Jeppe Knave Grave

On the western shoulder of Pendle lies Wiswell Moor and on the summit of Wiswell Moor can be found a very out of place and peculiar grave, that of Jeppe the knave.

Knave, Scoundrel and Outlaw

The story of Jeppe, otherwise known as Geoff Curtis, that is commonly told in this corner of Lancashire is that of a roving, piratical figure, a ‘knave’, scoundrel and leader of a gang of outlaws who terrorised the area around Pendle for many years in the 14th century. It is said the he was hated so much that when he was caught out alone and unawares one day in 1327 by a group of local men, they carried out their own form of vengeful, capital justice upon Jeppe and lynched him on the spot.

No local parish would have anything to do with Jeppe’s funerary arrangements, as he was that infamous, neither would anyone step forward to give him a Christian burial, so the locals had to arrange their own funeral for him.

Low’s High

Jeppe’s decapitated corpse was taken up to the top of Wiswell Moor, to a spot called Low’s high, where the three parishes of Wiswell, Worston and Pendle converged and hurriedly buried under a cairn of rocks that stood there, a rock was placed to mark the spot.

The words ‘Jeppe Knave Grave’ were carved into the rock and can be clearly seen today but it’s not known what the carvings originally looked like as they were retouched by a visiting scout troop in the 60s, who also carved a cross into the cold, bare stone.

Commissioner of evil deeds

Commonly anyone presumed to be a witch, or other commissioner of eldritch and evil deeds, such as Jeppe, was buried at a junction of boundaries or a crossroads as it was thought that their soul, upon rising from their earthly prison, would become confused and lost and therefore unable to commit any further atrocities after death. Their spirit would become trapped as it were. But the final resting place of Jeppe ended up being not at the exact spot where the parish boundaries met but at a nearby cairn instead.

The cairn is actually an ancient burial mound, dating from the Bronze Age or earlier, roughly circular and about 60 foot in diameter, with a hollow in the middle which is about 16 by 10 foot long, formed by the collapse of a chambered tomb. It is worth pointing out here that tombs of this scale were only built for people of note such as tribal chiefs, so it seems ironic for it to be used for the internment of a scoundrel like Geoff!

Called barrows these tombs can be found throughout the British isles and being dark, mysterious places, associated with the dead and left by long-disappeared ancestors, they became associated with many legends and ghost stories and were thought to be the home of wights and other malevolent spirits.

Jeppe’s ghost doesn’t seem to be that malevolent though and is not known to haunt this open and windswept moor, possibly because he was unintentionally interred in a burial mound which was probably consecrated at some point but definitely not by a Christian!

Visiting the grave

To visit the grave you have to ask permission from the landowner at Parker Place Farm and it’s fairly easy to locate. You basically head from the road at the bottom, called Clerk Hill Lane, north up the hill to the trig point on the top, this being the highest point, then you head south west a few hundred feet until you come across a low, rush-covered mound.

The views from the top of Wiswell moor are worth the short walk alone but there is a particular aura, or feel, to the place that makes it quite magical, you also get a unique perspective of Pendle. The reason why no one has reported encountering Jeppe’s spirit might simply be that they haven’t been there at the right time or day, who knows? You might be!

A B-H