Thank you to Jon Sheppard for the suggestion for this week’s topic. He asked about the origins of Gibbet Hill Road, the location of the gibbet and if there is any link with Lynchgate Road.
We need to imagine ourselves back in the days of the 18th Century and the completely open landscape including the heath of Westwood and Stoneleigh Common, the site of the present-day Gibbet Hill Road. The hill where the roundabout now is forming the junction with Stoneleigh Road and Kenilworth Road, was known as Gallow Hill, so clearly this was a site for hangings, although it appears the majority of local hangings actually took place at Whitley Common and Warwick Gaol. Although the gallows stood near to Cryfield Grange, the monastic farm associated with Stoneleigh Abbey, the two were not linked in spite of the Grange’s descriptive name! That derived from the Latin, “croiles felda”, meaning “the open land by the fork” and possibly refers to the course of Canley Brook, which flows through land linked to Cryfield Grange.
Modern-day accounts indicate that the gallows – and later the gibbet – were located in the vicinity of Leighton Close, just off Stoneleigh Road.
Hanging was the common means of execution for convicted criminals, whose notoriety attracted crowds often in their tens of thousands, from far and wide, to watch the gruesome spectacle. In the case of hanged murderers, a second, post-mortem punishment was inflicted upon them. The Murder Act (1751) stated that, “in no case whatsoever shall the body of any murderer be suffered to be buried”. The body could be publicly dissected or left “hanging in chains” on a gibbet, known as gibbeting. The hanging of the body in this way was a salutary lesson to criminal types. The presence of the gibbet – with or without a body in chains – had a profound effect on the landscape, since they were located in prominent positions, often on hills and near well-used highways. Enclosure of the body within chains or a cage allowed it to twist and sway in the wind and to clank and creak as it moved. These noises, not to mention the presence of flies and birds attracted by the decomposing flesh, added to the unpleasant sensory impact of the gibbet.
According to records, gibbeting took place at Gallow Hill only once, following the hanging there of three men convicted for murder, Edward Drury, Robert Leslie and Moses Baker.
Drury, Leslie and Baker had been notorious as vicious rogues for many years. On the night of Friday 18th March, 1765, they brutally attacked 3 local men as they made their way home across the fields in the direction of Berkswell. Two managed to escape to safety, but one - Thomas Edwards - had been beaten so savagely that he survived for only three days.
The trial judge ordered that the men “be hung in chains on Stoneleigh Common, above Wenbury Wood, by the Three Mile Stone”. Lord Leigh gave permission for the gibbet to be erected on his land. After being hanged, the bodies were taken down, tarred, clothed in metal suits and rehung on the gibbet. There they remained for the next 45 years. The gibbet itself was still standing in 1822. It was then taken down, some souvenirs made from the wood, and the main frame recycled in a farm building. Unsurprisingly, for many years stories of hauntings were rife in the area. Old Gallow Hill then became known as Gibbet Hill ensuring a permanent reminder of its grisly history.
Regarding Lynchgate Road, I cannot find any connection with Gibbet Hill/Gallow Hill. I wonder if the name is a corruption of “lychgate”, the covered gateway found at the entrance to a churchyard. The lych way was the path along which a corpse was carried to burial. However, I am unaware of any churches in the vicinity of Lynchgate Road. The Westwood Church was only built in the 1840s and did not replace an older church. If anyone knows more, please do get in touch.
I will be doing more research into Gibbet Hill and these three men, so if I learn more I will report back. We are lucky – if we can think of it like that! – to have this site so near to us, since most gibbetings took place in London and relatively few in the rest of the country.
Sources:
www.tandfonline.com
www.capitalpunishment.org
Coventry Telegraph, 14th October, 2013 (Article on Gibbet Hill): https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/red-button-posh-coventry-cul-de-sacs-6172610
David McGrory. Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Coventry. Wharncliffe Books, 2004.
The Gentleman’s and London Magazine, Vol.35.
Sarah Tarlow. The Golden and Ghoulish Age of the Gibbet in Britain. Palgrave, 2015.
Warwickshire Directory, 1874
Images:
View from Combe gibbet, looking north. (Wikimedia Commons)
Captain William Kidd executed for piracy and hung in chains, 1701. (Wikimedia Commons)
