Sheringham Graffiti

August has whirled by, hardly a breath between the blowing rain and the dry panic of the harvest. Combine harvesters throw their cones of dust over the fields pulling in the barley and wheat, sucking out what remains of the stored sun. We've been busy, fitting...

The black dog of Peterloo

Guest post from Rosie Garland. A Manchester Encounter, or, The Black Dog of Peterloo From an unpublished and anonymous letter now in the collection of the Portico Library, Manchester. Typography dates it to the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Spelling and...

The Black Dog of Sculthorpe Moor

Guest post by Nick Headland A couple of Black dog tales, neither experienced first hand which is more-or-less how Folklore works and how it evolves. So much so that Nick pointed out in his message that if he asked the other people involved now the story would change,...

Black Dogs and Cats in Suffolk

Guest post from Francis Young From Francis Young, regarding Heveningham Hall and Moreton Hall near Bury St. Edmonds. Heveningham is an area of previous alleged sightings in the 1920s which include the mention of a clanking chain, it is one of the archetypal...

The Halvergate Shuck

Guest post from Nigel Thorpe There's nothing quite as strange and good as a tale from the horses mouth, someone you know who has encountered, done, or experienced something. Nigel bumped into Shuck at the very start of the millennium. This story serves to show what a...

Black Dog tales: The Hound of St Austell

A guest post from Andrew Macdonald of Waveney Archaeology. Samuel Drew (1765-1833) was a self-taught man of letters; his special interest was metaphysics, which is perhaps why he is little known now. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker and gave the following account of...

Folklore and geo-mythology

Mapping the Grim

Mapping the Grim

This project on Black Shuck was part of the original intent of the Public Archaeology project (for PA2015) and for me, because data is poetry and maps are fine prose. Due to the nature of my working life; the fact that I'm a bit of a butterfly/battering ram when it...

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Tom Starling: Old Shuck – Salthouse into Kelling

Tom Starling: Old Shuck – Salthouse into Kelling

Wonderful piece of Norfolk dialect from a well-spoken North Norfolk chap relating his brief but nervy meeting with Old Shuck just outside Salthouse towards Kelling; one of the various 'two masters' routes that relate to the North Norfolk version of the tale based...

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Passing on Black Shuck

Passing on Black Shuck

Tim Fox-Godden is friend who prints and illustrates, he also originates from the same area of Norfolk as me, he strolls down many of the same psychological byways and holloways as me and occasionally our paths cross. He has produced this rather lovely linocut as a...

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Black Shuck of the Fens

Black Shuck of the Fens

Black Shuck of the Fens Guest post: Matthew Champion I have a confession to make. I was born on the edge of the fens. A child of the bleak, flat and desolate waste that sits on Norfolk's western boundary, between 'the Isle' and the cold North Sea. I'm not a true fen...

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Physical Graffiti – Jess Macdonald

Physical Graffiti – Jess Macdonald

Guest post from Jess Macdonald From a very early age, I’ve always loved ghosts and ghouls, and long-legged-beasties and things that go bump in the night. Folklore, myths, the supernatural. I’ve never believed any of it, but it’s always exerted a hold on me. I’d plead...

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The Mouldwarp King

The Mouldwarp King

Like badgers in channels of hypocausts devoid of fire, The Mouldwarps scatter the cairns of our mothers, And the bogs hold our fathers pinned to wicker.[1] The mole is an ‘earth-thrower’ - a mouldywarp, molywarppe, moudiwarp, mouldwarp, moldwarp. The collision between...

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