The Kidsgrove Boggart.

 

The Kidsgrove Boggart.

A sighting of the headless ghost of a woman is thought to forebode disaster – and it is said she was seen on the morning of many of North Staffordshire’s worst mining disasters.

Ask around Stoke-on-Trent and you will get told many versions of the Story of the Kidsgrove Boggart. Children know if the travel through the area they should close their eyes tight lest they see the Boggart..

 Probably the best known story is that of Christina Collins who was brutally murdered in 1839.

The story goes...

In 1838 Robert Collins, an out of work ostler, and his wife Christina went to Liverpool to find work. Finding none Robert moved on to London. Having found work he sent for Christina who set out on 15 June 1839.

After a long ride on a cart that was taking corn to the mill at Hardingswood, she stopped to take rest at the lock-side pub in Kidsgrove.

There she met three boatmen who promised her they would give her transport to London on their canal barge. They wanted to go on that night, and she was reluctant. They convinced her that the passage through the tunnel was dark in day or night, so they may as well set off as soon as possible.

The Boatmen set off with Christina via the Harecastle Tunnel. At the mouth of the tunnel, one of the boatmen took the pony up the track to Boathorse Road, and the other two set off into the tunnel with Christina.

The barge emerged at the other side carrying the boatmen, but Christina never came out. In the hope that she had riches in her trunks, they had murdered her and hid her body in the underground culvert to Goldenhill Colliery, known as Gilbert's Hole. She was found some days later in the tunnel, without her head.

James Owen and George Thomas, were convicted at Stafford Assizes for the murder of Christina Collins. A third man, William Ellis, was also sentenced to death, but on appeal was given a last minute reprieve and was sentenced to be transported to Australia.

Staffordshire Museum Service

 

The public hanging outside Stafford Gaol on Saturday April 11th 1840 was said to have been attended by nearly 10,000 people.

As this is a true story I was able to find quite easily that Christina's body was not found in or near Harecastle Tunnel, but some 26 miles further south in Brindley Bank. There is also no mention of her being decapitated.

An article which appeared in The Evening Sentinel, on December 6th, 1879, shows that the legend predates the Christina Collins murder by about 60 years, and was centred around the community of Ranscliff, which has long since been swallowed up by growth of Kidsgrove.
The Article says:

“Sometimes this ghostly invader of the quiet of the village would meet the collier as he travelled the lonely hills, or made his way along the old deep lanes that winded through the valley."

“On other occasions it would appear as a light and be seen dancing and flickering through the marshy dales. And the dread which this unearthly light, as it was supposed to be, inspired was something horrible. It was even known to come at night, and sing in the dales in imitation of a nightingale, and hundreds of colliers with affrighted faces gathered to the spot to listen to the strange bird."

The Victorian journalist who wrote the article had no doubt the roots of this “village phantom” lay with the construction of the canal tunnel under the hill, completed in 1777.

He wrote: 

“Soon after the completion of the tunnel, one of the coal mines on Ranscliff Hill was made to communicate by means of a footrill, with the canal, falling into it about a quarter of a mile from its mouth. It was in this particular footrill that the boggart first made itself known to the people of the village."

“So alarmed did the colliers become on what was supposed to be its first appearance, that there was great difficulty in getting them to work, and on the least unusual noise occurring, or let one of their number report that he had seen something, and work was at once suspended for the day and sometimes for a longer period. And then the news went round to every cottage household, with the usual results, that the boggart had been seen.”

 

A man working on the construction of the Harecastle Tunnel was killed in an accident which somehow caused his head to be chopped off. Shortly afterwards his ghost was seen wandering the passageway where he died.

Mining communities often have tales like this about Knockers or Boggarts. They are often a sign of impending disaster.

Sightings of The Kidsgrove Boggart were often said to have coincided with  mining disasters in the local area.

There are other stories of the Kidsgrove Boggart, but with Stoke's history of mining it seems more than likely that the origin is deep under Harecastle Hill...

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References 

StokeonTrentLive ByRichard Ault
Kidsgrove Town Council
staffspasttrack