Curse · Inkpen
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Seven gibbets since 1676, and none of them ever empty of the story.
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Short walk up a gravel track from the car park on the downs; free. Check before you go.
Two lovers, a murder on the downs, and a gibbet that keeps being rebuilt.
Combe Gibbet stands on Inkpen Beacon on top of a Neolithic long barrow, on the old county boundary. Tradition says the first gibbet went up in 1676 to hang the bodies of George Broomham and Dorothy Newman, lovers convicted at Winchester of killing his wife Martha and son Robert. In one telling the murder was seen by 'Mad Thomas'. Other versions say Newman's two children were poisoned instead. The Hungerford Virtual Museum reports that searches of assize records found no trace of the case. The present gibbet is a 1992 replica.