Quest for the Hexham Heads

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Here's a crash course in some of the myths and legends that have defined the North East over the years. Giant worms It happened like this. We can imagine a break in the rain or a beautiful spring day, but whatever the weather, in May in 1971, two brothers Colin and Leslie Robson, were playing in their garden. We know it was May because their sister later confirmed she was on her honeymoon and away from the house when it happened. Dr. Ross believed that the werewolf-like creature that they saw was possibly linked to the notorious Hexham Wolf of 1904 and may even be the exact same wolf!

In 1956, in an ordinary house on a quiet street in Battersea, South London, the Hitchings Family were woken by banging and scratching noises, so loud that the neighbours came round to complain. Things developed from there as multiple witnesses saw flying objects, slippers inexplicably walking around by themselves, unexplained spontaneous fires, and heard disembodied voices. The family christened the poltergeist ‘Donald’ and it became big news – so big in fact that, at one point, it was even discussed by the Home Secretary in Parliament. The Lambton worm is perhaps the most famous and enduring piece of North East folklore - but it is not the only one like it. Around that same year, Sunday People published an article about the Hexham Heads, along with a few pictures — titled, “ Myth of the ‘Evil’ Heads”.

An Extract from the Fortean Times, via the brilliant series of articles from The Urban Historian An Analysis The two young boys of the family were the ones who had discovered the stones, unearthed while they were digging the garden of their family house in Hexham, Northumberland. While they reached deep into the soil, they found two small stones shaped like skulls. They seemed like carved heads, which they brought to the house to show their parents. The original heads were later given to another man, but he and the heads vanished and their whereabouts are still unknown. The boy's ghost haunted the castle crying out 'I'm cold' until he was given a hood and cloak by a cook who worked in the castle.

Several nights after the discovery of the stone heads, neighbour Ellen Dodd and her daughter were sitting up late one evening when both of them witnessed a “half-man, half beast” entering the bedroom. The pair screamed in terror but the creature seemed indifferent to them and simply left the room, heard to be “padding down the stairs as if on its hind legs”. Later on, the front door was found open. It has been thought that the creature had been in search of something, and had left the house to continue searching elsewhere. Perhaps due to these strange events, the Robson family passed the heads on to Hexham Abbey where they eventually fell into the hands of Dr Anne Ross, an expert in Celtic artefacts. And this is where perhaps the strangest aspect of this whole story emerges – how is it possible that two specialists (geologists no less) were able to look at these objects and come to completely different conclusions about the materials they were made from? Remember, Anne Ross had got Professor Hodson at Southampton University to look at them and he concluded ‘both heads are made from the same material….a very coarse sandstone with rounded quartz grains’ and he suggested local sources for this. But a second analysis came up with a very different conclusion. Undertaken by Dr Douglas Robson of Newcastle University (his report is reproduced below, and published in Screeton’s book), it concluded ‘the material from which the heads have been formed is an artificial cement’ and ‘the material is unlike any natural sandstone’. The former and earlier analysis seems to have been based on microscope work and limited visual analysis, while the latter appears to have been based on the invasive removal of a sample for analysis. However, because his studies strayed into the occult, legend has often held that he was a wizard - a reputation cemented when he appeared in the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Divine Comedy.Whatever the case, it is still an interesting situation. It is still being looked into today by Paul Screeton, one of the first to investigate it during the 1970s. Mobile urban prehistory, the kind you can find in your garden, then display on your mantelpiece, has not featured much in my blog to date. Most urban prehistory has already been found and taken away, or is too big and awkward (i.e. a standing stone) to act as an ornament in anything but the most splendid of houses. When innocent parties do stumble upon objects which may be of great antiquity they usually take them to a local museum for identification, and then they become lost in the mists of time / store rooms / filed in the bin. But one examples stands out, where this didn’t happen. Over a few posts, I want to recount one of the most remarkable and controversial examples of urban prehistory that I can think of – the story of the Hexham Heads. Even if you have heard this one before, it is a great story.