Folklore

Long ago, a horseman was riding beside the River Dove on his way home to Hartington when he met a young woman, alone and distraught. When he asked her what was amiss she couldn’t answer; she merely sobbed. So he lifted her on to his horse, told her to grip his coat so she wouldn’t fall, and rode onwards, resolved to put her into the care of the vicar at Hartington.

Part way through the journey he turned to speak to her but she was no longer there. Alarmed, he turned his horse and rode back the way he’d come, but he found no sign of her, though it was a bright moonlit night. He called, but there was no answer.

In the end he was obliged to give up the search. The woman had disappeared. He never saw her again, or heard news of her.

The more familiar type of “phantom hitchhiker” story is to be found in various parts of the Peak District, as it is throughout most of the world.

See Mark P. Henderson, Folktales of the Peak District, Amberley Publishing, 2011, pp. 134-136 and 157;

Also, David Clarke, Supernatural Peak District, Robert Hale, London, 2001 – Dr Clarke devotes an entire chapter to road ghosts.

Beware of walking the lanes and fields around Onecote under the light of the moon. You might meet a rider on a white horse, who is an omen of doom. He’s easy to recognise: he has no head.

Some local farmers and other residents have met the headless horseman and survived, but not surprisingly they were filled with horror. Joe Bowden was carried home to his farm by the decapitated rider and flung to the ground; he suffered no lasting physical injury but he died a few days later.

Who is the horseman? The ghost of a murdered peddler? A knight killed in battle? One of the four evil spirits cast out of Heaven and condemned to wander the earth? It would presumably be futile to ask him since having no head he could neither hear nor speak.

Attempts have been to exorcise the horseman, but there is no indication that they’ve succeeded.

For more about the horseman, see

Mark P. Henderson, Folktales of the Peak District, Amberley Publishing, 2011, pp. 129-130.

There is good reason to believe that this strange gloomy cleft in the limestone, where the Back Wood slopes down to the valley of the River Dane, is the Green Chapel of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. But there is something sinister in its atmosphere. Even in daylight you can sense that Lud’s Church is haunted – not only by the fearsome Bosley Boggart but also, perhaps, by the ghost of poor Alice, granddaughter of William de Ludauk, a Lollard captured by Lancastrian soldiers on this spot around 1400 CE. During the skirmish, Alice was killed. Moreover, mysterious ‘earth lights’ have been seen there.

It is tempting to suppose that Lud’s Church was named because it was where de Ludauk and his fellow-Lollards held their services, but some authorities say the opposite is true. According to this viewpoint, Lud’s Church was named after the Celtic god Ludd, and de Ludauk took his name from the place, ‘auk’ being an Old English dialect word for temple.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Lud’s Church is an impressive landscape feature.

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