Paranormal Investigations Ltd
" seek and ye shall find "
Bedfordshire Sites (2)
Marston Moretaine
The village of Marston Moretaine is situated on the A421 btween Bedford and Milton Keynes. It is a small village with a large surrounding of arable land.
The Church of St.Mary the Virgin is a feature of the village and is unique in that the tower is seperate from the church itself.
The legend behind this oddity is that the village folk were good people and prayed often. The Devil paid a visit to the Village to take his revenge for this prayfulness and grabbed the Tower that the village folk were very proud of. He lifted this onto his back but as he was doing so, the Vicar emerged and seeing what the Devil was up to, started to pray hard. The Tower became heavier and heavier until the Devil dropped it 70 feet away from the knave and Chancel on the North Wall.
The Tower is a Grade 1 listed building and dates back to 1340. This and the church are built from Ironstone Rubble.The Church also dates back to this time but was rebuilt in the 15th Century. The Main door was at this time changed from the South to the North as the village had resited to the North of the Church. The Architect responsible was Thomas Reynes who died in 1451.
There are many interesting features within the church including a two storey Vestry. The lower level contains a stone rib vault and in the South West corner is a stair turret leading to the upper room. There is a fireplace in the North East corner between two trefoiled windows. In the South wall are three arched recesses containing a round hole in the sill. This hole carries on down in the wall, through the head of a doorway that opens into the Chancel. On either side of the recess are holes for the end of a beam to which a wheel or pulley could be fastened to for raising and lowering something.
There is also a sundial cut into one of the buttresses on the South porch. On entering the church through the South Porch, a large painting of St. Christopher is prominent. Church records date back as far as 1653.
Another legend that again involves the Devil is that he was watching a group of children from the top of the Tower. They were playing 'jumps' in a nearby field on the Sabbath. The Devil jumped from the Tower onto a pre-historic stone in the field where they were playing and then proceeded to trick them into following him back into his realm and were never seen again. A pub stood nearby until recently perpetuating this claim. It was called 'The Leaps'.
The pub was called the 'Leaps' and is no longer there but the stone in the field still stands and is known as the Devil Stone.
There is also a dark figure that has been seen lurking around the tower but it is unknown who this could be and in the village on a windy day a beating drum can sometimes be heard.
During a Civil War skirmish, the Cavaliers retreated into a tunnel joining the Church to the Rectory that was situated on the edge of woodland. The Roundheads, realising what their intentions were, sealed the tunnel at both ends and left the Cavaliers to die slowly and the last sound to be heard was that of the beating drum of the Drummer boy.
If you look to the left in the window of the darker part of the main building there is anorb
well here is a closer veiw ......yep its an orb
well its an orb and quite a nice one this picture was taken by charlie as we were leaving the one below was taken by me from another angle at the same time
if you look close at the second picture the orb is visible in the same place as the one charlie took in fact you can see charlie taking the photo in my shot ......cool eh.
