Dolphins, ghost dogs, hangings, gospel singing & a very ancient tree….?

Over coming weeks, we’ll be sharing all sorts of glimpses into Lichfield historic landscapes, snapped this summer all across the district, each with lush layers of legend, lore and mystery to unveil.

Tonight, we were up at Hanch, checking out a tree we’ve shared history and hunches about before – it’s a chestnut, said to be many centuries old, on the road towards Handsacre, tucked up behind the golf course at Seedy Mill, and in front of the grandeur of Hanch Hall.

We’ll come back to Hanch Hall itself another time (it’s where the dolphins come in!), with a deep dive down to its medieval roots, through crisis and chaos amidst the Civil War, and right up to local memories of the hall being opened up by candle light for locals just a few decades ago….

The tree itself is sooo intriguing, as LD Katie has shared stories about before. There are reports of ghost dogs prowling around its trunk, local folklore about folk being hanged from its branches, and people have mentioned gospels being preached from the site too. Way back in the 19th century, it was already thought to be at least 300 years old.

All that might seem a bit far fetched for a big old tree down a little country lane, but given the importance of the hall, that it used to mark an ancient parish boundary, and (our latest Hanch hunch), that the crossroads it’s on might date back over a 1000 years at least, all that folklore might have very solid roots indeed.

Or, like those ghost dogs of old, we might just be barking up the wrong tree…

John T