Unnatural Histories, The Peculier tale of Peg O’ Nell

Peg O’ Nell or ‘peg of the well’ is a name of which nearly everyone in Clitheroe and the surrounding area knows, a character from local folklore whose history is somewhat vague and the nature of which is thought to be malevolent.

St Margaret’s well

Historians believe that Peg derives from Meg or Margaret, and as the well she haunts, an old spring from pre-Christian times, is also known as St Margaret’s well, which has beside it a headless statue, this is thought to be the most accurate story.

The more modernised tale which well known local celebrity and yarn-spinner Simon Entwistle tells in this video and Clitheroe resident and author Daniel Cobban has just based his new novel on is that of a hapless servant girl who still haunts the well.

”I hope you fall and break your neck!”

One tale has it that a servant, Peg O’Neil, at nearby Waddow hall, which is now a girl guide camp but at the time belonged to the Starkie family (Roger Nowell Starkie presided over the Pendle witches trial in 1612), was held to blame for any mishaps that occurred in the hall and one stormy night was sent down to the well to fetch water.

Upon seeing how foul the weather was she complained, but her mistress was heard to proclaim “I hope you fall and break your neck!”, unfortunately this is what happened and her vengeful spirit haunts the well still.

Another story has it that the mistress of the hall blamed a water spirit, Peggy, who resides in the river, for all unfortunate events. One night she was expecting a Puritan preacher to visit Waddow hall, which like the village of Waddington, is named after the Anglo Saxon king Wadda, and he was late. The worried woman sent out servants to find him and when he was finally brought over the threshold she found him to be soaking wet and shaking.

He told a tale of how he was crossing the Brungerley hipping stones, the same ones that king Henry the 6th was famously arrested at, and was suddenly overcome half way by a huge wave which knocked him into the river. Mistress Starkie is meant to have cried “it’s Peggy’s work”, blaming the spirit, and taking up an axe hurried down to the the statue of St Margaret which looks over the well.

She swung the axe at the statue and decapitated it, the head tumbling into the well, but the spirit was not vanquished.

Margaret of Antioch

It is known that the head was retrieved and was certainly kept in Waddow hall up to the 1800s but what has happened to it since no one knows. The statue it comes from, which is still guarding the well to this day, is thought to have come from Whalley Abbey when it was taken down during the dissolution of the monasteries and may originally have been a statue of Margaret of Antioch who is the saint of childbirth, beheaded by the Roman emperor Diocletian.

Water spirits

Water spirits are thought by some to haunt many rivers in the north of England, Jenny Greenteeth being one, and since Roman times they have been considered and appeased by travellers passing over rivers, often just by offering a coin or token, though sometimes something more is needed.

Every 7 years a sacrifice has to be given to appease the spirit that inhabits the Ribble. After the statue of peg was decapitated, a cockerel was sacrificed in Waddow hall in the room that the head was kept in as an attempt to calm her angry ghost, this being the required donation advised by local residents, up until then goats and other animals were routinely sacrificed to the Ribble.

Every 7 years

The spirit of peg is still thought to claim victims every seven years, Anfield cemetery in Liverpool has a monument to a sad incident when two boys mysteriously drowned in the Ribble in 1892 and there are other tales of unexplained drownings in the river.

In 1899, seven years after the two boys were taken, a fisherman drowned in the Ribble at Lytham in mysterious circumstances and since there have been other unexplained deaths. One of the earliest recorded deaths was that of the first rector of St Wilfrid’s in Ribchester, Drogo, who drowned in 1246 after falling from his horse whilst fording the seemingly calm river.

These folk tales are probably just cautionary bits of wisdom handed down through the generations, as they still are, to warn against messing about in rivers which can suddenly rise in spate after heavy rains on distant hills, but then again every seven years locals still avoid the still pools and churning weirs of the River Ribble and the clutches of the Gryndelow , Jenny Greenteeth or Peg O’ nell.

To the water’s edge, most will not venture near;

Of Jenny Greenteeth, there is a very great fear.

The young and the old should take special care

Not to venture too near to Jenny’s watery lair.

A B-H