Peak Experience

Picture of Black Harry the Highwayman  Picture of the Three Stags Head pub, Wardlow

 

In Gibbet Field at Wardlow many a criminal was gibbeted, including Black Harry the highwayman.  He terrified packhorse trains crossing the moors around Longstone and Wardlow.  Black Harry’s thieving activities were cut short on the gibbet at Wardlow Mires.  His name lives on at Black Harry Gate and Black Harry House near Stoney Middleton.

 

Wardlow Mires was a tollhouse and the junction point for the roads from Stoney Middleton and Bakewell.  Here a murderer committed the last murder ever to receive the gibbeting sentence.  And it is also the location of the last gibbet.

 

In 1815 Hannah Oliver the toll keeper, was murdered and the only clue police found was that her red shoes were missing from her feet.  When police questioned Antony Lingard, they searched his room and found the shoes. The police had insufficient evidence to arrest him, but they knew Mr Marsden of Stoney Middleton had made the shoes.  He proved he had made them for Hannah and confirmed Lingard’s guilt.

 

21-year-old Lingard was sentenced to be hung and then gibbeted at the scene of the crime.  From 1 April his body hung in Gibbet Field for several months.

 

This was the last gibbet in England. William Newton’s moving poem about Lingard’s father, called ‘The supposed soliloquy of a father under the gibbet of his son, upon one of the Peak Mountains near Wardlow’ made a strong contribution to having the sentence abolished.

 

You can still visit the Three Stags Head pub at Wardlow, which at one time contained the mummified remains of a cat exhibited in a glass case.  It was found during alterations to a chimneybreast.  Cats were often buried in buildings during construction work or alterations to frighten away evil spirits or rodents.

 

Public transport information for all locations can be found by calling Traveline on 0871 200 2233.

To plan your journey to Wardlow Mires, which has direct bus services from a variety of destinations, visit Traveline.