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The legend Only a few years after Queen Victoria came to the throne, a young woman arrived late one afternoon in Kidsgrove. She climbed down from the cart which had brought her, and thanked the driver for his kindness as he handed down the two trunks which formed her luggage, she stood tiredly by her goods wondering what she should do next. She had already travelled a long distance from Liverpool and had a longer distance to travel yet. She had been married in Liverpool, but her husband had not been able to find work there and had gone to London. She remained at her lodgings paying for her keep by dressmaking. He had only gone a few weeks before, in early June, she had received a letter full of good news. He had found work and accommodation, and more importantly, was able to enclose money, a guinea, for her to come and join him. There was a fast and regular stage coach service from Liverpool to London, but the money was not enough to pay the fare. So, starting with a helpful neighbour who was travelling part of the way, she had set off with her two trunks of clothes and household goods, hoping to obtain lifts where possible and so save part of the fare for food. Though the roads were bad they were busy: crowded with people going to local towns and markets driving sheep or pigs to be sold, businessmen on horseback, and everywhere trains of packhorses carrying materials to the factories. She had started at first light; and now as the afternoon shadows lenghtened, was set down in Kidsgrove. For a while she stood by the road they had come along, asking if anyone journeying towards Stoke or further could take her. But no, people were thinking more of home than travelling further. However, miners were comming from their black and dusty toll at Maryhill Colliery, and heading for the nearby Canal Tavern to wet their parched throats before getting home. Two of them offered to carry her luggage to the Tavern for her. She could ask there they suggested, or maybe she could find a boat to travel further on. Theie was a two hour shift night and day through the Harecastle Tunnel. It were so black in there it didn't matter if it were morning or midnight. So she went to the pub and made inquires. Most of the boatmen had tied up for the night, but one of the girls behind the bar offered to keep an eye on her two trunks while she went along the tow path to the canal basin to inquire if any boats were setting out that evening. Thankfully she walked over the still quite new bridge over the Macclesfield Canal and round the corner towards the two canal tunnels. Boats were tied at every mooring ring but if there were anyonne on board their days work was over. The smell of boiled meat and potatoes drifted tantalisingly from several cabins. Her hopes fell as she neared the tunnel entrances, the lightless eyes of the gloomy basin, overshadowed by tall trees and hedges. She was affected too by the livid orange-brown colour of the water; she was used to gutter water stained by household refuse, but had never seen a stream dyed that ominous shade. But then, hard by the entrances, three men offered to take her on, right down as far as London, and for only sixteen shillings. They seemed cheerful and friendly, though she only came to suspect later that this might have been because they had been sampling their cargo, wines and spirits bound for the big city. However, they willingly offered to accompany her back to the Canal Tavern, two to carry her luggage, and one to fetch their barge horse, which was stabled at the Blue Bell. All three however, called in at the Tavern, for "something to warm us up". They offered to buy her a drink. It'll warm you up too Missus. It's chill under 'Arecastle". She refused but the men had a pint each and then the two who remained had another while the third was fetching the horse. When they came to pick up the trunks, the boat Captain, staggering rather, commented on how heavy they were. "There's little of value in them", the woman replied hastily. By now dusk had fallen and the men were swearing as they tried to avoid the many tow ropes looped across the path, dangerous as snakes in the darkness. The woman was glad when they reached the boat. As the two crew prepared to cast off the third appeared leading an old white horse, spoke briefly then slowly plodded away up the slope by the side of the tunnels, to walk over the hill to Chatterly by what was coming to be known as th'boat-horse road. The two remaining cast off and the heavy boat slowly glided over the sickly, rust-coloured water, towards the low, looming entrance of Brindley's tunnel. They quickly spread out bargeboards and sacks to rest their sholders on as they legged through the miles of tunnel. "You'll have to get in th' cabin", said one, as she stumbled in the cramped cockpit, trying to keep out of their way. "Arecastle's damp. You'll spoil your dress. And it's a long tunnel - almost two mile - you'll be under it a long while". Unexpectedly , the other bargee chuckled. She shivered and had hardly time to look