The Black Dog

A presence at the edges

Friends,

This story is the first in my new series, Rima - an Exploration of the Edges. If you’re new to my work or if you missed last week’s introduction to the series you can read about it below.

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Hope you like this first episode in the adventure.

J

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The old house is bleak and creepy. It stands on a promontory of land just above the road and is surrounded by the remains of a moat, now a deep, grassy ditch and shallow pool. Years before I found out about the history of the place I shuddered as I drove past it on the little lane into town. There was something about it that made me uncomfortable, as if it occupied a shadowland, an open seam where the past burst through. There are similar places all over this area, abandoned farmhouses left to collapse with all their contents still in place, the cupboards and chairs, tables and beds, ornaments and tools of the dead. But those houses, though sad, don’t cast a shadow around them the way Hergest Court does.

Centuries ago it was the most important building in this area, the home of lords. I don’t know who lives there now but the place is down on its luck, a timber and stone building with boarded up windows on one side, surrounded by dilapidated barns and ragged fields. You can understand why there are ghost stories attached to it. In the nearby church the 500 year old remains of Sir Thomas Vaughan lie in a stone tomb chest carved in the shape of an armoured knight in prayer. Vaughan, or so the story goes, was beheaded as a traitor during the War of the Roses, and his headless body sent back here to Kington to be buried. Afterwards his ghost haunted the surrounding lanes and town, sometimes in the form of a black bull, and other times as a giant fly which stung riders and drove horses mad. The hauntings were so frequent that people refused to leave their homes and an exorcism had to be performed at the house. After a whole day of continuous prayers by several priests the dark spirit was shrunk to a tiny size, imprisoned in a snuff box and buried under a stone slab at the bottom of the moat. I suppose it could still exist today. I’m not about to go looking for it.

The house is a home of stories, ghostly and otherwise. It was a place where bards visited frequently and the ancient tales of the Welsh people were archived there, most famously in the Red Book of Hergest, a source of the Mabinogion. In the Red Book there is a story about spectral hounds, or the Cŵn Annwn, guardians of the otherworld who were set loose from time to time to hunt in the Welsh mountains. It may or may not be a source of the tale of the black hound which has been attached to this area since Vaughan’s death. It carried the head of its master back to Hergest Court after his execution and has haunted the family ever since, roaming the lanes and ridges. Like all old stories this one has travelled. Depending on the source it is believed that Arthur Conan Doyle used to stay at Hergest Court, or at nearby Baskerville Court, just over the border in Clyro. Doyle heard the local legend of the black hound, which fired his imagination and evolved into his classic Sherlock Homes story - the Hound of the Baskervilles. The famous writer transposed the location to the (slightly) more bleak and spooky Dartmoor, the residents of which claim the black dog as their own.

A descendent of the Vaughans once lived in our house a century and a half ago. Our cottage is located in a quiet courtyard off an almost lightless back street. There are narrow alleyways either side surrounded by abandoned ground and ancient empty buildings. It’s a dim and shadowy place. Coming home late at night sometimes I feel a shiver of fear running from the base of my skull to my tailbone. The black hound is present.