Devil
The Devil steals Knowlton's bell
The bell is still down there, and it will not come up.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Ruined church inside a circular earthwork
- Legend from
- 19th-c. local tradition
- Tone
- Eerie
A church inside a pagan ring, and a bell the Devil threw into the river.
Knowlton's roofless Norman church stands in the middle of a Neolithic henge. English Heritage records a 19th-century story that the church fell into ruin after the Devil stole its bell and hurled it into the nearby river, from which it could never be pulled out. Another version says human thieves took it and were thwarted by witchcraft. Stukeley's older tale of seven churches, one for each earthwork, rests on a false assumption. The church, overgrown until the 1960s, has long had a reputation for being haunted.