Ghost
Bomere's Sunken Bells
The water closed over the village. The bells kept ringing.
Private, don't visit
- What's there
- Deep wooded mere, a nature reserve
- Legend from
- Folk tales, recorded 1880s
- Best time
- Christmas Eve; Easter
- Tone
- Eerie
On Christmas Eve, they say, church bells ring from under the water.
Bomere Pool is a deep, still mere south of Shrewsbury, used by people since the Iron Age, with a Roman camp nearby. Burne gathered several versions of a drowned-village story: a wicked village swallowed by the water whose bells still ring on Christmas Eve; a Roman soldier who rows on the pool on Easter Eve looking for his lost love; and a farmer drowned for reaping on Sunday. Wikipedia says the Roman soldier is seen on Easter Day when Easter falls on the same date as the year he died. Locals said that when Bomere meets Shomere the world will end. Mary Webb used Bomere as Sarn Mere.