The Grave That Would Not Measure

Measure it once. Measure it again. The grave is never the same length twice.

The Historia Brittonum, a history compiled around 829–30, lists the wonders of Britain. One lies in the region of Ercing: a tomb beside a spring called Licat Amr. The man buried there, it says, was Amr, son of Arthur the soldier, and Arthur himself killed him and buried him in that very place. Men came to measure the grave and found it sometimes six feet long, sometimes nine, twelve or fifteen, and never the same twice; the writer says he tested this himself. Local tradition held that the mound at Wormelow Tump was Amr's grave. The tump was flattened in 1896 to widen the road.