HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

 A story about a curse on a family involving a giant man-killing hound seems a perfect subject for a Halloween special.  The story is by Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes.  The family in question are the Baskervilles, and the curse dates from the days of the English Civil War, when Sir Hugo Baskerville kidnapped a farmer’s daughter.  Sir Hugo is killed by a spectral hound, a fate which befalls a number of subsequent Baskervilles. 

The story has been turned into film a number of times over the years, firstly in 1939, which was mostly studio-based, then in 1959, in a film starring horror stalwarts Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, with filming taking place in Surrey, at Frensham Ponds and Chobham Common.  More recently, a TV movie in 1988 starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes, was filmed in a number of locations in the Midlands and North (although the original story was based in Dartmoor).

In the 1988 film, The Heath House in Tean, Staffordshire doubled as Baskerville Hall, while Mobberley Old Hall near Knutsford, Cheshire, provided some of the interior shots.  Croxteth Hall on Merseyside leant one of its rooms to be used as a hotel room.  The hotel in the film was called The Northumberland Hotel.  The railway scenes were filmed at Pickering railway station, one of the terminii of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.  Just outside Harrogate lie Brimham Rocks.  This is the area used as the moors around Baskerville Hall, where Watson shoots the hound. 

The Heath House-geograph-4049368. Photo by Dennis Thorley, via Wikimedia Commons.

 

The Heath House is a Gothic Revival building, which in 2021 was featured in Country Life magazine, being up for sale for 6 and a quarter million pounds.  The estate was described as a ‘farm’, but the magazine commented that it was more Downton Abbey than dirty wellies.  Tean lies just off the A50, to the south-east of Cheadle.  Mobberley Old Hall dates from the 17^th century, and lies in the village of Mobberley in Cheshire, a short distance from Knutsford.  Croxteth Hall is just outside Liverpool and offers a function room and parkland open to visitors.  It was formerly the ancestral home of the Molyneux family, the Earls of Sefton.  Pickering railway station is the terminus of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, a magnificent line which wends its way down to the coast at Whitby.  Brimham Rocks, run by the National Trust, is a beauty spot to the north-west of Harrogate and south-west of Ripon featuring dramatic rock formations.

Brimham Rocks turtle and eagle. Photo by Geertivp, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is currently available to view on ITVX.

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: THE SECRET OF CRICKLEY HALL/LYNMOUTH, DEVON

When the Caleighs, the family at the centre of The Secret of Crickley Hall - Gabe, Eve and their children Loren and Cally - arrive in the sleepy seaside village of Hollow Bay for a temporary stay at the riverside property Crickley Hall in a bid to heal the pain of their son’s disappearance, they look forward to walks along the “beautiful deep-sided and tree-lined gorge” marked as Devils Cleave on the map – down to the sea or up to the moors.  They anticipate weekends exploring the “craggy coastline”, and they are met with the sight of the “swift-moving, boulder-strewn Bay River”.  Early on in their stay they pay a visit to the local whitewashed and thatched inn, the Barnaby Inn with its low-ceilinged, beamed interiors.

Anyone who has visited Lynmouth on the North Devon coast will recognise this description, and indeed Hollow Bay was based on this beautiful little harbour village.  The reference to lime kilns is further proof, these being a feature of the village and surrounding area, formerly used for burning imported lime.  That, plus the fact that Hollow Bay is on the shores of the Bristol Channel, as is Lynmouth.  The craggy coastline referred to brings to mind the Valley of the Rocks to the west of Lynton, just above Lynmouth, while the Barnaby Inn may well be based on the charming harbourside inn The Rising Sun.  The only part of the scene described which doesn’t ring true to me is the reference to the “stranger-shy” locals.

Harbourside, with the Rising Sun

Devil’s Cleave must surely be the fictional equivalent of East Lyn Valley whose river tumbles down to the sea from Exmoor, although in an interview with the author of The Secret of Crickley Hall, James Herbert, he reveals that what he had in mind was a valley near his Sussex home called Devil’s Dyke.  As for Crickley Hall itself, which turns out to be a hotbed of supernatural phenomena, there is no particular building in Lynmouth that inspired it, but one can easily imagine such a pile lying alongside the river, where there are a number of impressive properties from the Victorian era lording it over the valley.

