Each summer, countless holidaymakers scream down the infamous A30, heading for the overcrowded beaches of Cornwall. When they do, they pass close by the Duchy’s ancient capital, Launceston, known in the past by the name Dunheved.
It’s a shame that only a handful visit the town, which was the only one in Cornwall every shielded by high stone walls. For there is much to see in Dunheved, a historic community haunted by ghosts.
Arguably the most famous relates to Dockacre House, a fine Tudor mansion clinging to the side of a narrow road. Dating to the 16th century, its ghostly occurrences have their origins in 1714, when Sir Nicholas Herle moved in with his wife Elizabeth.
What happened next depends on which version of the tale one hears. It’s said by some that Elizabeth was shot dead by her husband, whereas other accounts claim she fell insane and was subsequently locked within her bedroom. A third story says he starved her to death. Nobody seems quite sure exactly how poor Elizabeth met her fate, but met it she had by the end of the year.
Tellingly, her memorial stone in Dunheved’s famous church of St Mary Magdalene says she was,‘killed by starvation or other unlawful means’.
Being an extremely powerful man, Sir Nicholas met no justice for his wife’s death. However, his immortal soul cannot defy punishment in the same way, meaning his ghost still haunts his old home, playing a sorrowful tune on an old wooden flute.
Elizabeth also haunts Dockacre House. Twelve or so years ago, its then owner told me about her experiences there. Serena Buckeridge-Hobbs said she had to collect her mail daily from Dunheved’s post office because the postman would no longer venture onto the grounds. Having seen Elizabeth’s ghost gazing at him from an upstairs window, he was too scared to return!
There’s a final ghostly tale associated with the mansion, although this one appears to melt into local folklore. Successive owners have apparently added walking sticks to a collection kept by the front door. If they’re not left in the exact order of appearance, the sticks are heard to rattle at night.
A Norman castle, founded in 1068 by Robert, Count of Mortain, is Dunheved’s most spectacular sight. The castle served as a courthouse and prison during the 17th century, when the bite of justice was unnaturally hard. Cornish Witches were tried there in the county assizes. It’s believed locally that those found guilty were then burnt alive at the base of one of the towers.
Thus was it known as the Witches Tower until it collapsed in 1830.
Although the tower no longer stands, where it once did appears to retain some residual energy from those dark and intolerant days. Some claim to feel an unnatural heat when standing nearby, whilst others say they hear the sound of women screaming after dark.
The Bell is the oldest pub in the town’s historic centre. The building originally served as the kitchen and stables of a far larger inn. When that structure was torn down to make way for the Liberal Club in 1898, The Bell took its place in local beer drinkers’ affections.
It’s a lovely pub, with wooden beams and woodburning stoves and a great selection of real ales on tap. It’s also haunted, which was witnessed by a friend of mine, Todd Jenkins, during August 2022.
Todd stood in The Bell’s second, largely unused, room filming his surroundings on his iPhone. Watching the video back we noticed something wholly unexpected on the footage. A strange mist materialised beside the woodburning stove, in a part of the room containing a very distinctive and somewhat unusual atmosphere.
My personal favourite of all Dunheved’s ghost stories involves Reverend John Ruddle, the vicar of St Mary Magdalene during the 17th century. Ruddle, who appears in more than one Cornish tale of ghosts and exorcism, has his own memorial on the wall of the church.
During the summer of 1665, he was approached by a parishioner from a nearby village. The man sought the vicar’s help for his young son, Sam, who’d apparently fallen into depression on account of being haunted by the ghost of one Dorothy Dingley, a neighbour who’d died eight years before.
Sam took Ruddle to the field where the apparition appeared to him each day as he walked to school. The vicar was dumbstruck when seeing her himself. So much so that, in his own words, ‘Although I had taken up a firm resolution to speak to it, yet I had not the power, nor indeed durst I look back.’
Further attempts to make contact with Dorothy’s spirit were more successful. A somewhat fanciful account has Ruddle armed with pentacles, circles and rowan sticks, but he never mentioned anything of the kind himself. Indeed, the rather more prosaic presence of a small dog was highlighted in his own version of events.
‘A spaniel, who followed our company unregarded, did bark and run away as the spectrum passed by; whence it is easy to conclude that it was not our fear or fancy which made the apparition.’
He also detailed how the ghost moved through the field.
‘The motion of the spectrum was not gradatim, or by steps, and moving of the feet; but a kind of gliding as children upon the ice or a boat down a swift river.’
Ruddle managed to accost the ghost and demand from her the reason why she chose to scare the boy so. Accepting her explanation, he then commanded she leave this world altogether and move onto the next life. The vicar was discreet in keeping Dorothy’s motives for behaving as she did to himself. All he said on the matter was, ‘I spoke and it answered, in a voice neither very audible nor intelligible. I was not in the least terrified, and therefore persisted until it spoke again, and gave me satisfaction…After a few words of each side it quietly vanished; and neither doth appear since, nor will ever more to any man’s disturbance.’
Others haven’t been as circumspect when discussing these strange events. Accordingly, the field in question has been named as Higher Brown Quartils near South Petherwin, whilst the family Dorothy haunted were the Bligh’s of Botathan House. As for her own tragic background, it’s claimed that Dorothy Dingley was an unmarried woman who died in childbirth, shortly after Sam’s eldest brother mysteriously moved away from the area. The implication being that the older lad seduced, then abandoned, the young woman.
Whether any of that’s true or, like the tales of pentacles and rowan sticks, a later embellishment is unknown. I will leave it to Reverend Ruddle to have the final word when summing up what he saw.
‘These things are true, and I know them to be so with as much certainly as eyes and ears can give me; and until I can be persuaded that my senses do deceive me about their proper object, I must and will assert that these things in this paper are true.’
If you enjoyed this article, you may also like to read about Launceston’s infamous pub Jamaica Inn, which is widely believed to be the most haunted location in Cornwall.
Featured Image Credit: Hugh Letheren CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED
