Beast
The Gibbet's Black Dog
Where a witch-killer hung in chains, a hound with burning eyes still waits.
Private, don't visit
- What's there
- A private house, not open to visitors
- Legend from
- 1751
- Tone
- Chilling
You're nearing Gubblecote Cross, where a witch-hunter swung in chains in 1751, and where travellers later met a black dog with eyes like fire.
In April 1751 a mob seized Ruth Osborne and her husband, accused of witchcraft, and swam them in a pond at Long Marston, where Ruth died. The chimney sweep Thomas Colley, a ringleader, was convicted of her murder, hanged at Gubblecote Cross on 24 August 1751 and left hanging in chains. Long after the gibbet had rotted away, the spot was said to be haunted by a huge black dog. A village schoolmaster told of driving past by gig one night, seeing a flame on the roadside bank, then a gaunt, shaggy hound with blazing eyes lying in the road, which vanished like a shadow.