The 'boulder-strewn' river and the start of the East Lyn Valley

As well as the village and its surrounding landscape, The Secret of Crickley Hall manages to weave through the story two features of Lynmouth’s history.  During the war, Lynmouth played host to wartime evacuees from the big cities.  In the novel Crickley Hall is used to house some of the evacuees.  Several years later, in 1952, Lynmouth experienced a devastating flood which killed 34 people.  In the novel this event is moved back in time to 1943, with many of the evacuated children among the dead.  The horrors the Caleighs are met with at Crickley Hall are born of this event, with the spirits of the children haunting the property, along with the ghost of the sadistic Augustus Cribben, who subjected them to beatings and starvation.

In 2012 the Secret of Crickley Hall was dramatised for TV, but Devon was nowhere to be seen in the TV version.  Crickley Hall itself was represented by Bowden Hall in Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire.

The real-life Hollow Bay, Lynmouth, is a reassuringly charming and quiet seaside village.  Attractions on offer to visitors include the Victorian cliff railway linking it to the clifftop town of Lynton.  The walk up the valley to Watersmeet is popular with walkers, who are rewarded for their efforts with a pleasant National Trust tearoom with a garden overlooking the rushing river.  Another gorge accessible to visitors (for a fee) is the Glen Lyn Gorge, where among other points of interest is an indication of the 1952 flood level mark.  See my other blog Postcards From The Edge for a write-up on Lynmouth.

Map of the area.

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED/LETCHMORE HEATH

There are few things creepier than a bunch of children with luminous staring eyes and impassive faces roaming around the place, especially when the place in question is an idyllic English village surrounded by a pastoral landscape with flocks of sheep.  The village which witnessed these disturbing scenes was Midwich, the focal point of the classic British horror movie The Village of the Damned. 

But how did Midwich reach this point?  The opening scenes of the film depict a man falling asleep mid-phone conversation, accompanied by his snoozing dog.  All over the village people are being plunged into a mysterious slumber, and when they wake up the women face a double whammy: all women of child-bearing age have become pregnant, and they all give birth at the same time to the aforementioned spooky children.  The children grow up very fast and to add to their unnatural demeanour they all have platinum blonde hair, and they are capable of communicating with each other telepathically.  The ensuing mayhem includes a plane crash caused by the pilot of a military reconnaissance plane sent to investigate the events falling asleep at the controls as he enters the sphere of influence of the village.

The real-life version of Midwich is the village of Letchmore  Heath near Watford, named after the original Old Saxon “leche mere” meaning muddy pond.  The present-day pond is just to the south of the fetching village green, and adjacent to the green is the Three Horseshoes pub, which was used in the filming.  Another building seen in the film was the Post Office and General Stores, occupying a charming village house also facing the green.  The building has hardly changed in appearance, although it no longer serves its original purpose.  Letchmore Heath is no stranger to filming, being close to both the MGM British Studios, which produced this horror masterpiece, and also the Elstree Studios.  In fact, so many TV series from the 60s and 70s were filmed around here that the area has been dubbed Avengerland, after the famous Avengers TV series.

Letchmore Heath - geograph.org.uk - 65207. Photo by Nigel Cox, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sadly, George Sanders, who played Professor Gordon Zellaby in the film, is no longer with us, having died in 1972.  However, his screen wife Anthea Zellaby (Barbara Shelley) and their son David (Martin Stephens) are still alive, and in 2013 they were reunited with other cast members, along with fans of the film, for a visit to the former film set and a lunch at the Three Horseshoes.   

Map of the area.

GHOSTLY OCCURRENCES ON THE COTSWOLD WAY: THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

For walkers following the Cotswold Way on the approach to Bath, the ups and downs of the northern part of the Cotswolds give way to a rolling plateau just to the north of the M4 motorway.  One of the points of interest on this stretch of the trail is Horton Court, a National Trust property (now turned into a holiday cottage) which is a honey-coloured manor house built on the site of a Norman hall.  This property recently graced our TV screens in The Living And The Dead as Shepzoy House, the home of a young couple whose marriage is threatened by all manner of supernatural horrors going on around them, and by the husband’s descent into madness over the death of his son Gabriel, who died from drowning, a tragedy for which he blames himself.  The series is set in Somerset in the late 19^th century, but Horton is in South Gloucestershire near Chipping Sodbury, between Stroud and Bath, a rural area where the brooding woodlands and swaying grasses of the fields create a suitably spooky atmosphere, prompting some to refer to the series as a kind of Gothic Thomas Hardy.  

Horton Court. Photo by Marion Dutcher, via Wikimedia Commons.

