1. The Ghost of Lady Bennet Words and Music by Kevin Adams
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Lady Grace Bennet, widow of Sir Simon Bennet and mother of the Countess of Salisbury was murdered in Calverton Manor Farm House in 1694 by a ‘butcher of Stoney-Stratford’. The murderer, Adam Barnes was subsequently hanged from the Gibbet Oak at the end of Gib Lane, a track running from Calverton Church up to Watling Street at Galley Hill. There are still incised graffiti on stones set into the rear boundary wall bearing a hangman image.[1]
The full story of the murder is recounted by John Taylor[2] where he also describes how Lady Bennet had been ‘widely disliked for her mean and covetous ways (and) had anyone found gathering firewood on her land severely beaten.’ She would also neglect to pay her poor rates and was ‘frequently hauled before the Justices at the Quarter Session.’ The local community had much to dislike about her and her miserliness: ‘Being a miserable, covetous, and wretched person, she lived by herself… being supposed to have great store of money.’ John Taylor adds the gruesome account of an eyewitness, made soon after the execution: ‘Celia Fiennes, a lady famed for her 17th century travels throughout England on a donkey, (passed) 'the rich Mrs Bennet's House remarkable for her coveteousness which was the cause of her death… her treasures tempted a Butcher to cut her throate, who hangs in chains just against her house.' Dick Webb, who lived and worked on Calverton Manor Farm from the 1930s said: ‘I did go once up into the big attic at the top with Harold West and he said that there was a bloodstain on the floor there - where that woman was killed. Whether he was having me on I don’t know. But it didn’t bother me. Just one of those things.’ It did bother Richard Fountaine who is the little boy in the song and whose father inherited the estate in 1950: ‘I moved there when I was nine. It was not a house that I enjoyed sleeping in on my own. I found it quite frightening. Oh, it’s a frightening place. Lady Bennet haunts it…’ Such foreboding was exacerbated when a red-stained stone defied all attempts to clean it: ‘However, when the stone was eventually taken up, a natural red vein was found to run right through it!’ John Taylor Inspired by the research on Calverton Manor Farm in 2011 for Living Archive’s Radio Ballad The Horse and the Tractor, this song was ultimately released on Kevin Adams’ album, Winternight[3] in 2017. [1] Information from Paul Woodfield and David Muston in Calverton Manor Farm: a century of memories by Marion Hill pub LAMK 2011. This and The Horse and the Tractor are available from www.livingarchive.org.uk [2] See Lady Grace Bennett - butchered by the butcher (mkheritage.co.uk) [3] A download of the performance is supplied on this webpage from the album Winternight with composer Kevin Adams as the lead singer and producer. A link is also provided from this album - The Ghost of Lady Bennet | Kevin Adams (bandcamp.com) . |
Calverton Manor House
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