It was said that the coming of the London and North Western Railway in 1863 from Stockport to Buxton was impacted by a supernatural skull, known as Dicky, when during the building work a railway embankment near Tunstead Farm when the line crossed the Coombs valley to Chapel-en-le-Frith slipped and the foundations of a bridge sank on several occasions. Eventually the company had to relocate the bridge. Local writers blamed Dicky for the expense and embellished the story with details of buried tools rather than consider that geology might have had its part to play.
The skull and the beleaguered inhabitants of Tunstead Farm was one of the most famous of the Peak District’s folk tales. In 1809, when John Hutchinson’s tour through the High Peak of Derbyshire was first published. Hutchinson met the owner of the farmhouse, Adam Fox, who claimed that the skull had been a feature of the property for the previous 200 years. There are several stories about the skull that used to be found at Tunstead Farm, near Chapel-en-le-Frith before its removal during the twentieth century to St James’ Church, Taxal, including the version that Ned Dixon was murdered by his cousin when he returned home after lengthy service as a soldier in Europe during the sixteenth century. Dixon’s murderous cousin was troubled by the appearance of the skull which remained at the farm despite attempts to remove it. By 1895, another story had sprouted: the skull belonged to a woman who was killed by her own sister during a quarrel over a man they both loved.
In reality, how the farm came to be home to the skull is a matter for conjecture. William Bunting, a historian writing in 1940, claimed that it was an archaeological find dating from the Iron Age.
Railway owners who developed lines and opened stations inside the Peak District discovered that passenger traffic was larger than they anticipated. By the 1840s it accounted for two thirds of their revenue. The Midland Railway opened at station at Buxton on 1 June 1863 from Derby while the London and North Western Railway opened its own, identical, station a fortnight later. Affordable travel drew day trippers from the middle and working classes who lived in the industrial towns that surrounded the Peak District. The new arrivals wanted more than hills and dry-stone walls. Dicky’s skull became part of the Peak District’s lore offering entertainment that appealed to the visitors and a method of boosting the local economy. It was even possible to buy postcards featuring the farm and the skull.
Inevitably, Dicky is not the UK’s only haunted skull. There are several purportedly screaming skulls. At Burton Agnes, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Anne Griffiths was attacked and died soon afterwards having extracted a promise that her head would remain in the hall. Unsurprisingly her family did not comply with the request but soon wished that they had. To avoid continued disturbance Anne’s head was buried somewhere in the walls of the newly built house.
While history relies on recorded evidence – folk lore fills the gaps and there’s nothing like a spot of embellishment to improve a story in its telling!
