What occurs in this world, can echo into the Unseen. There are places that are more susceptible to your efforts, places where the Veil is thinnest; where your echos make louder and more powerful ripples in the Unseen places beyond the border. Places such as crossroads, ancient stone, hills & burial mounds, groupings of certain trees, natural gateways in the Land, rings of certain plants, cemeteries and of course old roads, to name but a few.
Throughout England, in times of old, roads weren’t always the mundane features they are today. Of course, there were the roads used for travel and business, but there were also special routes and tracks that had spiritual, symbolic, magical & ceremonial attributes and uses. Some of these roads still exist, but their true purpose has been buried by time, their meaning forgotten, their function changed.
Among these special roads were the ‘Roads of the Dead’ – Ghost roads, corpse roads, Lych ways, bier, burial/funeral or coffin roads – Usually these roads were synonymous with a church path or churchway, but that was not always the case.
The basic facts of the corpse road are straight forward enough: Sometime in the Tenth Century, with the expansion of church building, burial rights became an issue. The minister officials were threatened by the outlaying settlements, and feared for their authority and revenue. As such they decided to institute ‘corpse ways’ that would lead from distant locations to the Mother Church. This Mother Church alone, at the heart of the parish, held the burial rights. Parishioners would have to transport corpses, either in a coffin or bier (a wooden stretcher on which lay a stiff canvas bag into which the corpse was sown) along these roads, sometimes a very long distance and across difficult terrain.
The way to the church was often-times littered with obstacles, which were to confuse the spirits of the dead, to prevent them from returning home to haunt their loved ones. Traveling across water is the most well-known today, but the practice of carrying coffins around trees, a number of times in specific directions, was also common. The shoes of the deceased also had to point in the direction the mourners were travelling, as to have the boots of the dead facing their old home would let them remember their way back.
Roughly hewn coffin stones, or ‘preaching crosses’ would be laid along the Roads of the Dead, in order for the company to take rest, feed packhorses and utter prayers and sing hymns over the body of the deceased. These wayside crosses were said the ‘guard and guide the way to the church’. After much labour, the travelers would finally reach the mother church and cross the tenemos through a special gate, the ‘Lych Gate’. These gates would give the mourners a chance to pause, and rest beneath it’s shelter, as they would no doubt arrive early. The long, rough travel did not allow for exact timing.
The Lych-Gate was rather a special place for the village seer, or wise-woman or man, as it was the place they would ‘church-watch’. Church-watching was a vigil held in between the hours of 11pm and 1am, where they would, on St. Mark’s Eve, Halloween, of the eves of New Year, Midsummer or Christmas, sit at the Lych-Gate and drift into trance-like state. This was to foretell who in the village would die in the next twelve months, the seer would see the ‘wraiths’ (the double of the doomed living) or hear whispers.
Now it is the time of night,
That the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth it’s sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare
It’s not hard to see why these ‘Roads of the Dead’ have such Otherworldly associations, especially when following the mile and half long road from Noke to Islip in Oxfordshire. The corpse road is found on part of a larger track, known as the Oxfordshire Way, which passes from the Cotswold’s to the Chiltern Hills. This old road makes for a rather interesting (and beautiful) walk over Otmoor, which has been described as a place that is “under a spell of ancient magic”.
After spending some time wandering around the very pretty village of Noke, taking in the 13th century church of St. Giles’ and woodlands, climbing a stile at the edge of the village begins the walk of the corpse road. Travelling along this path, as the tunnel of trees close in around you, it’s very easy to lose yourself (even if your walking partner insists on whistling one of the most annoying tunes you have ever heard, and you threaten to crack him over the head with the ‘walking staff’ he carries). At the tunnel’s end there stands another stile, from which the corpse road can be seen crossing the broad ‘fenlike’ open land, towards the tower of the Church of St. Nicholas the Confessor, which has stood on the same spot since 1065. The sight is enough to put paid to the most idle of whistling, annoying or no.
Sitting there on the wayside, bathed in the golden glow of the setting Autumn Sun, voices mingle into one as a dirge is sung; the shadows shift. The air grows calm, and your hairs stand on end. The atmosphere palpable. Your head will flare, and your heart race. The dead whisper, as they flit past. Sometimes they may even carry your messages. Sometimes not. Sometimes other Spirits will come to play…
And you come to realize that these ‘Roads of the Dead’ aren’t only used by the dead…
But that’s another story…
On this night, on this night,
Every night and all,
Hearth and house and candle-light,
Let Him receive your soul.When from here away you pass
Every night and all,
To Whinny-muir you come at last;
Let Him receive your soul.From Whinny-muir then you may pass,
Every night and all,
To Brig o’ Dread you come at last;
Let Him receive your soul.On this night, on this night,
Every night and all,
Hearth and house and candle-light,
Let Him receive your soul.-Re-written excerpt of the traditional English Lyke-Wake Dirge
Text – Sarah-Jayne Farrer
Images © Matt Baldwin-Ives (www.milescross.co.uk)
