Hello all!
I hadn’t heard of Holy Trinity Church in Buckfastleigh until a couple of years ago. I was scouting around for book promo shoot locations when someone said to me, “What about the ruined church in Buckfastleigh? You know, the one with the cage over the grave.” I didn’t know what they meant but, of course, I was intrigued. They gave me directions and I told my partner, Jay, to pack his camera!
So, off we went. We were doing the shots for one of my books and also a promo shoot for my business Alter Ego. The place is exactly the sort of backdrop you’d expect for gothic photos: scorched stone, roofless walls, and the tower still standing watch over the graves. It was spooky, yes, but also surprisingly quiet. We pranced around the churchyard with our props, snapping photos among the headstones, and every now and then I’d catch myself looking over at the famous tomb in the corner. It is one thing to read about a caged grave and quite another to stand next to it.
So, the history. Holy Trinity was Buckfastleigh’s parish church from the fifteenth century right through into the twentieth. Over time the town grew down in the valley and a new church was built closer to the people, leaving Holy Trinity less and less used. Then in 1992 vandals set it on fire, destroying the roof and gutting the inside. Over the years locals have embroidered the story, some say it was Satanists, others whisper about occult rituals. It fits the pattern: once a place already has a “dark” reputation, people pile on extra layers of myth to explain any later misfortune. Either way, the fire was real and today the church stands as a hollow ruin, open to the sky.
And then there is Richard Cabell. Cabell was the local squire of nearby Brook Manor in the seventeenth century, remembered less for any great deeds than for being cruel, corrupt, and generally despised by his neighbours. He died in 1677 with a reputation so black that locals built him a chest tomb of heavy stone and caged it with iron rails. Cabell was said to be violent, corrupt and irreligious, a man people feared enough to try to pin down even in death. The legends followed quickly. Stories of phantom hounds circling the tomb on stormy nights, of Cabell’s spirit roaming Dartmoor, of how Arthur Conan Doyle supposedly borrowed the tale for The Hound of the Baskervilles. Whether or not Doyle ever did hardly matters now, because the link has stuck.
What I found interesting, posing there amongst the ruins with my bestie, is how much of the story comes not from words but from sight. The tomb (which we didn't actually photograph, would you believe!) looks like a stage set. You don’t have to be told Cabell was wicked; the iron cage tells you. Other squires have been forgotten, their names on fading stones, but Cabell’s story clings because there is something to see, something to point at. Even with the church gutted, the legend feels louder than the history.
So, Holy Trinity isn’t just a ruin, it is folklore made solid. A ruined church, a caged grave, and centuries of stories still circling. We went there for photos, but what I came away with was a sense of how a place can hold a story long after everything else has burned away.