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Here's the approximate location of the gibbet (the red star) on a map composed of a satellite image laid over a Victorian 6" to the mile OS map:

Bierton-gibbet-Corbet-Fortean-star.jpg


Note that the lane is still referred to as "Gib Lane" even over a century after the event.

maximus otter
 
I usually park in Wharram Le Street, Ghost, and walk along the old railway line. It's really not very far, but that would depend on how used you are to walking, I guess. Dog and I do around 8 miles a day, so anything less than three miles is a cough and a spit!
 
... Out of interest, I have just found the blacksmith's bill for making the gibbet.
https://screenshots.firefox.com/vnBs6coOPiT5av1r/books.google.co.uk
Link is dead. See later post for a replacement specimen.

Here's a replacement illustration of blacksmith Francis Neale's bill for constructing the Bierton gibbet ...

Gibbet-Bierton-Bill.jpg
SOURCE:

William Andrews, Bygone Punishments, p. 34. Reproduction of original by Outlook Verlag, Frankfurt (2019).
Accessible via Google Books:

https://books.google.com/books?id=3xayDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=gibbet+bierton+blacksmith&source=bl&ots=DC7FGuWKKP&sig=ACfU3U2mTKl2ZtRk8Mn4KK4n_B3397SCFQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5g8Kb2cDoAhXPmq0KHbWsBHAQ6AEwBHoECBMQAQ#v=onepage&q=gibbet bierton blacksmith&f=false
 
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... I'm not sure what the tenter hooks were used for - driven into the gibbet post to prevent anyone scaling it ? ...

Tenterhooks were used to hang hides or fabrics for drying. My guess is that they were installed inside the gibbet cage to aid in holding the corpse.
 
Here's a replacement illustration of blacksmith Francis Neale's bill for constructing the Bierton gibbet ...

SOURCE:

William Andrews, Bygone Punishments, p. 34. Reproduction of original by Outlook Verlag, Frankfurt (2019).
Accessible via Google Books:

https://books.google.com/books?id=3xayDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=gibbet+bierton+blacksmith&source=bl&ots=DC7FGuWKKP&sig=ACfU3U2mTKl2ZtRk8Mn4KK4n_B3397SCFQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5g8Kb2cDoAhXPmq0KHbWsBHAQ6AEwBHoECBMQAQ#v=onepage&q=gibbet bierton blacksmith&f=false

£6/5/7d seems like a lot of money for an uncomplicated design like a gibbet.

UK Inflation Calculator suggests that £1 in 1775 would be the equivalent of £162.61p today. That would make the cost of the gibbet roughly £1,020 in 2020 money.

maximus otter
 
At the risk of boring everyone with yet another local tale of murder most horrid, execution and hanging in chains 'til nowt left but happy maggot memories, I've found by accident a case that was quite a cause célèbre in its day:
Ruth Osborne was the last woman ever to be killed for witchcraft in England, and Thomas Colley the last man to be executed for carrying out such a crime.

