Our London walks encompass many diverse stories drawn from many sources and locations. The Norman Conquest, for example, is covered on several tours, and the story William the Conqueror’s crowning in Westminster Abbey in 1066 is a favourite tale on our Westminster London walk.
In addition to our regular and historical tours we also conduct several haunted London walks that mine a deep vein of folklore and legend.
Richard Jones is London’s leading ghost walk guide and has published almost 20 books on Haunted Britain, not to mention numerous books of London walks on themes as diverse as Jack the Ripper, Charles Dickens and the haunted city.
Richard has travelled all over Britain and Ireland collecting ghost stories and today the blog will take you far from our London to the tranquil expanse of the New Forest.
The New Forest was a favourite hunting ground with William the Conqueror whose treasury was at nearby Winchester.
It encompasses 90,000 acres of peaceful forest, heaths that glint golden with gorse or turn purple with heather, depending on the season; deep ponds, stretches of bog and delightful clearings in which graze the famed New Forest ponies.
In one such clearing near Minstead stands the Rufus Stone marking the site where William Rufus, the second son of William the Conqueror, met his untimely death.
Crowned William 11 in 1087 he was not particularly popular with his nobles who within twelve months had begun a revolt intended to secure the throne of England for his elder brother, Robert.
Offering a relaxation of the hated Forest Laws and an end to the crippling and unpopular taxations that the Conquest had foisted on them, Rufus appealed to his English subjects to support him. With their help, he was able to see off the threat and then promptly went back on his word once the danger had passed.
On August 2nd 1100 William joined a hunting party in the New Forest and, at some stage found himself alone with Sir Walter Tyrrell. According to the inscription upon the stone an arrow fired by Tyrrell at a stag, glanced off an oak tree and struck Rufus “on the breast of which he instantly died”.
Whether the killing was accidental or deliberate is one of histories most abiding mysteries. Tyrrell, perhaps wisely, fled abroad pausing, it is said, to wash the blood from his hands at a pond in nearby Castle Malwood which subsequently was said to turn crimson each year on the anniversary!
William’s younger brother Henry headed for Winchester to seize the treasury and have himself proclaimed King, whilst the other members of the hunting party made haste to secure their own estates under the new regime.
Meanwhile the Kings lifeless body was placed onto the cart of a charcoal burner named Purkiss and transported to Winchester for burial.
As the cart bounced and jolted over the rough forest paths it is said to have left in its wake a trail of blood which the ghost of Rufus follows each year on the anniversary of his sudden demise.
