Ghost
Old Coles Rides
Fire from the nostrils, and a dead squire at the reins.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Huge medieval cruck-framed barn by Leigh church
- Legend from
- Local tradition, recorded 1852
- Tone
- Eerie
Four horses breathing fire, a coach, and a dead man at the reins. They jump the barn every time.
Jabez Allies remembered old people in Leigh speaking of a spectre called Old Coles. At dead of night he would ride as swift as the wind down Leigh Walk, the road between Bransford and Brockamin, in a coach drawn by four horses with fire flying from their nostrils. They always leapt right over the great barn at Leigh Court and on into the River Teme. At last twelve parsons laid him in a nearby pool by the light of an inch of candle, which was thrown into the pool so it could never burn out, and the pool was filled in. Allies linked him to Edmund Colles, who died in 1606.