Three Strange and Mysterious Stories from Suffolk

Tales of liminal spaces and thin places from a very curious county

After finishing my pet-sit in Speyside in the remote Scottish Highlands, I travelled over 500 miles to a charmingly rustic part of Suffolk in England.

Suffolk is a flat, largely rural county of farmlands and beaches. It’s filled with storybook place names that are a cross between Enid Blyton and The Hobbit: Pear Tree Farm, Pippin Cottage, Bobbit’s Lane and the like. I’m pet-sitting at a huge, newly built property on the edge of a village, surrounded by horse paddocks and soft, ripe wheat fields. The house is airy and serene, all long windows and blonde wood, with a total of seven bedrooms (if I counted right).

I’m taking care of two sweet gun dogs — ironically, one is terrified of bangs! Every day on our walks, the dogs disappear into the nearby wheat field, their golden coats indistinguishable from the crops — yet I can usually tell where they are by the startled pheasants flapping away. At night, I sit on the long sun terrace while the sky turns lemon, marmalade and apricot (Suffolk sunsets are famously stunning).

Suffolk is filled with strange stories

Needless to say, I’ve found myself captivated by this lovely county. And as I tend to connect with places through their stories, I’ve been exploring Suffolk legends and folklore. It turns out that beneath its surface of tea and biscuits tranquillity, this is a very curious county indeed.

Because if the tales told over the centuries are true, then time and space are a little, well, wonky here. Time slips, spectral cities, strange visitors from elsewhere — they all show up in local folklore and legends. Do I believe in all this? I’d like to, although generally, I’m one part fantasist and one part rationalist.

But I do like the notion of time not always being a hard, relentless tunnel that we’re hurtled through in constant forward motion. I like the idea of it sometimes being pliable and porous — and perhaps even a little playful. Which is why I’m intrigued by the idea that certain parts of the world, such as Suffolk, might have a more fluid relationship with the seemingly immutable rules of reality.

Does Suffolk have “thin places”?

Celts had a term for locations like these, calling them “thin places”. For early medieval Celtic Christians, thin places weren’t just mysterious, they were sacred spaces where the veil between heaven and earth was more permeable.

And judging by local lore, it’s possible that Suffolk has various pockets of “thinness”. So I’m going to share three strange stories with you from this uncanny English county: the Rougham mirage, the lost city of Dunwich, and the Green Children of Woolpit.

Ad whether you believe them or not, they’re certainly intriguing…

The Rougham mirage — Suffolk’s vanishing mansion

Georgian house, Burtywiki, Wikimedia Commons

For over 150 years, numerous people have claimed to have seen a captivating mansion on the outskirts of Rougham village in Suffolk — yet no such mansion exists. Known as the Rougham house or Rougham mirage, most people describe it as being an idyllic red-brick Georgian property sitting behind wrought iron gates and surrounded by gardens.

The house usually appears in a field in front of Colville's Grove. Oddly, at least a couple of sightings have been from visitors or newcomers to the village, who claimed never to have heard of the Rougham house before. If we’re to take their word for it then these stories are pretty hard to explain.

The first reported sighting was on a summer afternoon in 1860. A local man named Robert Palfrey was making a haystack when a large red-brick Georgian house suddenly appeared across the field, its gardens in full bloom. Although it was a June evening, the air was filled with a sudden chill. When Robert went back later to find the house, it was gone.

Interestingly, his great-grandson James Cobbald also claimed to have seen the house in around 1908. James had previously been a sceptic about the Rougham house — at age 11, a village girl told him she’d seen it and he’d laughed at her. Yet years later, he was to change his mind.

One day in June, James was out driving in his pony and trap with his friend George Waylett when the air became cold around them and the pony reared in fear, throwing James to the ground. The two friends then saw a Georgian mansion in a previously empty field, before it was swallowed up by mist and disappeared. George told his friend that it was the third time he‘d seen the house.

More recorded sightings of the Rougham house followed in the 1920s, 40s, 70s and 90s. Supposedly, other locals have seen it over the years too. The most recent recorded appearance was in 2007 when Jean Bartram was visiting the village with her husband. As they drove near Colville's Grove, Jean was struck by the sight of a beautiful red-brick mansion and suggested they visit it later. But on their way back, it was no longer there. Unsettled, she confessed to a friend that she had seen something strange in Rougham. “Oh, you haven't seen the ghost house, have you?" she asked.

Interestingly, the Rougham mirage also seems to change location at times and not all of the descriptions match. Also, old maps do show records of a grand house in Rougham built during the Georgian era and demolished in the early 1800s, before the sightings began. A century and a half after it first appeared, Rougham’s vanishing mansion is one of Suffolk’s most haunting mysteries.

Is the Rougham mirage an echo of a demolished house? I’m not sure. Because if so, then surely the first person who saw it in 1860 would have known that a Georgian manor had previously stood in the same spot. Instead, I wonder if it’s an “almost-house” — a perfect property that someone longed for and imagined and planned, but somehow, never got built. Yet the idea of it was so strong that it lingered, flickering in and out of reality.

