Holy Trinity, Buckfastleigh

 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.

Me and Tabs - the bestie - at the church

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.

The Last Witch Trials in England

 Hello all!

My very first published novel, way back in 2014, was Ella’s Memoirs. It was a gothic tale that included witch trials, although mine were set in Germany where persecutions reached some of their most terrifying heights. You do not need to look abroad to find witches, though. Devon has its own story, and it came shockingly late. In 1682, three women from Bideford were tried for witchcraft and hanged. Their case is remembered as one of the last executions for witchcraft in England.

The women were called Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards and Mary Trembles. They were all poor, marginalised, and vulnerable. Temperance had already faced accusations before, Susannah was widowed and socially isolated, and Mary had lost her family and survived by begging. In other words, they fitted the profile of women who were easiest to target when fear and resentment ran high (Callow 2021).

The charges themselves were built on flimsy ground. Local gossip claimed that Temperance had confessed to meeting a “black man” who gave her power, that she had pinched and cursed a neighbour. Other testimony accused the women of travelling in invisible form or leaving marks upon the afflicted (Barry 2012). The trial was held at the Exeter Assizes, in Rougemont Castle, under Judge Thomas Raymond. The jury convicted them, and they were executed at Heavitree on 25 August 1682 (Gent 1982).

What makes the case so striking is its timing. By the 1680s much of Europe had moved away from witchcraft prosecutions, and even in England most accusations ended in acquittal. Devon, though, put three women to death on little more than suspicion and prejudice. John Callow describes it as a “tragedy of sorcery and superstition” and reminds us that the intensity of hatred towards them is part of the reason their story was preserved when so many others were forgotten (Callow 2021).

Their memory lingers. Exeter now has a plaque on the gatehouse of Rougemont Castle naming Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards and Mary Trembles, along with Alice Molland, another woman said to have been condemned for witchcraft in the region (Exeter Civic Society 2023). They are remembered not as villains but as victims, women whose lives were destroyed by gossip, fear and the readiness of the powerful to believe the worst of the powerless.

So, when I wrote about witches in my first novel, I imagined Germany. Yet the same story was happening here in Devon, with the same ingredients of poverty, fear, and prejudice. These women remind us how close folklore and tragedy can sit together, and how easily a story can become a sentence.

---

References:

• Barry, Jonathan. Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640–1789. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

• Callow, John. The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition. Bloomsbury, 2021.

• Gent, Frank J. The Trial of the Bideford Witches. Bideford: Edward Gaskell, 1982.

• Exeter Civic Society. “The Devon Witches Plaque.” exetercivicsociety.org.uk (accessed 2023).

The White Lady of Radford: Ghosts, Folklore, and Forgotten Histories

 

For a couple of years I lived in Plymstock, not far from Radford, and it became one of my favourite places to walk my two dogs. The path leads you in under the trees, then down to the wide lake where swans and ducks float about on the still waters. On one side the ruined boathouse leans into the water, its roof gone, its windows hollow. Further along you find the folly castle standing guard on the bank, and in the middle of the grounds the remains of the old silo still rise up, a reminder of when the estate was more than just a park. It is a place where history shows through in fragments, every turn of the path hinting at what once stood there. 

The only thing that ever spoiled it for me was the South West Water plant tucked on the edge of the park. If you wander too near on the wrong day the air turns sharp and sewagey, a rude interruption to the otherwise gothic air of the lake and woods. 

Even so, I loved it, and I even used Radford for my books, sourcing the cover photographs for Ella’s Memoirs and The Black Marshes there among the ruins.

One of the raw images from the Haverleigh cover photos featuring Natasha Berry who posed as Ella.

The Ghost Stories

Radford has its share of ghost stories. A faceless monk is said to appear at the lodge gates. Drake himself is said to have been spotted there and people claimed servants' bells rang on their own in the long-ruined house before demolition. Dogs are said to shy away from the paths at night. The most famous of all is the White Lady.

The story of the White Lady at Radford is told in many ways. Most versions centre on a young woman of the family who drowns and whose ghost lingers by the water. First to mention is that "White Lady Ghosts" are a common figure in folklore, not just in Devon but across Europe. They are usually tied to stories of tragic love, suicide, or betrayal, women who died too soon and are said to wander in pale garments near the place of their death. The details change from place to place, yet the image is instantly recognisable. I have written before about the White Lady of Berry Pomeroy Castle, and you can read more about the whit ladies of folklore in my earlier blog post HERE

In one of the best-known tellings of Radford's white lady story, a girl of the house falls in love with a boy from Oreston. She is forbidden to see him, and the pair take a rowing boat onto the lake which overturns, drowning them both. Since then she has been seen in white, walking by the water or drifting across it on moonlit nights, searching for her lost love. A local road even bears her name, White Lady Road, keeping the tale alive.

