Discover: Folklore of the Broads

Black Shuck is an apparition of a huge black dog, who is said to prowl the countryside of Norfolk and Suffolk. In the Broads in Norfolk, there are tales of sightings from Reedham, Coltishall, Potter Heigham and it is said that the creature stalks the ruins of Burgh Castle. While some call it a terrible hell hound, others say it is harmless and protects lost travellers and lone women, but the legend of Shuck began in the market town of Bungay, Suffolk. Shuck is described as a big black shaggy dog with bared teeth and huge burning red eyes (or in some folk tales, just one eye).

Each year on the first weekend in August, visitors from far and wide flock to Bungay. For three days the whole town is gripped with Shuck fever that involves a costumed parade, music, puppetry, poetry and coracle racing, to commemorate the day that Black Shuck is said to have terrorised two Suffolk churches on 4 August 1577, during a terrible storm. 

On that fateful night, Shuck is said to have burst through the church doors at Bungay’s St Mary’s Church and killed a man and a boy before running into the night. As lightning hit the Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh, the steeple was struck and collapsed on the entire congregation. In the total darkness, and lit only by the lightning from above, the terrifying image of Shuck is said to have appeared. As it ran out of the church, Shuck left claw marks burnt onto the north door (known locally as the devil’s fingerprints) which can still be seen today at the church.

In her book Bogie Tales of East Anglia, Margaret Helen James describes “an uncomfortable sort of ghostly terror, in beast form, that haunts villages on the borders of the two counties [Norfolk and Suffolk] known as the ‘Hateful Thing’. 

“I allude to the churchyard or hell-beast. This charming creature generally takes the somewhat indefinite form of a ‘swoundling’, i.e. swooning shadow. Whenever it is met in any locality, it is a sign that some great and unusually horrible wickedness is about to be committed, or has just taken place there.”

Another dark tale is the story of the witch’s leg at the ruins of St Mary’s Church in East Somerton Village in Norfolk. 

The Church is said to have been ruined when, during the height of the witch trials that were sweeping Britain, a woman believed to be a witch was put on trial there and subsequently buried alive in the church.

It is said that she was buried in the woods and the church built around her to contain her evil, or that she was taken to the abandoned church by villagers and her grave dug on consecrated ground. 

According to legend, to enact her revenge she willed her wooden leg to sprout up as an oak tree and bring the church crashing down above it.

You can still visit the ruins today, tucked away in a mysterious woodland area in East Somerton. At twilight, it is said that visitors can speak to the witch beneath the earth if they circle her tree three times, gently whispering her name. 

Although this tale is folklore, it originates from a particularly brutal era in the region’s history. Between 1645 and 1647, around 250 women were brought before the authorities in East Anglia accused of witchcraft, and at least 100 people were executed, under the watch of the infamous witchfinder-general Matthew Hopkins. East Anglia reported the largest number of accusations that England had experienced in one place over such a short time. 

We can only speculate as to whether East Somerton’s witch was one of the accused.  

Jack o’Lanterns are strange ethereal lights that appear in the marsh after dark. Whether just a trick of the eye, or apparitions’ lights and ghosts, the long, misty nights in the Broads lend themselves well to such tales. 

In 1809, a man named Joseph Bexfield is said to have drowned in Thurlton Marsh after being led astray by a Jack o’Lantern. His ghost is said to still appear each August, trying to find his way home. 

Alderfen Broad was once said to be haunted by the ghost of a criminal named Heard, waving his lantern on misty evenings. His ghost was finally trapped in a bottle by three men reading the Bible aloud. 

If a mother or child falls sick in any of the isolated marsh cottages around Thurne, it is said that a ghostly lantern shines out at night from the top of Thurne Church tower in an attempt to summon the help of the monks of St. Benet’s Abbey.