Read The Cretingham Murder Online
Authors: Sheila Hardy
The Cretingham Murder
T
HE
C
RETINGHAM
M
URDER
T
HE
C
RETINGHAM
M
URDER
S
HEILA
H
ARDY
Dedicated to Diana and Henry Mann
whose love of the past and curiosity to
know more led to this investigation
.
First published 1998
This edition published 2008
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire,
GL
5 2
QG
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© Sheila Hardy, 2008, 2013
The right of Sheila Hardy to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB
ISBN
978 0 7509 5259 0
Original typesetting by The History Press
CONTENTS
6. Friday–Sunday 7–9 October 1887
7. The Assizes, 15 November 1887
Appendix
: Members of the Inquest Jury
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I
wish to express my sincere thanks to the many people who have helped me build up the background to this case: Vic Llewellyn of The New Bell, Cretingham; the late Mrs Phyllis Burman; Mrs C. Ransome; Michael Brown; Alan Lettin; Neil Langridge; Mrs Wilda Woodland; A.A. Lovejoy; Beryl and Peter Smith; Julie Ashwell; Sarah Mitchell; Helen Vallier; Brenda Tracey; Rae Atkins (NZ); Michael Pinner; Peter Mays; Ann Hoole, Librarian of Framlingham College; Brian Martin, Magdalen College School; Robert Leon, archivist, St Luke’s Hospital; Rita Read, Haringey Museum & Archive Service, for details of Northumberland House;the helpful staff of the County Record Offices of Berkshire, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey and Wiltshire; Ilfracombe Museum; Portsmouth City Record Office; the PRO at Kew and the British Library newspapers.
And an extra special thank you to Mike Reynolds and Patricia Burnham who ‘dug deep’ into records on my behalf; Trish not only entered into my enthusiasm to find the elusive Harriet Louisa but has kept the search going.
FOREWORD
I
grew up in the village of Cretingham in the 1960s. Throughout my childhood, I heard older villagers talking about the terrible murder of the vicar which had happened so many years before. I believed the tales (fanciful or not?) that his spilled blood still stained the wooden floorboards of the bedroom at Cretingham House, where the awful deed had taken place. With each telling, the story became more and more grisly – not that my youthful imagination needed much prompting to run riot!
In 1998, I was honoured to be asked to write the foreword for Sheila Hardy’s original, limited edition of
The Cretingham Murder
. I am delighted to reprise my thoughts for this updated version, which will deservedly be reaching a wider audience.
For the past decade I have been privileged to have the role of Editor of the
East Anglian Daily Times
newspaper. There is, of course, a strong link between the newspaper and the murder which took place in Cretingham in 1887. This sensational occurrence was one of the newspaper’s biggest early stories and was reported in full, graphic detail in the days following the heinous crime. Far more detail than we would be allowed to use, or indeed would want to use, in these modern times!
This is indeed a dramatic tale in which the truth is every bit as compelling as the myths and legends which I heard during my childhood, and this time no youthful fantasies are required.
Terry Hunt
Editor,
East Anglian Daily Times
INTRODUCTION
I
n the late summer of 1887 carpenters Frank Dodd and William Woolnough were among the craftsmen putting the finishing touches to a hunting lodge of mansion-like proportions, close to the upper reaches of the river Alde in Suffolk.
William lived in the nearby village of Friston where Frank, who was an Essex man, had found lodgings – and a young woman called Elizabeth Ellen Gildersleeves – for the duration of his contract. As they worked sawing planks for floorboards, or hammering into place the pieces of good seasoned oak which would cover the tops of the columns that rose high from the ground floor to support the massive arched glass dome stretched above the first floor gallery, the thick leaded pencil, an essential tool of their trade, was never far from hand. Used mainly for marking where incisions should be made, they occasionally used it to leave messages, not just for each other but for those who would come after them. It takes very little imagination to reconstruct what led one of them to write on a handy plank, somewhat piously, ‘our poor heads wont ache when this is taken down. This ought to be a good warning to young men to keep away from the beer.’ Thick head or not, the handwriting is both steady and remarkably good, a testimony to the solid basic education of the period.
