The Lulworth Triangle |06 February 2016

For anyone who has enjoyed the astonishing insights of Seychelles so eloquently depicted in Glynn Burridge's book 'VOICES from a corner of Eden' may also enjoy 'The Lulworth Triangle'. This timeinvolving Jim's pirating ancestors of the 16th and 17th centuries, originating from Pill in South West England, an isolated island type community; considered by outsiders to be only inhabited by savages and cannibals. To venture there was a one way dinner ticket.

The author’s childhood origins were also cut off from the rest of the world; this being East Lulworth, a Catholic stronghold where three-quarters of the village were half-drunk on Popery. To the south lay the Purbeck hills rising majestically before the English Channel, a vast expanse of sea that often accommodated stray missiles from the Army Tank Range, together with a world of abandoned farms, the deserted village of Tyneham and the Abbey of Our Lady & St. Susan. While to the north the village was embraced by extensive woodlands and heaths, to the west lay the enormous 550 acre Lulworth Castle Park surrounded by 5 miles of walling. The castle being the seat of the Weld family just until 1929, when tragically the castle was gutted by fire. The east consisted of yet even more tank ranges, broken up by quarries.

East Lulworth due to its history of piracy and its latter day army ranges has always been an insular community with its ancient landscape of magically imbued pagan stone circles and religious edifices, which sometimes struck the fear of God into people’s hearts.

At other times it was the fear of the devil that was struck into the villagers’ hearts as depicted here in this true story:  for in our day there was the ingenious ‘Will-o’-the-wisp’ or perhaps more accurately the ‘Wisp-o’-the-will’ tale that was still told in East Lulworth of Peter. His uncle had made him sole heir to all his property, so when he passed away, all his worldly goods belonged to Peter. Although moderate throughout his years, the Uncle’s property had become quite considerable during his lifetime by his economy of habit and frugal lifestyle. These were gifts from the heavens for grieving Peter, a Catholic labourer in dire straits attempting to bring up 11 kids on next to nothing in the late 1700s. However, other potential beneficiaries in the family were most unhappy about the inheritance, and were giving Peter grief and threatened to dispute the will. This only seemed to wake up the dead, especially Peter’s uncle from the other side, and it was not long before supernatural happenings abounded, which had all the superstitious locals in a dreadful state of terror and anxiety. Chatter-Wumps were afraid to go out alone after sunset and candles burned in all the rooms to discourage the shadows. The local rumour mill ran in overdrive turning out all sorts of anecdotes regarding Peter’s haunted cottage, principally involving malevolent hobgoblins, mischievous elves and the prince of darkness. Don’t forget, this was back in the heyday of the horse, so rumours fair galloped around. Such an event as this in a town would only affect a small percentage of the people; but in a village such as ours, the percentages gets traumatically reversed. The lanes around the village became deserted at night, and the villagers suffered from disturbed or sleepless nights due in part to night-time sounds of bump, the odd dump, the familiar hump and the unfamiliar wump, and the other part was attributable to their own fertile imaginations. So one day, the ever willing Peter invited them to witness one night after sunset, these phenomenons of inexplicably eerie knockings and groaning sounds. Had there been a candle in the bedroom, some of the visitors may have spotted the little devils dancing in the middle of Peter’s eyes; but this being night time these went unobserved.

One brave man undertook to sit by the dead uncle’s bed. When all of a sudden, he was hit upon the head, with such force that he fell all the way down the stairs. As fast as he could lay his feet back on the ground, he was off, quicker than a firecracker, in order to escape this horrifying abode of devilish antics. All this happened in the twinkling of a bedpost and he now took off as fast as his legs would carry him in the direction of the clay pit with its blazing brick kiln, a fire never quenched in the production of bricks; only to come across one of the most terrifying sights ever known to man, the ultimate horror. For there in the flames, waiting for him with an enormous and satisfying sickly grin, was Old Nick himself. As the flames licked around the kiln’s entrance, he could not even discern the tops of the horns, for they appeared to be lost, penetrating the night sky, way out of the firelight’s reach. The poor chap turned away, screaming, only to fall into a pit of wet clay, now certainly bricking himself in the process, and certainly with absolutely no intention of looking back. He now found himself slipping and sliding into the pit, rapidly going down while trying to go up, floundering like a man about to be possessed, because he was. In the end, driven by a force of desperation beyond compare, believing that this could be the dark angel’s very own bottomless pit, he managed to drag himself out of this hell-hole. He was caked from head to toe in wet clay, ready to jump out of the frying pan into the fire, notwithstanding that events were going from bad to worse as he was now inextricably caught between the devil itself, and that horrifying abode which harboured the devil’s antics. What should he do? He was petrified of the former just as he was petrified of the latter. His petrified mind chose possibly the lesser of two evils, and he turned without much hesitation back the way he had come, towards the cottage. By this time there was a serious gathering of meddlesome onlookers outside the cottage, flibbertigibbets every one of them, who possessed eyes for seeing, but not much grey matter for thinking, and their thinking ability was severely tested and surpassed, when they hearkened on hearing the inexplicable blood curdling screams rendering the night air, and a deathly cold chill permeated their spines. Even worse, they too now found themselves witnesses to a most terrible sight; of eyes possessed and a set of unrestrained jabbering teeth emerging from the darkness, immediately followed by the most terrifying, ghastly pale and animated apparition ever; a sickly looking corpse which appeared to disintegrate and disembody itself before them, as it oozed and squirted body fluids everywhere. This unknown spectre was heading directly for them, out of the shadows like a bolt from the blue. These flighty gossipers panicked, looked up for their saviour, turned heels and headed homewards as fast as their faithful catholic legs would carry them. By the time they arrived at home, they then looked down, and realised that their two-timing legs were shaking like autumn leaves in the wind, with knees a-knocking, and teeth a-chattering as they hurriedly bolted doors behind them.

It was to be the writer John Fitzgerald Pennie who finally exposed that all the scratching, groans, and thumps had been caused by a boy hidden in the bed. He thereby exposed a brilliant plot, a plot which had, without a shadow of doubt, taken the relatives’ minds off the will business, and once uncovered relieved the villagers from their nocturnal terrors. What Pennie tantalizingly failed to reveal, was the location of The Inauguration Stone of Celtic Kings that he claimed to have discovered and which may have formed part of the missing stone circle situated between East Lulworth and Povington.

So here is a book where the pirates venture into Seychelles waters and where often facts surpass fiction. A short video featuring an 'AIR SEYCHELLES' medieval greenwood rocket is available by the same title on You Tube and the fully illustrated book is available from any of the Antigone shops.

By Jim Warren