Black Vaughan

Herefordshire is rich in ghosts. You can’t move for them. But, alas, you will no longer be bothered by Black Vaughan of Hergest Court. His spirit has, fortunately or unfortunately, been laid—or has it?

The original Black Vaughan was reputedly a fierce and brave knight who died at the Battle of Banbury in 1469. His effigy is still to be seen in the Vaughan chapel in St Mary's Church, Kington.  Effigy or not, his spirit lives on in local legends that over the centuries grew in the telling. 

One story has it that the brave knight was decapitated at Banbury, but as his head bounced across the blood-soaked field, his faithful black hound took it in his jaws and carried it all the way home to Hergest Court over 100 miles away. (2hrs 6 minutes along the motorway)

Hergest Ridge

Kington

Headless or not, Sir Thomas knew no rest and over the centuries became ever more wicked, coming back ‘stronger and stronger.’ Stories tell of how Black Vaughan began appearing in broad daylight, upsetting farmers and their heavily laden wagons. He would frighten their wives jumping up behind them as they rode to market, and sometimes assume the form of a large bluebottle in order to ‘torment the horses.’ 

So powerful did he become, that on one occasion he took on the shape of a bull and charged into the local church. Enough was enough, the final straw perhaps. Black Vaughan had to be stopped. As one old man put it:

“So, they got twelve parsons with twelve candles to wait in the church to try and read him down into a silver snuff box. For, we have all got a sperrit something like a spark inside we, an a sperrit can go large or small, even into a snuff box.” To make the rite even more potent they had with them a woman with a new-born baby, its purity and innocence adding power to the exorcism:

“Well, they read, but it was no use; they were all afraid, and all their candles went out but one. The parson as held that candle had a stout heart, and he feared no man nor sperrit. He called out ‘Vaughan, why art thou so fierce?’

 ‘I was fierce when I was a man, but fiercer now, for I am a devil!’ was the answer. But nothing could dismay the stout-hearted parson…He read and read, and when Vaughan felt himself going down and down and down, till the snuff box was nearly shut, he asked Vaughan, ‘where wilt thou be laid?’ The spirit answered ‘Anywhere, but not in the Red Sea.’   (Don't ask)

“So, they shut the box and took him and buried him for a thousand years in Hergest pool, in the wood with a big stone on top of him. But the time is nearly up.”

It’s a great story spoilt only by the fact that you have the same variant in other different stories of laying a troublesome ghost to rest.* Spoilt also by the fact that irrespective of the snuff box, Black Vaughan’s ghost lingers still—along with his fierce and terrible hound. No snuff box for him. It is said that even Vaughan’s descendants feared the hound as a harbinger of death, and for some, it continues to haunt the area.

Black Vaughan, himself left two footprints under an oak tree where he’d stand and admire his deer. The footprints could still be seen until quite recent times, for no grass would grow there on account of the man’s wickedness. When, eventually, the oak tree was chopped down, the woodsman responsible ended his days in a lunatic asylum. To this day, “Local people around Kington take the stories of the ghost of Black Vaughan, and his black dog as more than just legend.” (BBC’s Hereford and Worcester website 2004) 

*See a previous post recounting the demise of the wicked Sir Lawrence Tanfield