The parish church here, built c. 1340, has a fine spire; in its churchyard is an anonymous ridged stone which, tradition asserts, marks the grave of someone who fell from it. The story is told in two versions. The simpler one, known in the 19th century, was that when the architect who designed the church had completed the spire he climbed to the pinnacle to drink a health to the king, crashed to the ground, and was buried under this stone at this spot where he fell. This is a more or less rationalized version of a widespread tale type in which an architect meets a tragic death by falling from the very building he designed, by suicide, by murder, or more rarely by accident; in this case, the explanation given is based upon the real-life builder’s custom of ‘topping out’, i.e. celebrating the completion of a building by having a drink on the roof – but to attempt this on a spire is obviously very foolish indeed.
A more complex version begins by recounting how the church was built on the orders of Sir William Trussell, a reformed drunkard who had promised his wife that he would pay for a church, as proof of his good resolutions. When it was completed, he noticed with anger that there was no weathervane, and called for somebody to climb up and place on there. Dickon the Smith volunteered to do so, provided he could have a tankard of ale sent up to him so that he could drink to the king’s health. This was done, with the help of ropes and a pulley, but as he drank he lost his balance and fell. As he lay dying, he groaned, ‘Oh, oh!’ – for which reason, it is said, his gravestone was carved with ‘O O’. Unfortunately the stone is now so weathered and overgrown with moss that it is impossible to tell whether this is indeed the case, though it seems plausible, since legends are so often linked to some specific feature of their setting.