The Horsley Stone legend revealed.

I have previously written about the legend surrounding the mysterious Horsley Stone which can be found in the Coombes brook which runs through the Spirithole Hole woods and can be found in the Coombes valley in the county of Staffordshire.

To refresh your memory regarding the legend I have reproduced the story which is as follows:

In an area of the valley known as the Devils hole with the Coombes brook still running through it, can be found a large rock which is split in two, this is known as the Horsley Stone and the story attached to it is as follows; Many years ago there were two brothers whose surname was Horsley, one was a Doctor and the other one was a Lawyer, both men fell in love with their Housekeeper, and when their Mother died the Doctor decided that he would poison his Brother, thus allowing him to have the Housekeeper to himself. According to one account the Doctor put his Brother’s body in the stream and rolled a large boulder on top of it to conceal it, another account states that the body was burnt in an oven, however the one thing that local people were sure of is that the Brother’s spirit refused to rest and that it roamed the area scaring people.

It is easy just to dismiss this as some old folktale, however I decided to do some research into the story and was suprised to find that there did indeed seem to be some truth to the tale. I was able to find out through research that the two brothers lived close to the Coombes valley at a place called Crowholt farm, and if you look at the google map which I’ve reproduced you will see that as the crow flies (excuse the pun) it is quite close to Coombes valley making it convenient to dispose of a dead body.

So now we have a good idea where the murder took place and also where the body was taken too and concealed, we now look at the two brothers. Although I have been unable to discover any information regarding the Horsley brother who was a Doctor, I have been able to uncover information regarding John Horsley who was baptised St Edwards Church in the nearby town of Leek. The following document is a record of his baptism in the year 1650.

So we are able to establish that these two brothers did in fact live locally too the Coombes valley and if the story is correct the one brother who remains unamed and who was a Doctor, would probably have had access to poisons, which if the story is true, he went on to poison his brother John in a fit of jealousy over their Housekeeper. The following document records John Horsley’s burial at St Edwards Church in Leek in 1695 and also reveals that he was in fact a Lawyer/Attorney.

As to the story regarding the spirit of John Horsley entering a bird I tend to put this down to an overactive imagination by the locals. It may be the case that the locals saw a bird which they were not familiar with, and which had an unusual call. The Coombes valley attracts a few rare birds each year from abroad, it may be the case that the locals fabricated the story around a sighting of a bird that was visiting at the time and they were unfamiliar with.

I came across this extract in an archive which puts a John Horsley in the right area and also the right time frame.