Northumberland

Winter’s Gibbet stands on a wild moorland road above the village of Elsdon in Northumberland, a severed head still swinging from it. The head is a fibr&glass one. It is a grisly memorial to William Winter,the last man in England to be gibbeted. Winter was a gypsy and noted criminal. In 1791 he was charged with the brutal murder of an old woman,

Margaret Crozier, who lived in a tower at Raw Pele, just north of Elsdon, and was reputed to have a secret hoard of money He and the two women arrested with him,Jane and Eleanor Clark, claimed they had robbed the old lady but not killed her. However, evidence given by a shep herd boy, Robert Hindmarsh, condemned them all and they were hanged in Newcastle. The women’s bodies were then sent to the surgeons’ hall for dissection, but Winter’s was hung on a gibbet at Whiskershields Common. It remained there for months, until the clothes had rotted away then it was cut down and the bones scattered.

In Northumberland a gibbet is known as a stob and it Was believed that rubbing slivers of wood from one on the gums would cure toothache. Bit by bit, pieces were taken off the original gibbet and finally it decayed completely. Around 1867 Sir Walter Travelyan of Wallington ordered a replica with a wooden body to be erected on his land. The body was often used as target practice and eventually only the head remained. Even that was frequently stolen and in 1998 the entire gibbet disappeared for a while.

A joker left a miniature one in its place with a sign proclaiming that it would soon grow, given the current amount of rain! Though Winter’s body has long gone from the gib bet, it is said that the sound of rattling bones can often be heard there, especially on stormy nights, and that the ghosts of Winter and Jane and Eleanor Clark can been seen running from the old tower at Raw Pele.

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