Hollow Places

Hollow Places
Christopher Hadley

IN THE MIDDLE AGES, a remarkable tomb was carved to cover the bones of an English hero. For centuries, tales spread about dragons, giants and devils. How and why this happened is the subject of this book.Do you wonder where dragons once lurked and where the local fairies baked their loaves? Or where wolves were trapped and suicides buried? Did people in the past really believe the marvellous stories they told and can those beliefs and those stories still teach us something about how to live in the world today?These questions lie at the heart of Christopher Hadley’s Hollow Places as it searches through the centuries for the truth behind the legend of Piers Shonks, a giant from a village in Hertfordshire, who slew a dragon that once had its lair under ancient yew in a field called Great Pepsells.Hadley’s quest takes us on a journey into the margins of history: to the margins of the Bayeux Tapestry where strange creatures gather, of ancient woodland where hollow trees hide secrets, of 18th century manuscripts where antiquaries scribbled clues to the identity of folk heroes.Hollow Places takes us back shivering to a church in Georgian England, to stand atop its tower triangulating the Elizabethan countryside, and to confront the zealous Mr Dowsing and his thugs looting the brasses and smashing the masonry during the Civil War. It asks why Churchwarden Morris could not sleep at night, and how long bones last in a crypt, and where a medieval stonemason found his inspiration.Hollow Places  rescues a vanished world and wrestles with superstition, with what people really believed; with what that tells us about them and how very much we are still alike– dragons or nay.The story of Piers Shonks is an obscure tale, but it has endured: the survivor of an 800-year battle between storytellers and those who would mock or silence them. Shonks’ story stands for all those thousands of seemingly forgotten tales that used to belong to every village. It is an adventure into the past by a talented and original new writer and a meditation on memory and belief that underlines the importance and the power of the folk legends we used to tell and why they still matter.

HOLLOW PLACES

An Unusual History of Land and Legend

Christopher Hadley

Copyright (#u516231de-7fbb-594e-8083-a0a16b284c5b)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019

Copyright © Christopher Hadley 2019

Cover illustration by Joe McLaren

Christopher Hadley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008319472

Ebook Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008319519

Version: 2019-06-28

Dedication (#u516231de-7fbb-594e-8083-a0a16b284c5b)

To my dad Harry Raymond Hadley, and in loving memory of my mum Joan Mary Hadley, a born storyteller

Epigraph (#u516231de-7fbb-594e-8083-a0a16b284c5b)

Dummling set to work (#litres_trial_promo), and cut down the tree; and when it fell, he found in a hollow under the roots a goose with feathers of pure gold.

—‘The Golden Goose’ in German Popular Stories, collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, from oral tradition, London, 1823

Contents

Cover (#u4bad688c-8a97-5e63-aa63-f9ff3fb8175c)

Title Page (#uedb3bc70-5c29-542c-a4a0-b8027f31d8cf)

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph (#u504cd96e-adc1-52e7-b649-2b949f9e7005)

Part I: Tree

Chapter 1 (#u97217a7d-e3d8-5378-a57b-734f459ca568)

Chapter 2 (#u93031e63-5779-5d4d-abbb-1af0d78f0715)

Chapter 3 (#u88f69618-dbff-51a4-9a8b-09384d332de8)

Chapter 4 (#uef75f72a-a15c-5398-bfe8-8aaf67da18b7)

Chapter 5 (#u21a5a7cd-6c22-5260-a918-9e448c4f6b5b)

Chapter 6 (#uacfe0822-fb1e-5edf-837b-034d3acfceb7)

Chapter 7 (#uc0ef603a-b142-5d27-88fc-d3c10a6fbec7)

Chapter 8 (#uaf57c213-d649-5160-8288-55bfe22e1bb6)

Chapter 9 (#u2042b400-2102-5a1f-b5fd-1741d92005da)

Chapter 10 (#u799b8bd9-1b9e-5535-8cc9-3a181943f887)

Part II: Stone

Chapter 11 (#ue95b8451-d6ba-5de7-9056-f9a627990ba1)

Chapter 12 (#u6b7d4dc5-0725-5fc1-bdc3-f9020beda335)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Part III: Story