The Ghost of Money Lane Local tradition, recalled by members of the Women’s Institute in 1954, says that a former occupant of Limbery’s (a farmhouse at the east end of the village) once hid some money in Money Lane, hence its name. Since his death, he has returned from time to time, either to search for his treasure or check that it is still there.
It is said that anyone going down the lane on the night of the full moon is likely to hear the command: “Pick up your spade and follow me.”
No one so far has been brave enough to do so. (In folklore, obeying the ghost’s command was often the traditional way of ‘laying’ such a ghost by helping them finish their business).
Daddy Witch Belief in witches was still alive in Horseheath in 1915, when Miss Catherine Parsons gave a lecture on the village’s beliefs. The earliest witch remembered was known as Daddy Witch. She was an ancient bony creature, half-clad in rags, who lived in a hut by the sheep-pond.
When Daddy Witch died, her body was buried in the middle of the road from Horseheath to Horseheath Green. Her grave could be distinguished because the road was always dry at that spot, supposedly from the heat of her body. In 1935, it was recorded that to have good luck, you had to nod your head nine times before passing over the grave.
The Horseheath Imps Horseheath was notorious for the ‘imps’ or familiars owned by its witches. They were traditionally very hard to get rid of and had to be passed on to a relation before their current owner could die.
Miss Parsons related how the late rag-and-bone man of Horseheath was asked one day by the witch where he was going. Before he got half a mile away, he heard something following him; he discovered an imp who had been sent by the witch to track his movements. He chased the imp and tried to catch it, but the faster he ran, the faster the imp ran. At last, it reached the witch’s cottage. She was standing in the doorway and quickly caught the imp up and hid it in her bosom.
Bonny, Blue Cap, Red Cap, Jupiter, and Venus One witch’s imps came to her from her sister, who had died in Castle Camps. She would never have died, it was said, if some meddling person had not—against her orders—opened the hutch in which they were kept wrapped up in a red underskirt. They travelled to Horseheath in a box tightly tied up with cord.
Their names were Bonny, Blue Cap, Red Cap, Jupiter, and Venus, and to most of the villagers, they looked like white mice.