back at the silent basin, lit only by lanterns in the cabins of boats where folk were still awake, their reflections sliding to and fro on the ripples of their wake. Abruptly darkness closed down like a velvet hood. The candle lamp up at the bow of the vessel was hardly visible from its stern. Thus three people entered the dark vain of tunnel; two miles of darkness, two miles of the chill dropping of water from the roof, of the occasional rush of side streams pouring from dark side-passages, two miles of step-over-step walking on the scarred tunnel walls. No-one would hear if the liquid noises of their slow progress were added urgent whispers, a womans alarmed questionings, heavy trampings, drunken shouts, fearful screams, an echoing splash, watery struggles over a babble of curses, and a culminating cry of agony accompanied by the harsh grating of an unsteered boat against the rough walls, a cry cut off sharply and followed by urgent, panicky whispers. But out of the Chatterly mouth of the Harecastle, only two people glided to rejoin their colleague and harness up the patient white horse. It was several weeks later that the policeman came down from Tunstall enquiring after a missing woman. There was no local police station - the Reverend Wade maintaining that he could deal with what few criminals there were in Kidsgrove. After calling at the Vicarage to announce his presence, the policeman began to tour the pubs enquiring about a woman with a Liverpool accent. It seemed that the woman's husband had received a letter telling him she was setting out for London, but she had never arrived. She had been tracked along the roads towards the Potteries, but after that there was no trace. Once the policeman reached the Canal Tavern it wasn't long before people remembered the woman with the two trunks - and the three bargees who had been seen with her. A search of the tunnel was suggested, foul play by now being suspected, and a boat was found to carry the policeman and several curious helpers. The hunt took longer than might have been expected, for inside the tunnel there were offshoots to the Telford Tunnel alongside, as well as channels were coal had been mined from the seams under Harecastle. Eventually they came to the coal landing stage called Gillbert's Hole. Here one of the men climbed off the boat with the policeman and they clambered away into the darkness, candles in hand. They had only searched a short distance before something pale showed in the darkness ahead. The policeman went forward to examine it. "Yes it's her", he reported grimly, and then cried out in shock, the candle jerking and flickering in his hand. It was the body of a young woman, but a body with no head. The news of the murder was quickly carried far and wide. It went along the canal on horseback, carried from one police force to another, and it was not long before the men were traced. They were held in Stafford Gaol, two of them on trial for murder, the third for being an accessory. The motive was said to be robbery, for with her body were found two trunks, their pitiful contents rifled through in search of non-existent valuables. The men had found nothing; all they had gaind from thir dark drunken attack was the remains of the single guinea the woman's husband had supplied, that, and a rope's end. The third man was lucky to receive only only a sentence of transportation to Australia. And that, once the shock had worn off, and all the details of the crime and the punishments had been discussed in all the local pubs and over back yard walls, would seem to be the end of the story. The busy life of Kidsgrove and the canals went on. Except that sometime afterwards, and at intervals ever since, people working late in the gloomy basin and the tunnel mouths, or walking along the shadowy course of Boathorse Road, saw, or said they saw, the figure of a woman, headless and outlined in an unearthly light, and sometimes screaming and crying, rushing past them and into the darkness. Or less fearsomely, but still unnerving, an old patient white horse would soundlessly pass, and then disappear. People began to talk of the "Kitcrew Buggat" because, a few days after one of these apparations, there would be news of an accident in a nearby mine - someone would be killed, or dreadfully injured - or else a boatman would fall into a deep lock and be drowned. The sinister stories spread, like ripples on the rust-coloured canal. People became wary of venturing alone at night under the trees that outlined the road to BathPool and Acres Nook. Boatmen did not willingly tie up too near the tunnel mouths in the evenings. The town of Kidsgrove grew, the ironworks at Birchenwood expanded, the mines produced more coal, the railways came, a bustling town of shops and services grew up to supply these workers. But for a hundred years and more, strangers arriving in the town, especially on narrowboats, were warned about the canal basin by the shrill voices of the town's children: "Dunna go down there at night - Kikroo Bugget'll get ya!" |
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