I have come across several variations of this tale too, from blogs and heritage sites to Facebook posts and other retellings. The details shift with the teller. Sometimes the companion is a sweetheart, sometimes a close female friend of lower rank. Sometimes the lady drowns by accident, other times she chooses to end her life. A few versions move the setting away from Radford altogether and place her death at Hooe Lake. These contradictions are typical of folklore like this.

The ruined boathouse - photo by Mckinnon Images

The History:

Radford House was once the great seat of the Harris family, rising from a medieval manor into a grand Elizabethan mansion where Sir Christopher Harris, Member of Parliament for Plymouth and close associate of Sir Francis Drake, entertained figures tied to England’s naval exploits. Drake is said to have lodged at Radford during preparations against the Armada, and the Harris family held his will for a time, securing Radford’s place in that circle of sea-faring legend. The estate sprawled across what is now Radford Park, with ornamental gardens, a lake, a boathouse and, later, a little folly-castle built on the dam. By the nineteenth century the land was being parcelled and remodelled, its former grandeur slowly ebbing away. The twentieth century brought decline: the house stood increasingly empty, its contents sold, its walls left to rot, until the main building was finally demolished in 1937. What remains today are fragments: the lake, the lodge, and the boathouse ruins which are open and free to roam.

In several recountings of the folklore, I found mention of the white lady's drowning happening in the 1700s (18th century). In the 18th century there certainly were daughters and female relatives living at the house such as Susannah Harris and Anne Harris of the Bellevue and Hooe branch. Neither of these ladies drowned, though. In fact, after extensive searching through parish registers, inquest files, and local papers, I can confidently say that there is no record of any drowning there in the period usually implied by the legend. No named young woman lost to the water. No grief-stricken lover. Nothing of the sort.

There was, however, one incident that may have seeded rumour from a later period. In 1853, a twenty-year-old woman named only as "Mrs Revil" was discovered in Radford Lake with her baby in her arms. She and the child had both almost drowned, but ‘had the good luck’ to be pulled out by a passing doctor, who managed to revive them both. Mrs Revil lived not in Radford, but in Prince Rock, and had no recorded link to the house. Her actions were reported as an attempted suicide and attempted murder of the child in the Western Times (25 June 1853, p.7). The story travelled widely, reprinted in several newspapers across England, including in London. It is tragic, sensational, and close enough to the setting that later retellings may have shaped it into something ghostly.

More telling still is the silence in the literature. I cannot find any written version of the Radford White Lady prior to a local guidebook in the 1990s. The most-cited online account is an unsourced ghost story book printed in 2010. The demolition-era reporting (for example, Western Morning News, 27 July 1935, p.7) describes the house falling into ruin. It speaks of echoes of Drake and of bells heard on still evenings, but no pale figure by the lake. Those latter details seem to have grown later, perhaps from oral stories told around the time when the estate was derelict and romantic to imagine.

So the White Lady of Radford is both ghost and gap: a figure who may never have lived at all, yet whose presence has outlasted those who did. Walking the water’s edge at dusk, I can see why she has appeared as a local legend.

A Forgotten Haunting

 Bowden House stands just outside Totnes in the parish of Ashprington, a building with layers of history written into its very walls. A manor has existed here since at least the medieval period. In the early 1500s John Gyles built a grand Tudor house on the site, complete with carved chimneypieces and panelled interiors. A century later, in 1704, Nicholas Trist purchased Bowden and transformed it, refacing the Tudor core in the elegant Queen Anne style that still dominates its south and east fronts. By the 1800s the Adams family (not the spooky one!) had taken over, leaving their own mark on the fabric of the house. Today, the Grade I listed property is home to the Bowden House Community, an intentional eco-community that has lived there since 2005.

                                                        (image taken from wiki)

That’s the official history... but there’s another side to Bowden’s story, one that’s almost been lost.

