#sourton

[travelling-my-little-pony]

This is the year of Dr Whooves searching for his own special telephone box!

This is photo number 149 of 365.

Here is Dr Whooves looking at a phone box in Sourton, in Devon, England. This is not the box he is looking for.

[pretty-lavinia]

Haunted Inns of Britain and Ireland by Richard Jones: The Highwayman Inn, Sourton, Devon, England

The Highwayman Inn enjoys a lonely and dramatic setting. It stands opposite the pretty little church of St Thomas à Becket, beyond which the dark bulk of Dartmoor looms against the scudding clouds -- bleak, brooding, and thoroughly menacing. Until the mid-20th century, this little pub was known as the New Inn, although it was anything but, since the building dates back to the 13th century. In 1959, the dilapidated property came into the possession of John “Buster” Jones, a Welsh visionary whose previous achievements had included running away to sea when he was 14, and representing Wales in boxing and distance running. He and his wife, Rita, changed the pub’s name to the Highwayman, and set about transforming the modest roadside watering hole into one of the most unusual and imaginatively furnished hostelries in the whole of England.

What Buster Jones created was a fairy tale cottage cum Aladdin’s cave, with nautical and ecclesiastical themes thrown in for good measure. He dragged tree stumps from nearby woodland, and either fashioned them into bar tops or used them as massive beams to prop up aging ceilings. The old Okehampton-to-Launceston stagecoach became a suitably eccentric entrance lobby. Old spindles, battered tankards, cartwheels, lanterns, and all manner of other bric-a-brac came to occupy every spare inch of wall, beam, or ceiling. Timbers and fittings from old ships, including the intricately carved door of the whaler Diana that ran aground in the Humber in 1869, were used to create the remarkable Galleon Bar, which has the below-decks ambiance of an 18th century pirate ship. Buster’s daughter, Sally, and her husband, Bruce, now run the inn, and take great care to ensure that his legacy remains intact. They have long grown used to sharing their bequest with one or two spirits of an ethereal nature that drop in every so often to keep an eye on the comings and goings.

Much of the ghostly activity occurs in the Galleon Bar, and it is mooted that it may be related to the eerie-looking door from the Diana. Between September 21, 1866 and March 17, 1868, thirteen members of the ship’s crew died when she became trapped in Arctic pack ice. “We will not have a moment’s peace of mind or body so long as we are in this awful ice,” one sailor wrote in his log. When the remaining crew finally managed to force the crippled vessel across the Atlantic to reach Shetland, the first reporter to board her was appalled by the sight that met his eyes. “Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner might have sailed in such a ghastly ship,” he wrote, “the main deck a charred house not to be described.”

Several psychic investigators have suggested that the apparitions seen in the Galleon Bar are the long-dead mariners whose spirits have remained earthbound in the fabric of the door. Such a theory might sound a little far-fetched, but a definite air of melancholy emanates from the relic.

Other phenomena experienced here have included items being moved around by invisible hands, orbs of light hovering in mid-air, and a ghostly figure in a feathered cap who drifts silently around, no doubt content to roam the eclectic interior of such a characterful and hospitable place.