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Bottlebush Down

Ghosts and spirits have come back across hundreds of years. But none have come further than the mystery horseman who rides the north Dorset countryside. The horseman of Bottlebush Down is thought to date back to the Bronze Age, which makes him and his mount around 2,500 years old.

His appearances are nearly always close to the A3o8i road which runs between Cranborne and Sixpenny Handley in Britain's beautiful West Country. Although the area is today mainly quiet and devoted to agriculture, it was thought to have been a hive of activity thousands of years ago. The fields are dotted with low, round burial mounds. A strange earthwork, known locally as the Cursus, runs for some six miles across the fields. It consists of two parallel ditches about 80 yards apart and it is here that the horseman is usually seen.

The horseman's ghostly rides have become legend in this part of the West Country. Farmworkers and shepherds have reported seeing him galloping across the fields towards the Cursus and in one incident in the 19205 two young girls were terrified as they cycled one night from Handley to Cranborne. The wide-eyed girls told police that they were cycling along the road when suddenly a horseman appeared from nowhere and rode alongside them for some distance before disappearing.

But it was a few years earlier that the most documented sighting was made, and the one that put the time stamp on the horseman. Archaeologist RC Clay had such a close encounter with the rider that he was able to date the apparition by his clothes. Clay, leader of a team excavating a Bronze Age settlement near Christchurch, in Dorset, came face to face with the horseman in 1924 as he was driving home from the excavations to Salisbury, in Wiltshire. As he passed the spot where an old Roman road crossed the modern highway, he saw a horseman galloping across the fields ahead of him. The horseman was riding full tilt towards the road, but as Clay slowed down to let him cross, the rider swung his horse round and galloped parallel with the vehicle some 40 yards away.

For about 100 yards or more, the horseman kept pace with the car while Clay watched fascinated. In spite of his surprise, the archaeologist managed to take in a great deal of detail about horse and rider. He said later, "The horse was smallish with a long tail and mane. It had neither bridle nor stirrups. The rider had bare legs, a long flowing cloak and was holding some sort of weapon over his head." As suddenly as he had appeared, the horseman disappeared. Clay stopped his car and tried to gather his thoughts. His first instinct was to get out and look round, but as it was getting dark he decided to press on home.

The next morning he was back to see if he could discover anything which would help explain his ghostly encounter of the previous evening. He searched the road and the surrounding area for several hundred yards on either side of the spot but found nothing - except a low burial mound almost exactly where the horseman disappeared. For weeks afterwards he tried to find an explanation for what he saw. He drove along the section of road at the same time, evening after evening to see if in the gathering dusk he might have mistaken an overhanging tree or bank or anything for his galloping horseman. There was nothing. His one encounter with the horseman, coupled with his expert knowledge, enabled him to date the figure as from the late Bronze Age - somewhere between 700 and 600 BC. France | Ghostly Headless Rider | Gloucestershire | Phantom Coach | Alaska | Belmont County | Broomhill Road mystery | Chicago | Chicago | East End | England | Ghost of a man | Ghostly Vehicles | Grim Spectral Figure | Kent | Knottingly | Lancashire | Lincolnshire | Lynwood | Lynwood House | Morristown | Perthshire | Sailor | Stamford | Taiwan | The Bride | Wales |