In 1745 in Gubblecut (Gubblecote), a hamlet near Tring in Herts, an elderly woman named Ruth Osborne begged some buttermilk from local farmer John Butterworth. He sent her away, angrily claiming that ‘he had not enough for his hogs’, let alone for the likes of her. Words were exchanged. A few months later some of Butterworth’s calves died and by 1751 the farm had failed and he was running the Black Horse alehouse in Gubblecote. He was also suffering regular epileptic fits and suspected he was under a curse. Thomas Colley, a chimney sweep from Tring (same as Corbett mentioned in an earlier post), and a regular at the Black Horse, suggested that Butterworth consult a "cunning-woman" from Northhampton to get to the truth of the matter. Without naming any names, she identified ‘two of his neighbours, a man and a woman’ as the source of his bewitchment. This verdict was sufficient confirmation for Butterworth and his patrons to conclude that Ruth Osborne was a witch and her husband John a Vizard: further damning evidence was that they were both old and poor and probably Jacobites. This led Thomas Colley to agitate for the Osbornes to be tried by means of witch-swimming (ducking).
The last official execution of a witch in England occurred in 1682, the last conviction for witchcraft took place in 1712, and the law against witchcraft was eventually repealed in 1736. Although there were still some sympathetic local Magistrates , righteous retribution would have to be done obliquely. The Town criers in the nearby towns of Winslow, Leighton Buzzard, and Hemel Hempstead were given four pence and a sheet to give notice "on Monday next [22 April 1751] a man and a woman are to be publickly ducked at Tring, in this county, for their wicked crimes".
Upon learning the identity of the intended pair, Matthew Barton, Tring’s Overseer of the Poor, (who knew the Osbornes), lodged them in the town’s workhouse for protection. Fearing their location was compromised, the Workhouse Master Jonathan Tomkins, ‘believing both the man and his wife to be very honest people’, took the Osbornes to the vestry of the church of St Peter and St Paul in Tring (the one with the stupid waterspout), presumably hoping the old concept of sanctuary might save them from harm. It did not.
The appointed day of 22 April came, and a mob, some five thousand strong, advanced on the workhouse. Having broken into the building (ie tore the wall down), ransacked it and found no sign of the Osbornes, they threatened to burn it (and Tring) to the ground unless the couple were handed over. Tomkins reluctantly gave in and the Osbornes were marched from the church in Tring back to Gubblecote. It’s a distance of about three miles, down Tring’s High Street, along what are now Brook Street and Wingrave Road, past farmland and cottages and they were held at the Black Horse. With no suitable ducking pond in the vicinity (Tring reservoirs not yet constructed), they were taken later that afternoon to Marlston-Mere (the pond at Marlston-Green) , between Gubblecote and the next village, Long Marston.
Here, under Thomas Colley’s supervision, the couple were partially stripped and had their thumbs tied to their toes, cross-wise. They were wrapped in sheets and each was tied with a rope before being dragged through the pond. The procedure of witch-swimming was simple: a Priest blesses an expanse of water and if the suspect floated they were a witch (ie the water rejected them); If they sank and drowned, then there was some comfort in knowing that they were innocent. Initially Ruth sank because the water was less than 3 feet deep so she was turned over several times and pushed under the water with a stick. Both she and her husband were dragged several times in turn, but having ‘been suffocated with Water and Mud’, Ruth was unconscious by the time she was pulled back to the bank. She was brought to the Half Moon pub with her husband in another nearby village, Wilstone, where she was laid out on a bed by the landlord. Meanwhile outside the pub Colley was collecting money from the mob ‘for the enjoyment the ducking had provided’. Ruth died shortly after but her husband John survived .
In the weeks afterwards, the news of the events at Tring and Gubbelcote eventually making the London newspapers. Thomas Colley was one of a small number of the mob to be arrested (most fled across County lines), drawing most of the law’s attention as the ringleader and as the man who had collected money from the crowd afterwards. He was tried for murder at Hertford assizes on 30 July 1751, was found guilty and condemned to hang. The sentence was carried out on 24 August 1751 at Gubblecote Cross, the crossroads of the hamlet, with Colley and the hangman escorted by 108 men belonging to the Regiment of Horse Blue in case of crowd trouble. His corpse was gibbeted (hung in chains) there for months afterwards until it fell apart.
Crowds had gathered but kept themselves back - according to one witness: 'they would not be spectators of his death; yet many thousands stood at a distance to see him go, grumbling and muttering that it was a hard case to hang a man for destroying an old wicked woman that had done so much harm by her witchcraft.'
There are several versions of the story (look up Ruth Osborne) with inevitable embellishment and old place name changes but I've largely stuck to a reprint of the Court proceedings (ECCO Law and Reference : Thomas Colley)

Ducking_of_John_Osborne A.jpg Marlston Mere.jpg

There is almost predictably a ghost story associated with Thomas Colley (but none with Osborne), and it was said that a large black dog came to haunt the lanes around Gubbecote. Tring Brewery brew a "strong ruby ale" called "Colley's Dog"
A project for after lockdown is lifted.
 
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Sounds like Colley deserved to be cursed!

Colley was the local hero, a martyr who would have been executed a week earlier if a crowd hadn't prevented his transfer from St Albans prison to the gallows.
Thank goodness you can't plant an unsubstantiated rumour in the media to whip up a mob demanding justice without the inconvenience of a trial or evidence nowadays.
 
Thank goodness you can't plant an unsubstantiated rumour in the media to whip up a mob demanding justice without the inconvenience of a trial or evidence nowadays.
Oh, wait... you can...
 
Driving through Waddesdon always gives me the creeps. The Five Arrows hotel looks odd to me.:thought:
 
There's a village near the nuclear power station at Calder Hall called Beckermet which I have always found disturbing for unknown reasons (disturbing in a sort of Stephen King way!)
 
Does creepy country lanes count…?

There is one near to where I live that I ventured down, when I first moved into this house, (exploring, as you do) never again. It started off alright but the deeper I walked through that lane, a feeling of nastiness was felt, like I wasn’t wanted there – I had the odd feeling that I was about to get jumped.

It’s about ¾ of a mile long, very narrow and what with the trees hanging over on each side of the lane, it’s dark and very creepy.

My daughter who attends the local school, told me there is a tradition on Halloween nights, in which the local kids dare each other to run through the full length of the lane after dark.

Most turn back apparently.

The last time I checked, the google street map car only went in so far before (presumably) reversing back out again.

Anyway, I only found today that the lane is called “Devils Road”

I’ll see if I can find anything online about local traditions etc.
 
Driving through Waddesdon always gives me the creeps. The Five Arrows hotel looks odd to me.:thought:
Is that near Brill and Quainton? Yes I find that area a bit odd myself.
 
There's something a little odd about that entire West coast of Cumbria. Silloth even sounds like something out of Lovecraft.
A friend of a friend lives there. It looks pleasant enough.
 
Is that near Brill and Quainton? Yes I find that area a bit odd myself.
Yupp that's the one, The Long Dog pub looked a bit weird as well before it got renovated and painted white.
 
Driving through Waddesdon always gives me the creeps. The Five Arrows hotel looks odd to me.:thought:
Being American, I don't understand what you find disturbing about Waddesdon, on the internet it all looks charming. The Five Arrows wasn't built in very graceful proportions (too narrow), but that's not a deal breaker for me--it just looks quaint. The inside though! That's a different story. It's far too beige.
 
There's something a little odd about that entire West coast of Cumbria. Silloth even sounds like something out of Lovecraft.
Agreed- an occasional trip up there through Aspatria and the like left me cold.
 
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