Desecrated church at Kings Newnham
A forgotten vault, irregular burials, desecrated church, and a haunting in Kings Newnham
I’d driven past the turn off for Kings Newnham nearly every day for years, but it wasn’t until very recently that I decided to check out the ruined church tower and the legends that surround it.
My brother had first brought this place to my attention with a rather vague story about an excavation by the tower which had unearthed a long forgotten crypt containing some ‘irregular’ burials. The details were few, other than that the coffins were aligned in the wrong direction (I wasn’t aware that there was a right one), were made of lead, and when opened, the bodies were found in a remarkable state of preservation. This, coupled with a vague recollection of some associated hauntings made it worthy, I felt, of a visit and a little bit of research.
Kings Newnham is a tiny village on the banks of the river Avon in Warwickshire, just beyond the outskirts of Rugby. This handful of houses and farm buildings on the corner of a b road could be easily overlooked if it wasn’t for the imposing ruin of the church tower standing lonely and derelict over the rural surroundings.
My small party of friends and family approached the site across country from the remains of the Mott and Bailey castle (stories for another time) in nearby Brinklow. It was a cold but bright December day with a very hard frost that was showing no signs of thawing when we reached the ruined tower at around lunch time. The tower was very much as described in ‘The Beauties of England and Wales’ by EW Brayley and J Britton in around 1810:
“The church has been desecrated for many years, and little at present remains except the tower, which is rendered picturesque by a partial screen of ivy.”
Indeed the ivy screen was all present and correct after 200 years. Interestingly, it goes on to say:
“The cemetery is now converted to a rick-yard, which has been rendered level by a layer of bones.”
My ordinance survey map marked the site as “Church (remains of)”, but seemed to be slightly out of place, being on the wrong side of the road to the actual building, which is very close to the roadside and fenced within the private grounds of a farmhouse. Without seeking to gain entry to the tower, there was little more to be done than taking a few ‘picturesque’ photographs and then continuing on our walk. To be honest I hadn’t expected to find a staircase leading down to ancient catacombs, but I decided I would find out a little more about the legend of the crypt, the hauntings, and the history of the church.
A little bit of Googling led me to the story from my Brother’s seemed to derive. On
www.visitoruk.com I found the following:
“Around 1850 Lord John Scott inherited the estate and one day after heavy rain, it was observed that water in the rick-yard which had formerly been the churchyard, drained away remarkably quickly. After investigations near the old tower, a water-filled underground vault was discovered containing several lead lined coffins. One coffin contained the body of Lady Audry Leigh who died in 1640 and could not have been more than 17 years old. Plates on other coffins showed that they contained the bodies of Francis, Earl of Chichester, Lady Chichester, Lord Dunsmore and Sir John Anderson. However, the most interesting and intriguing coffin was unnamed and had in it the remains of a man who had been beheaded, the head being separately prepared for burial and laid with the body. Around the neck was a black silk ribbon embroidered with the initials T.B. This and the other bodies had been embalmed and covered with rosemary and other herbs, but once the coffins had been opened and the remains exposed to the air, they rapidly disintegrated.”
Now this sounded very mysterious and interesting. A forgotten vault, a decapitated body with cryptic initials, corpses preserved in lead lined coffins covered with herbs. So perhaps there was something to my brother’s story after all. I really shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard from a friend who hailed from Rugby that, the ghost who haunts the village is actually a headless horseman. Of course!
Now the story from
www.visitoruk.com above is referenced back to a book called The Warwickshire Village Book, written by members of the WI. It appears to be in print so I’m going to track it down and see if it contains any further references. I don’t have much more to offer at this point, although my friend from Rugby has promised to fill me with some more detail about the ghostly horseman and any other legends next time I see her. The Listed Buildings list states that the main body of the church was demolished in 1797, and there may be some more historical information to be found in ‘The Antiquities of Warwickshire’ (1656) by William Dugdale if I get round to trawling it. If anyone has any further information or comment then I would guess that here is the place to post it!
http://www.visitoruk.com/historydetail. ... 02&f=Rugby
http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk ... t-laurence
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nopC ... re&f=false