So, I was working on my Conversations About Ghosts project, when a story led me to research a location close to the house. This started a stirring... I had this nagging feeling - this buried memory.  I was SURE the house ran ghost tours back in the 1990s! Proper guided walks, with glossy little leaflets stacked on tourist stands alongside Paignton Zoo and Crealy Adventure Park. I could see the leaflets in my head, remember the talk of hauntings, but when I searched online there was nothing. Not a word. It started to feel like a false memory, one of those odd tricks where you’re sure something happened, yet everyone else looks at you blankly. It was odd!

I didn't think about it again, then, but just recently, I was writing up some history and background for the book and, since I had a free afternoon, I decided to give it a deep dive. At first, much of the same... that being, nothing at all. Then, at last, I stumbled across a post on an obscure Fortean forum where someone described the very tours I remembered. Right down to the details. The relief of knowing I hadn’t dreamt it was immense. Even better, I eventually unearthed newspaper clippings from the early 90s confirming the tours had been real.

According to those old reports, visitors claimed to have seen ghostly monks chanting in the dead of night, Elizabethan figures drifting through the halls, and the famous “girl in blue” on the staircase. Others spoke of invisible dogs brushing past their legs, cold hands tugging at their clothes, and even a disembodied arm floating across the lounge. Guides in Georgian costume led groups room by room, keeping a sightings book of every chilling account.

Proof at last. I knew it.

What strikes me now is how little trace remains. For a while Bowden was painted as one of the most haunted houses in Devon, with stories of dozens of different ghosts drifting through its corridors. Now there is almost nothing.  Apart from those buried newspaper articles and that single forum thread, it’s as though the ghost tours never happened. Maybe they ended when the house became a community in 2005, or maybe they were just a short-lived 90s curiosity that faded quietly into memory.

 
Hauntings often flare up in the public imagination and then fade away again like this though. In the 1930s, for example, Borley Rectory  (in Essex) was everywhere in the newspapers, branded the “most haunted house in England.” but but after a fire and years of scepticism it faded into obscurity. Whilst those of us who are interested int he topic still know the name, there are no recent stories. In the 1970s and 80s Chingle Hall (Lancashire) was drawing crowds for its ghost tours until the doors shut and the stories fell quiet. Even Pluckley in Kent, once promoted as the “most haunted village in England,” has slipped into relative obscurity after years of ghostly fame. Bowden House seems to follow the same pattern. For a short time it was a place of leaflets and late-night whispers, before vanishing almost completely from memory. Its haunting, like so many others, was not just about ghosts but about the way we remember and forget them.

Tudors in Devon (and some ghosts too!) - Berry Pomeroy Castle

 Today's post contains not only some Tudor history and some local history, but some ghost stories too! I really am spoiling you! 

Most people reading this will have heard of Henry VIII and his infamous 6 wives! Most will even be able to name those poor unfortunate ladies - Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleeves, Catherine Howard, Katherine Parr - but what some of you might not know is that one of the most famous stately home castles in Devon was actually owned by Jane Seymour's brother! 

Berry Pomeroy Castle sits out in the countryside between Paignton and Totnes on the edge of Berry Pomeroy village. The place is atmospheric and set into some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. Sadly, however the house stands in ruins these days and was in fact not actually ever finished in the first place! Here's a pic I took last time I was there...

Berry Pomeroy Castle, taken in between lockdowns 2020 by myself, Dr Emma Barrett.

Berry Pomeroy's origins are interesting. Originally, the house or at least parts of it were thought to be of Norman origin, however it's been discovered recently that in fact whilst the Pomeroy family was present in the village in that era, they actually lived in a smaller mansion near tot he church! The original structures, then were more likely built in the late 1400s by Henry Pomeroy or his heirs. 
The distinctive house within - as seen in my pic above, was actually built much later. 
Edward Seymour, the Lord Protector of England (Uncle of Henry VII's surviving son and brother tot he late Queen Jane) bought the land and buildings on it in 1547 during a time where he was in high favour and was buying up fancy houses throughout the country. Whilst Berry Pomeroy was the most valuable asset he acquired, there is no evidence that he did anything to the mansion himself - especially due to his soon thereafter downfall and execution. (Jane Seymour's brothers fell from grace quickly with both Edward and Thomas being executed within about ten years of each other! Thomas is also an interesting character having married Henry VIII's widow Katherine Parr in secret - but that's another story for another time!)

