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General
Clophill lies in a heavily wooded area with the village running east off the A6 Luton to Bedford road. The population is currently 1,810.
The Flying Horse pub was a very important coaching inn and legend has it that Dick Turpin stopped there on his ride to York.
The village once had a reputation for the excellence of its straw plaiting. At the west end of the High Street is the village lockup and pound. The village itself contains several old houses and walls built of mellow stone. On a ridge above the village stands the ruin of St Mary’s church which is now a designated Ancient Monument and which has a gruesome past.
South-east of the village, just off the Shefford Road (A507), lies the earthworks of Cainhoe Castle, which dates from Norman times.
Clophill
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Great Lane
Just before Christmas 1969 a newsagent and his wife were delivering papers to Northfield farm when they saw a small light approaching along the Haynes Church End to Clophill road (Great Lane). Believing it to be a cyclist the driver dipped his headlights and slowed down only to discover it was a rider on horseback carrying a lantern.
The driver stopped the car and turned off the lights and as the rider approached they could see that the man was hooded like a monk. Without stopping the horse and rider passed, literally, straight through the car.
This ghost is the same as one seen in nearby Chicksands wood. Or is it just that the legend has been relocated?
To view a map of the area click on the button below
See also - Bedfordshire - Chicksands -
Chicksands Wood
Great Lane
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St Mary’s
St Mary’s is now a ruin and has had a grisly past. During the 1960’s it was twice used for what were purported to be black magic rituals. In March 1963 the grave of the wife of an eighteenth century apothecary, Jenny Humberstone, was opened and the bones were later found in the nave of the church arranged in what appeared to be a ritualistic fashion. The bones formed a circle with cockerel feathers placed nearby and the skull was found impaled on a railing. The bones were eventually reburied in her original grave by the church porch. In 1969 on Midsummer’s Eve graves were again broken into and bones removed. No clue has ever been found as to the people who did this but it seems likely that the Black Mass was involved as the sixties were a time of occult revival with many groups being interested in the darker aspects. In 1975 bones were again removed from the graves but this time they were just scattered around the site which may, therefore, have been the work of vandals.
Local inhabitants believe that the site is haunted by ‘Sophie’s Ghost’ especially when a visitor and his wife photographed the church and discovered a figure in the church window clad in white and looking down the nave. The strangeness was heightened when they realised that the window lies nearly two metres above the floor of the nave.
The site has such a reputation that teenagers turn up there at night with the purpose of scaring themselves. During a recent visit we observed two car loads of teenagers who arrived at midnight on a wet and windy night but only one of them was brave enough to leave the cars. We hid twenty metres away and listened, hoping they would leave but they stayed with the car headlights illuminating the church in an attempt to dispel the dark. After fifteen minutes we decided we were going in and walked straight past the cars onto the site much to the consternation of the occupants. When we walked into the nave we heard “God, they’re going in!” Even though they had travelled some way to get to the church they would not follow us in though they did turn off the headlights after a while. The reputation of the site certainly affects peoples thinking, they claimed they didn’t believe in ghosts but they still wouldn’t go inside. As we left one of the occupants of the cars said “did you see those flashing lights” and were obviously shocked, the lights in question were caused by the flash on our camera.
To view a map of the area click on the button below
To view images see:
Clophill Album
To view reports about St Mary's see:
26-09-2003, 27-02-2004 and 24-06-2005
Clophill, St Mary
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