THE HONKEYMOON CAFE

Around Christmas ‘Old Ethel’ a bag lady, makes a regular appearance  at the bottom of  Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, at a time when such people were greeted with suspicion,  but was Old Ethel a witch?  A kind gesture from a child who knows no better, is rewarded and the benefit doesn’t stop there. Next to the Old Drum and Monkey is a building built around the same time and our village museum records it as being the home of the brewery owner when the pub itself was the brewery. In the past when water was unfit to drink, farm workers, particularly during harvest, would quench their thirst with small beer, a cheap low alcohol beverage. John Humby now occupies the house and has done so since his predecessor bought it over a hundred years ago. John’s family owns Shiplane Farm, land that once was part of Delamere Park. The farm is very successful and is now being run by John’s daughter. There are minor dynasties everywhere in the country and it is worth taking care to know who y...

To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose, in other words nothing lasts forever and no one.  Those who were masters have ceased to be, and those who were poor become less so, everybody’s going through changes, and everybody changes places, but the world goes on the same. Drive up the high street then just before the village shop on the right there’s a turning. It’s a winding lane that heads south of Shipston and eventually to a village called Shipston Delamere, referred to by those locals who have a sense of irony as ‘The Delly'. Two substantial stone pillars surmounted by finely carved eagles stand proudly as an entrance to - nothing but open fields. They are all that remain of the entrance to Delamere Park, once the seat of the Delamere family. Like many families their wealth was built on commerce and farming. The Delamere’s were traders and their ships travelled the oceans carrying herbs, spices and other exotic foodstuffs, hence the name, ’The Delli’. During ...

It could lead you to believe there is as many dead wandering the lanes and cottages  as there are those that appear in good health.  The Old Mill in which both Lucy and Mark Musgrave met their ends still creates much discussion as to whether both deaths were accidental, or ‘something else’. The something else being paranormal activity for which the mill had already a reputation. I can understand the caution over moving-in fearing that the presence of Lucy and Mark may still persist. One shouldn’t forget Diana of course, Mark’s first wife, who’s ghost, he claimed, was the cause of Lucy’s death. Then there was whatever existed there before the Musgrave’s moved in. If one prefers to believe in the supernatural then the Old Mill would seem a busy place if it’s ghosts you’re after. It has taken some time for the new owners to arrange a visit from a ‘house whisperer’, apparently it is better that they come recommended and they have gone to great lengths to find someone with any cred...

Michael Corrigan says he knows how to see 'the little people'  but it's not easy and you have to keep still, very still  with no more light than a lighted candle. A lane once made its way up to Kilnbury, an ancient hill fort where the earthworks are still prominent and from where the village, nestling as it does below, looks like a typical example of a rural idyll. The lane was never used for much even in its heyday but when a pair of farm workers cottages were built by it towards the end of the eighteen hundreds, some of the lane was at least destined to survive. Between the wars the cottages became uninhabited then in the fifties they were both sold and combined into one. Beyond the cottage the lane became a track and then the track became a footpath inaccessible to traffic. It may have been then that the cottage got its name, ‘Turnabout Cottage’ though for the last twenty years it been known by the locals as Corregan’s.  Michael Corregan, if he’s in the mood, will tell...