After Edward was executed, the house passed down to his heirs rather than revert to the crown, and it was his son who first settled there and began an ambitious plan to build a huge stately home there. Alas, he ran out of cash before he was done and so Berry Pomeroy was never completed! Despite that, the land and the ruin within are still owned by the Seymour family to this day.
 For a more in depth account of the history of the house, the current caretakers - English Heritage - have a great blog post on it and rather than just repeat that, I suggest that you have a look at that HERE 

I first encountered Berry Pomeroy a lot earlier in life than my love of history, though! When I was younger, I began to collect Ghost Stories from people with a view to writing a book (a project 25 years in the making and still ongoing! See HERE for more info on that! ) and being local to Totnes of course I heard a lot of stories about Berry Pomeroy (these will be in the book if I ever finish it!). From ghostly figures in the woods, to spectral children Berry Pomeroy has earned it's reputation as one of the most haunted sites in Devon! I've actually visited the place many a time myself - as a younger woman looking for ghosts and as an older one just to enjoy the peace and ambiance! Below is a pic of me and one of my close friends posing for an atmospheric photo at the last visit!

Myself (Dr Emma Barrett) and a friend Miss Tabitha Shave at the ruins

Now, I tend to take the middle road with ghost stories I am open-minded but also quite skeptical - I love to hear about experiences and have experienced some weird (but probably explainable) phenomena myself, but I do take a lot of ghost stories with a pinch of salt. Berry Pomeroy is a fine example of that. One of the most repeated and recognised stories is that of The white and Blue ladies of the castle.

I quote from a ghostly blogger:

"The White Lady is the restless soul of Margaret Pomeroy. She haunts the dungeons of St. Margaret’s Tower and has been seen waving to visitors. She was held captive in the castle dungeons by her sister, Eleanor, because of jealousy and starved to death in the dungeons"

A ghoulish though indeed. Whilst I have chosen this quote - this is a very common tale about the castle and I have heard similar told to me accompanied by apparent sightings. (as in "I thought I saw the ghost of Matilda / Margaret De Pomeroy... then launch into the story). 

HOWEVER! It's not true! 

In the 1800s, the castle ruins became a haven for artists and writers during the romantic movement and of course the castle was perfect as the setting for a gothic novel! In 1806, a writer by the name of Edward Montague wrote a spooky gothic novel using the castle as it's base. His novel featured the fictional Elinor De Pomeroy and her sister Matilda. Elinor, jealous of her sister marrying the man that she loved, had her murdered. The sister's ghost then began to appear as a white lady around the castle to bring attention to her sister's nefarious deeds! Sound familiar? Probably because it is very likely that this novel forms the basis for these particular tales! 

Further to this, however - I have also seen people claiming that the book is based on real events, some say from the medieval period, others say from the 1700s... the latter is very unlikely as the house was a ruin far before then!

As to a medieval source, firstly, Elinor De Pomeroy seems never to have existed! There is some evidence that there may have been a lady called Matilda De Pomeroy - in fact her full name was Matilda “Maud” De Vitre De Pomeroy. However Matilda was not a daughter of the house, but was in fact married into the family as the wife of Henry De Pomeroy in the 1100s. As we have seen by the above history, this means she actually never set foot on the grounds of the castle as it is known now, and would have resided at the previous smaller mansion nearer the village. Matilda did indeed die young, most likely in childbirth or shortly after from the dates given for her only son's birth, however that is about all that is known about her!

To add to this, the idea of a "white lady" ghost is actually a staple of many folk-lorish ghost stories all around the world - thought to be the spirits of the murdered, suicides or those who have died at a time of unrequited love. It is more likely, then, that Montague based his white lady ghost more in this sort of folklore than actual events.

The second most famous spirit said to haunt Berry Pomeroy is the fabled "blue lady" and she seems to originate from the 1700s. In the 1790s, a memoir was published by a rich doctor (Dr Farquar) who told a tale of a woman roaming the village of Berry Pomeroy who he considered to be a reliable harbinger of local deaths. Not a living woman, but a ghost of some poor unfortunate. Dr Farquar's story seems to be the first instance of this ghost story coming to light, with later retellings moving to describe the woman as dressed in blue. This then morphed into sightings at the castle, and then finally to her as a spectre which led the unwary to their deaths in falling from one of the towers. In many ghostly blogs the blue lady of Berry Pomeroy is stated to be that of a woman who lived in the Norman castle and who murdered her incest-conceived child. This is of course, debunked by the history, since the castle did not stand in Norman times. Also, noteworthy, incestual relationships are another staple of Gothic Literature (the Castle of Otrano springs to mind, by Warpole - which is said to be the first true gothic novel), and so it is likely that this story too is the product of over stimulated gothic imagination!