The men seem to have been very conscious of the fact that what they were building would be there long after they were dead and buried, for in another inscription they direct future craftsmen working on the lodge to seek them ‘among the moles’. The desire to leave one’s name for posterity appears to loom large among the company, for George Rackham of Snape and Bob James from Leiston both added their signatures to pieces of wood which would be hidden from contemporary eyes.
Not all the writings were of sombre aspect. Inspired on one occasion to break into rhyme, the verse they produced is far too lewd to be incorporated here! Pride in their work is contained in the words ‘This cornice was fixed October 8th 1887 by Frank Dodd of Chelmsford Essex and William Woolnough of Friston Suffolk.’
8 October was a Saturday and the two had had much to talk over during that week: news so gruesome that one of them had written the important message which was to provide the inspiration for this book.
Just over a hundred years later, in the late summer of 1996, Henry Mann, a carpenter from Peasenhall, was engaged in carrying out renovations to that isolated hunting lodge. Taking out the old boards, he suddenly found himself reading the words left by his long dead predecessors. Being the sensitive craftsman he is, he found himself forming a bond with them, unable simply to jettison these messages from the past into the waiting skip. One piece in particular caught his imagination. Written along the edge of a board were the words ‘A fearful murder’. Tantalizingly, a second board carried the same three words and no more, as if lack of space had led to the abandonment of the project. Undaunted, Henry scrutinized every board until at last he found the one which read ‘A fearful murder was committed the first day of this month (October 1887) at Cretingham.A curate (Revd Cooper) cut the vicar’s throat at 12 o’clock at night. He stands committed for trial.’
Coming from Peasenhall where even today every villager knows the story of the murder of Rose Harsent, just as every Suffolk resident has heard of Maria Marten’s murder in the Red Barn, Henry wondered why he had never come across an account of this ‘fearful’ murder. Following his discovery, Henry and his wife, Diana, came to a talk I gave in Saxmundham. Their simple question – could I verify the statement on a piece of wood – started me off on a long, fascinating, and at times frustratingly infuriating quest to find the background to and perhaps the truth of a little known but quite bizarre Suffolk story.
1
BACKGROUND TO THE
CASE
The Revd Farley
When the Revd Mr William Meymott Farley was appointed to the living of Cretingham in 1863, there was no house available in the village considered suitable for a gentleman and his family. So, with the aid of a mortgage of £300 from Queen Anne’s Bounty, a clerical building fund, plans were promptly put into place to build a new parsonage. We have come to expect to find the large Victorian village vicarage situated close to the church it served but as this was not feasible in Cretingham, the new house was set in pleasant surroundings on the approach to the village on the Otley road. Until the house was ready, the Farleys lived in the nearby village of Brandeston, the vicar commuting to attend his parishioners.
In his late forties, Farley had been a clergyman for twenty-three years, having trained at St Bee’s, a theological college noted for its advancement of the Evangelical cause in the Church of England. In entering the Church he was following a family tradition, his father having held the perpetual curacy of Broad Town in Wiltshire.
The vicarage at Cretingham, from a painting by Frederick Farley, 1875
. (Author’s collection)
The young man, having served his apprenticeship acting as curate in two parishes in Lancashire, was given better paid employment at Baldock in Hertfordshire in 1841, which had enabled him to embark on marriage the previous year and later, the responsibilities of fatherhood. His firstborn, a son called Frederick, marks this period in his father’s career by bearing Baldock as his second name. A curacy in Saffron Walden provided extra income but by 1845 William had been appointed to the living of Haddenham in Buckinghamshire and another son, Thomas and a daughter, Ada were added to the family.
In 1848 Mrs Farley died. The following year, William married Miss Susannah May who was to provide him with two further sons, William and Arthur and two daughters, Susannah and Elizabeth.