In this sense, the Rougham Mirage might be the ghost of a lost dream. And haven’t we all been haunted by one of those? But perhaps one day, someone will finally build it. Maybe the Rougham house is a vision of the future, not the past.

Dunwich — Suffolk’s lost underwater city

Coastal erosion in Suffolk, David Merrett, Flickr

In medieval times, Dunwich was a thriving Suffolk coastal town and England’s main port. It was a seat of bishops, had eight churches and even rivalled London in significance. Yet today, most of Dunwich lies deep below the ocean. In the 13th and 14th centuries, a series of great storms gradually obliterated the town, destroying some homes and swallowing others into the sea.

In 1286, the local monastery was swept away by waves and in 1347, around 400 houses followed it to a salty crypt. In the early 20th century, the last of Dunwich’s eight churches suffered the same fate. Now all that remains of the major port is a small seaside village, while the lost underwater town is dubbed ‘Britain’s Atlantis’ and ‘Britain’s Lost City’.

Yet Dunwich may have left a lingering echo. It’s claimed that during late-night storms, fishermen have heard the bells of the old Dunwich church ringing — even though those are now barnacled and rotten beneath the waters. No wonder novelist Ester Freud described Dunwich as a “strange liminal space between land and sea”. The lost town also inspired British gothic writers M.R. James and H.P Lovecraft.

What does the story of the Dunwich bells tell us? Maybe that the past is never really gone. Its church spires might be covered in seaweed, its relics and treasures nibbled away to nothing by fishes, its lovers lost forever to the waters, yet the past can still ring out to us. And we can honour it by pausing to listen.

The Green Children of Woolpit

Woolpit village sign, Rod Bacon, Wikimedia Commons

Likely you’ve heard the legend of the Green Children before but it would feel wrong to leave it out. The story takes place in the 12th century in the village of Woolpit (interestingly, just under five miles from Rougham). And while it might sound pretty implausible, there are written records of the event.

Accounts vary but here’s the gist: on a summer’s day during harvest time, two strange children, a sister and brother, appeared beside one of the village’s wolf pits (hence the name Woolpit). They spoke an unknown language, wore odd clothes and, most strikingly of all, had green skin. They were taken in by a local gentleman, Sir Richard de Calne of Wyke, who sheltered them in his manor house.

For the first few days, the children refused all food, apart from green beans eaten straight out of the ground. Gradually, the green tone faded from their skin, yet the boy was sickly and died a little while after arriving. The girl survived and after learning English, shared a very peculiar tale.

She claimed that she and her brother were from a place called St. Martin’s Land, an underground region of perpetual twilight where everything and everyone was green. The girl said that in St. Martin’s Land, you could see another, luminous country in the distance, divided from them by a wide river.

In one account the brother and sister were tending to their father’s flock when they heard bells chiming and were so enchanted by the sound that they followed it, arriving in Woolpit (some believe that the bells came from the nearby Bury St. Edmunds Abbey, a popular site for pilgrims).

In another account, the children had been herding their father’s cattle and followed some of the cows into a cave, where they got lost. Again, they heard the sound of bells and were guided out of the tunnels, somehow finding themselves in the village. Whatever the real version, the story of the Green Children was shared for centuries, with many people believing that they were lost visitors from fairyland.

A theory about the Green Children of Woolpit

Yet there’s another, much more plausible explanation. It’s thought that the children might have been from a family of Flemish immigrants, an ethnic group that was being persecuted and killed in Suffolk at that time. This would explain their strange clothes and unknown tongue.

The family might have been hiding out in woods or caves by day, which explains why the girl claims that they never saw the sun. Also, if the children were suffering from anaemia due to malnutrition, this could have created a greenish-yellow skin tone.

And “St. Martin’s Land”? There is a town called Fornham St. Martin not far from Woolpit, divided from the village by the River Lark — which might explain the girl’s story of the river. It was also a place where Flemish people were persecuted.

Or maybe the Green Children did come from a strange twilight world, a place that the abbey’s atmospheric church bells somehow managed to reach. And in a sense, isn’t that what a good story does too — chimes to us, draws us out of drudgery and gloom, and urges us to follow it into a luminous new land?

Suffolk is a shimmering, glimmering mystery

What are we to make of these strange Suffolk stories? Personally, I like to believe in thin places and sacred spaces, in liminal zones and pockets of porousness. I like to think that maybe the past isn’t always lost to us but can reach out a hand and pull us towards it. That other realms are just a tear in the veil away.

And I like to think that sometimes, we’re just a footstep away from pure enchantment. That reality isn’t always stubbornly solid, that there can be slippage and mystery too.

What do you think of these stories? Any theories? I’d love to know! (I’d also like to hear from anyone who lives in or near Rougham).

The Beckoning is written by a wandering Scottish writer who is currently travelling across the UK as a full-time house-sitter. I hope that you’ll join me on the journey.

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