Tudors in Devon, Lady Jane Grey

 Now, we all know my area of expertise is eighteenth and nineteenth century, folklore and local history, but like so much of the population, I do also have an interest in the Tudor court and it's current cultural representation in TV programs, movies and books. Due to this, one thing I always like to see is a famous name attached to some local history! 

Lady Jane Grey's story is an unfortunate one! Lady Jane, if you don't know who she was, was a young woman who had the misfortune to be placed on the throne of England where she reigned for only 9 days before her arrest. She was the Great-granddaughter of Henry VII (The first Tudor King). Her mother was Frances Brandon, who was in turn the daughter of Mary Tudor (the sister of Henry VIII). Due to these royal connections, When Henry's only son, Edward VI was newly king, Jane was a good candidate to have become his wife, and would have been if her uncle (who was orchestrating the union) had not been arrested and later executed for treason, leading Jane to marry a youth called Lord Dudley instead. Jane's other link to the Tudor court was her childhood spent as the ward of Henry VIII's surviving wife, Katherine Parr. 

A later imagining of LJG from 1793 courtesy of the National
Portrait Gallery (Academic Licence)

When Edward VI died his untimely death, Lady Jane's husband and father moved swiftly to put her on the throne due to the fact that Edward himself had named her heir due to the issues surrounding his sister's legitimacy (left over grief from Henry's various ways of ending his marriages!). This did not go down well, however, with the soon to be queen Mary I. The Greys did not have the public's support either, and so any powerful supporters they had to the claim soon melted away. Lady Jane, her husband and father were all arrested for high treason and on November 14th, 1553, found themselves in the Tower of London facing high treason charges. Initially, Lady Jane's father was pardoned but both her and her husband were sentenced to death. Lady Jane's sentence was initially suspended. In 1554, however, a new rebellion was started in her name. This new rebellion failed and both Lady Jane and her husband (as well as her previously pardoned father who was tied up in the new rebellion) were executed. Lady Jane Grey is said in popular legend to have fainted when the plot to make her Queen as announced, and was just 17 years old when she died. She has long since been remembered as an innocent victim of her family's greed.

So what were Lady Jane's ties to Devon? 
I first saw Lady Jane's name tied to Devon whilst reading up on a manor house in Ilfracombe after being told a ghost story for my book. The suite of haunted rooms is named the Lady Jane Rooms. Intrigued, I pushed on and discovered that in fact the house there had previously belonged to Lady Jane's mother. From what I can gather in my research, there is no evidence to say whether a young Lady Jane ever spent any time in the house but it is unlikely that she lived there, however it is more than possible she visited! The main bedroom there holds a Tudor era tapestry which has a coat of arms on it which is that of a relation of the Grey family. Chambercombe Manor (the house in question) also has a history of hauntings associated with these rooms but they pertain not to Lady Jane herself, but to another lady who stayed in those rooms. (If you like ghost stories, check out some of my other posts HERE).

A famous (much later) painting of Lady Jane's Execution from 1833 (Paul Delaroche)

Whilst Lady Jane did not necessarily spend much time in Devon herself, there are actually several other close family links! Her grandparents owned a house over near the Wiltshire border named Knightstone, and her father also had a house built near Exeter - Peamore House - which reverted to the crown and was sold after his execution. Even Boringdon Hall - that gorgeous old Tudor house near Plymouth (where, incidentally, I married my first husband!) was owned by Henry Grey for a short time, before being sold on. 

Madhouse Networks in Devon and Somerset (1800 - 1850)

 Now that I am done with the PhD, I can finally share some of the discoveries I made whilst completing it! One of the very first things I did, back when I started was to map out the locations of private mental health establishments from 1750 - 1860. (Any info in this blog post can be further explored by reading my thesis which will be available online from 11/4/25 or cited as "Emma Barrett, A Delicate Matter: the private asylums of the South West of England 1770 - 1851, PhD Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2024.")

First, let me briefly explain what a private asylum was! 

