MysteryFamous
Bella in the Wych Elm
The tree kept her secret for years. The wall told everyone.
Private, don't visit
- What's there
- Private estate woodland below Wychbury Hill
- Legend from
- Wartime mystery, 1943
- Tone
- Chilling
Someone wrote it on a wall in 1944, and still nobody can answer: who put Bella in the wych elm?
On 18 April 1943 four boys poaching in Hagley Wood, on Lord Cobham's estate near Wychbury Hill, found a skeleton stuffed inside the hollow trunk of a wych elm. A piece of taffeta was in the mouth, a hand was found buried apart, and the shoes showed she had died after 1940. In 1944 graffiti appeared asking who put Bella down the wych elm, and the question was later painted on the Wychbury Obelisk. Theories have included witchcraft, from Margaret Murray's Hand of Glory idea, and a wartime spy ring, with the German singer Clara Bauerle suggested. A police review closed in 2014.