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The Wilful Skull of Chilton Cantelo

In the north transept of St James’ Church in Chilton Cantelo, not far from Yeovil, is the tomb of a very strange man indeed. The inscription on his tomb reads: ‘Here lyeth the Body of Theophilus Broome, of the Broomes of the house of Woodlowes neare Warwick town in the county of Warwick, who deceased the 18th August 1670 aged 69. A man just in his actions; true to his friends; forgave those that wronged him, and dyed in peace.’

Whether he died in peace is quite unpredictable for his choice and manner of death was by no means normal, for his deathbed request was that his skull should remain permanently in the house where his sister lived and to which he came after the Civil Wars had ended and the Restoration of Charles II had at last been achieved. That he was a Royalist is evident from the arms on his tomb — Sable, on a chevron argent three sprigs of Broom proper. So shocked was he by the bloodthirsty acts he had seen carried out by the Royalist troops that like so many others during those wars he defected to the Roundheads. All his life he was haunted by the atrocities he had witnessed by the Royalists who had hanged, drawn and quartered their prisoners and stuck their severed heads on railings and spikes for all to see.

Thus it was that his deathbed plea to his sister was made that his head should be separated from his body, so that if ever his body were dug up they would find no head to impale and that his skull should never leave the house, a request his sister dutifully had arranged to be fulfilled. During the years after his death there had been a con stant change of tenants, quite possibly due to the skull, for every time it was removed horrid noises took place in protest at its removal. Skulls—often screaming skulls—have played a large part in the history and folklore of ghosts and almost without fail they resist tenaciously any attempt to remove them from where they have always been, almost as if they are quite certain that the body to which they once belonged will be joined to them once more. Thus it was that successive tenants of Higher Chilton Farm had to make their choice between peace and quiet in the house or hor rible noises if the skull was moved.

However, one tenant who had had enough of its pre sence decided on a final attempt to be rid of it, in spite of the warning the outgoing tenant had given him. He applied to the church authorities to have the tomb opened in order to put the skull back with Theophilus Broome’s skeleton and thus secure peace at last for both the skull and himself and family. In spite of gaining permission and ordering the sexton to proceed with the work, it ended even more disastrously and inexplicably, for the sexton’s spade broke in half, an omen which he was so convinced boded no good to him that he refused to go on with the task. He vowed it was a judgment on him for interfering with the dead, so once again the skull returned to its home and presumably there was peace, at least for a time. In 1826, however, when alterations and repairs were carried out on the farmhouse, the workmen quite without malice or ill-doing, found the skull in the cabinet and used it as a drinking-vessel when they made tea or drank beer. Perhaps Broome would have been highly amused at this familiarity as long as the skull remained in the house, and was returned to the cabinet.

The skull is now at peace if the body is not, for it rests in a special cabinet with Mr and Mrs Kerton of Higher Farm, Chilton Cantelo, opposite the church. When my wife and I recently visited them about the skull, which we saw in its special place in the cabinet opposite the front door, they said that nothing would ever persuade them to have its peace disturbed in any way and indeed they were grateful to it in a very special way.

Before their marriage, Mrs Kerton had visited the house one night and was perturbed at having to live with a skull in the house after the mar riage. When the time came for her to leave and get into her car, her future husband, seeing a black shadow on the ground, called Out to her that she had dropped her coat. The shadow was not her coat but the top of an uncovered well which, had she not paused to turn, she would have fallen into. It was only one of other stories which were good enough reasons for gratitude to the skull of the strange Theophilus Broome. | British | Derbyshire | Dorset | Fawkhans Green | Rotherham | Wardley Hall | Yorkshire |