The main subject of the story, Nathan Appleby (‘Merlin’ with a beard aka Colin Morgan), is a psychologist who returns from London to the family home after the death of his mother and with his young wife Charlotte (Charlotte Spender) takes over the running of the farm there. The locals are like something from a bygone age with their ancient rituals and superstitions, something akin to the community encountered by Edward Woodward in The Wicker Man.  As for Nathan, he finds it hard to shake off his psychological calling, and starts investigating the case of a possessed local girl called Harriet, which unleashes a series of sinister phenomena and apparitions.  Harriet’s party piece is mimicking the voice of the late Gabriel, which tests Nathan’s sanity to the limit.  The sinister atmosphere and tension continue to build up in subsequent episodes, and the final episode is full of surprises, which I won’t go into in case anyone hasn’t seen it yet. 

West from Highfield Lane near Horton Court - geograph.org.uk - 1001174. Photo by Maurice Pullin, via Wikimedia Commons.

 

According to the Cotswold Way Trail Guide, Horton Court is probably the oldest property along the trail, being based on a single-storey hall house from the 12^th century.  The adjoining church is the parish church of St James the Elder, built around 1300 on the site of the previous Norman church.  The manor itself, which lies alongside the hall, was built around 1521 by the Rev. William Knight, the future Bishop of Bath and Wells.  The most charming feature of the gardens is a 16^th century Italianate loggia.  Although ramblers following the Cotswold Way are unable to enter the manor house at this time, the church is still up and running for those wanting to relive the atmosphere surrounding the drama series, and of course there is the bucolic countryside to wander through.

Horton church in South Gloucestershire England arp. Photo by Adrian Pingstone, via Wikimedia Commons.

Map of the area.

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: WHITBY WOO!

This weekend Whitby is set to be invaded by hordes of ‘goths’ as it hosts one of its twice-yearly Goth Weekends (the other being in late April).  These interestingly attired folk, sometimes scary-looking but always genial, evidently regard Whitby as their spiritual home, and they lend a unique atmosphere to the streets and pubs of this picturesque Yorkshire harbour town. 

But why Whitby?  Well, a certain 19^th-century author called Bram Stoker probably has a lot to do with it.  His classic horror novel Dracula, published in 1897, starts off in continental Europe, but in chapters 6-8 the action moves to Whitby. Stoker stayed in a house on the West Cliff in 1890, and it was during this stay that the inspiration for Count Dracula took hold.  Stoker visited Whitby Library during his stay, where he studied a history book containing a reference to the name Dracula. 

In the novel, Dracula is shipwrecked off the coast of North Yorkshire on the Russian schooner Demeter as he makes his way from Varna to England. The approach of the Demeter is witnessed by a multitude of people gathered on the pier.  Certain among them describe  how “lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro”.  When the ship ran aground, “an immense dog sprang up on deck from below” – the dog in question being a manifestation of Dracula. 

Replica Endeavour pleasure boat entering Whitby Harbour - geograph.org.uk - 787533. Photo by derek dye, via Wikimedia Commons.

Mina Harker, the fiancée of Jonathan Harker, who has the unenviable task of bringing Dracula to England, describes Whitby Abbey as “a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits”.  She also tells of the legend of a ‘white lady’ who has been seen in one of the windows.  In the novel, Dracula is buried in St Mary’s Church graveyard.  Many visitors come looking for the grave, forgetting that it is a work of fiction.  However, visitors wanting to immerse themselves fully in the Whitby experience can always join one of the excellent ghost tours on offer.  They might also want to visit the Bram Stoker Memorial Seat, placed in an elevated position with a view which is allegedly identical to that which inspired the Whitby scenes in Dracula.  

Whitby - geograph.org.uk - 661437.  Photo by dennis smith, via Wikimedia Commons

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Apart from its spooky credentials, Whitby is famous for the quality of its fish and chips, and the most famous fish and chip restaurant in the town is The Magpie, although it has become something of a victim of its own success, with queues often stretching out into the street. Those who don’t like having to queue, however, have plenty of other alternatives to choose from, as there are several other exceptionally good fish and chip venues in the town. Best to ask a local for advice on where to go, although you’ll probably get as many different answers as people you ask. Apart from the aforementioned Abbey and the Captain Cook Memorial Museum, another activity not to be missed is to take one of boat trips which leave from the harbour, including sailings on a replica of Captain Cook’s HMS Endeavour. One of the commercial activities which used to take place out of Whitby was whaling, and there is a relic of that time in the form of the whale jaw bone arch on the West Cliff. Another product of the area is jet, a lustrous black mineral formed from the fossilized remains of trees from the Jurassic period, which can be found for sale in many of the shops mainly as jewellery.

Map of the area.