So, back in the 1700s, the care of the mentally unwell fell to what was called "The Parish" - think like a local council. This was later changed to unions but still run locally. Hospitals for the mentally unwell as we think of them now just didn't exist because people were only just starting to realise that mental illness was an illness at all!  There was of course the infamous Bethlem in London and other charitable institutions but most likely if you were poor and mentally unwell you were bound for the nearest workhouse. The rich and unwell were predominantly cared for at home. 
In the mid 1700s a new "craze" began, as businessmen, clergy, and doctors too began to realise there was the potential to make money by housing the mentally unwell (and later treating them) in privately run "lunatic asylums" - also known as madhouses. These started out as almost like care homes for the rich mentally unwell, but were soon taking on poorer patients too, paid for by the parish unions.  Before 1770 this was completely ungoverned! No lists of patients, licencing or records had to be kept at all and anybody could set up shop as a madhouse. In 1770, a bill passed into law that any houses such as these had to at least be licenced and had to keep a register of who they housed. This suddenly became a booming business - especially in the south west of England but all over the country too! 

However, madhouses soon picked up a bad reputation! 

Stories became rife of mistreatment, unnecessary detainment and people being forced into asylums in order to steal fortunes. Women, it was told, were especially vulnerable to being locked away by unscrupulous husbands and fathers. Now, this reputation doesn't entirely hold up when these asylums are studied, and my thesis goes further into how this damning reputation was created, however for this post all we need to say is that there was a real mixture of different types of asylums, all with different conditions within (from the very good, to very poor). There was not, however, the abundance of forcibly held sane people that literature and public opinion would have you believe. 

In the south west, there were more private asylums than anywhere else in the country - three times as many at one point! I will attach a map I created for my thesis to demonstrate the sheer numbers here - it's a little hard to read on this scale but at least shows you the numbers and rough locations:

The details are as follows:

What becomes even more interesting than the sheer numbers, is the network of people running them. Of the above, most of the men (and women!) running these asylums were doctors. Unusual for the time. More unusual were the links between them. At least 5 of the above, for example, were run by (at least for a short time) 1 of 2 brothers - the "Duck" brothers. 3 of the others were run by a family named Langworthy and there was a link by marriage between the two families too (James Duck's son married Caroline Langworthy - the daughter of another asylum owner). These families then, had a huge influence over mental health care in the region. Many of them were in (and on occasions ran) the Taunton branch of the local medical society too. Unfortunately, being run by one of these men was a sure-fire sign, however, that the asylum's conditions would be poor as all of the Langworthy asylums and most of the Duck asylums were heavily censured in inspections once those became commonplace in the 1800s.  (for more info on this, see my earlier blog post about Plympton House Asylum HERE )


Additionally, 

For anybody interested, or anybody doing family history, here is also a list of the persons running asylums in the south west of England and which asylums they ran :) 
(I apologise for the wonky columns. No matter what I do, they don't seem to want to play!)

Edward Long Fox                         Physician                          Cleave hill, Brislington

William Finch (2)                          Physician                          Laverstock

Charles Langworthy                   Physician                          Kingsdown

Robert Langworthy                      Physician                          Longwood, Kingsdown

William Finch (1)                          Not Medical                    Laverstock

Ann Hinks                                      Not Medical                    Nailsea

Martha Hinks                                Not Medical                    Nailsea

Justinian Mercer                          Not Medical                    Halstock

Caroline Finch                             Not Medical                    Laverstock

William Gillett                              Not Medical                    Fivehead

Robert Willett                               Not Medical                    Market Lavington

Zachariah Jefferies                      Physic                               Kingsdown

Nehemiah Duck                           Surgeon                            Cleve, Ridgeway

James Rich                                   Surgeon                            Ford House

Richard Langworthy                    Surgeon                            Plympton

john J Mercer                                Surgeon and Apoc         Halstock

William Spicer                             Not Medical                    Broadhayes

William Symes                             Surgeon                            Cranbourne

William E Gillet                             Surgeon and Apoc         Fivehead, Fairwater

James Duck                                  Physician                          Cleve, Fullands, Plympton

Charls Finch                                 Not Medical                    Fisherton (plus others)

Joseph Spry                                  Not Medical                    Bailbrook

Elizabeth Langworthy                 Not Medical                    Kingsdown

Joseph F Spencer                        Surgeon                            Fonthill

William C Finch                          Surgeon                            Fisherton (plus others not in region)

Betsey Mercer                            Not Medical                    Halstock

Alice Mercer                              Not Medical                    Halstock

 

For anybody who is interested, I do have a future post planned which will explain the different job titles the medical professionals had - when it's done I will add a link here :)