Mr & Mrs Middle England: Grave Matters and Hounds
Another week in Ipplepen, and in true British fashion we begin with the weather.
It has rained — heavily, lightly, sideways — with the occasional burst of sunshine just to confuse us further.
October to date has been unusually warm too, nudging into double digits, leaving everyone dithering between the safety of a winter coat or the reckless gamble of a jumper and hypothermia.
On the wind this week came the sound of children playing at the primary school a mile away.
There’s nothing better than laughter drifting across the village — unless, of course, you’re one of those grumpy souls who files complaints about “too much noise.”
Every village has them.
But laughter also set me thinking about time.
What I was hearing had already happened a fraction of a second before I heard it.
Which means, technically, I was living in the future.
Bloody Einstein and his E = mc².
Only in Ipplepen can schoolyard giggles send you spiralling into relativity.
St Andrew’s Church, standing for over 700 years, is one of those places I admire from a safe distance — I’d rather not risk a bolt of divine retribution given my views on religion.
But the churchyard is irresistible: a library of human stories written in stone.
One grave in particular always draws attention:
Bertram Fletcher Robinson, journalist, barrister, and friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Robinson died in 1907, officially of enteric fever and peritonitis, aged just 36.
But whispers lingered: that he was poisoned, perhaps even murdered.
Why?
Because it was Robinson — not Doyle — who first spun tales of wild beasts on Dartmoor, stories, that became the seed of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Legend has it the two men quarrelled over ownership, and Doyle’s ambition may have hastened his friend’s end.
The church sensibly refused to exhume the body, so the rumours remain, pacing the moors alongside the spectral hound itself.
It proves what I’ve always said: every graveyard tells a story — tragic, heroic, or downright mysterious.
And here in Ipplepen, even the dead keep the gossip alive.
Now, Mr & Mrs Middle England may fret about burglars, immigrants, or the price of milk, but the real excitement lies under our feet — in 700 years of stories etched into stone.
And with that, I’m off to the Con Club and the Welly.
Tales of hounds and poison are thirsty work.
Leave a comment