Gory stories from Stone’s past for Halloween

Here are some historical gory stories and ghostly goings-on from Philip Leason, the chairman of Stone Historical Society, to mark Halloween. Don’t have nightmares!

Stone man buried alive in 1781…

Over the centuries one of the worst fears that people have had is that of being buried alive. Some Victorians were so scared that they went to great lengths to make sure they did not suffer such a fate. However, back in 1781 it was a fate that happened to a young man from Stone.

Thomas Meakyn was born in the small village of Rushton Spencer in the Staffordshire Moorlands. He left there to seek work and came to Stone where he found work as a house-boy and groom for an apothecary.

Thomas was apparently a popular person in the town and could often be seen exercising his master’s horses. Unfortunately his master’s daughter fell in love with Thomas and despite his attempts to reject her advances her infatuation grew. The romance became the talk of the town and it soon became apparent that his master would become aware of it.

Thomas was a healthy young man and there was disbelief when he suddenly died and was buried very quickly in St. Michael’s churchyard. The death was very convenient to his master as it resolved the problem of the romance between his daughter and Thomas.

One can imagine that rumours started to circulate and people started to speculate regarding Thomas’s death. However the months passed by and people started to forget about the circumstances of the death until a strange thing happened. A pony that Thomas had looked after escaped and went to the churchyard, found the grave and started to scrape away the earth with its hooves.

The pony continued to escape and go to the grave in the church yard. There was so much speculation that it was decided to exhume the body. When the coffin was removed from the grave and opened it was discovered that Thomas’s body was lying face down and he had been buried face up and there were marks on the coffin lid where he had scratched and his fingers had bled. Thomas had been buried alive!!

An enquiry concluded that Thomas may have been buried while under the influence of a drug but there is no record of any action being taken against anyone. One can only imagine the terror that poor Thomas experienced when the drug wore off and he realised where he was and there was no escape.

Thomas’s family had the body removed from St. Michael’s Church yard and buried in the church yard of St. Lawrence the Martyr in his home village of Rushton Spencer. The inscription on his tomb stone reads:

Memento Mori (be mindful of death);
Thomas son of Thomas and Mary Meakyn
Interred July 16th 1781 age 21 years
As a man falleth before wicked men, so fell I
Bia Thanates (Death by violence).

To ensure the soul of Thomas rests in peace his grave is the opposite way to all the other graves in the churchyard.

Stone places with ghostly connections…

It is thought that the cannons from Stone priory had the brew house where they brewed there beer on the site where the Co-op in High Street is today. The beer had low alcohol content and was the safest thing to drink in the medieval period as water was often contaminated and the brewing process destroyed any bacteria.

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In 1781 the small brewery which the cannons had established was taken over by Francis Joule. His second son John later took over the running of the business and developed the brewery. Over the years stories exist that the brew house was haunted by a cannon. Workers reported that they heard footsteps and felt a cold chill as if someone had brushed past them…

The Black Horse public house occupied the site where Costa is today. The pub was an old black and white building and was demolished in 1951 and a supermarket built on the site. Staff at the supermarket experienced strange happenings. Boxes were moved over night and staff never felt alone. The infact christened the “ghost” George.

A young workmen employed at the Town Mill had his clothing caught up in the machinery and was dragged into to it and he was badly mutilated and died. Apparently for many years when the machinery was started up the workers could hear his screams.

To conclude, let’s look at two bloody murders that took place in the town.

In December 1896 Annie Hines, a domestic servant returned to Stone after a period of two years and went to live with her former fiancé Henry Shingler and his mother. On 15th January 1897 twenty-six year old Henry returned home to discover that Annie had given birth to a baby girl and she admitted (not surprisingly) he was not the father.

Henry waited until his mother had gone out and put the shutters on the windows and barred the doors and went into Annie’s room and shot her with a revolver. He then shot himself through the temple but failed to kill himself. He was taken to Stafford Infirmary where he died of his injuries on 22nd January 1897.

The baby girl was found alive covered in her mother’s blood and lying in her arms. She was named Annie after her late mother.

Moving on to another bloody murder. The Thai Larna Restaurant was formerly “The Falcon” owned by Messrs’ Montgomery and Co. Brewers. (Their brewery was in Mount Road, later taken over by Bents, part of which is now the Lymestone Brewery).

In 1891 the pub was run by William Strefford and his wife Ada Mary. The couple has recently lost a baby boy and William had taken the death particularly badly and turned to heavy drinking. On 17th February, 1891 just before the pub closed William called Ada into the cellar and without warning shot her in the head with a breech-loading gun. He then turned the gun on himself and shot himself in the head. The alarmed customers ran into the cellar and found the couple with their faces and heads shattered and the walls splattered with blood and brains.

The couple were buried in the St. Michael’s church yard and their tomb stone is against the wall near to the Lichfield Street gate.

I hope that you have found this article on the darker side of Stone life of interest – and that you don’t have nightmares!

Philip Leason