marking sailors’ graves, 1,000-year-old reindeer antlers still used in a day-long dance, and the skulls of saints from which pilgrims once sipped the waters of holy wells.

This fascinating book begins with an investigation of pagan artefacts before examining both human and animal relics.

A tour of churchyards comes next, with weird tombs, ancient yew trees and evidence of body snatching. Church Curiosities then descends into the eerie netherworld of crypts and secret tunnels before looking into the strange histories of holy wells. After contemplating artefacts linked to folkloric rituals, the book rounds off with a general survey of church curiosities across the UK.

As a prize-winning author of gothic fiction and a blogger intrigued by the folkloric and strange, Castleton has long been fascinated by British history’s more peculiar aspects. Church Curiosities – containing over 60 photographs – is an intriguing chronicle of this eccentric aspect of our distant past.