Jock Brocas On Spiritual Life

Monday, 20 April 2026

Arthur’s Oven: Scotland’s Mysterious ‘Cursed’ Roman Beehive Temple

This would be Arthur’s Oven/O’on

For over fifteen hundred years, visitors beyond the remains of Rome’s Antonine Wall in Scotland’s Central Lowlands would be greeted by a mysterious sight if they took the route along River Carron in Stenhousemuir (Stone House in English).

This would be Arthur's Oven/O'on (Scots), an towering ancient igloo/beehive shaped stone building (hence the village name) believed to be a Roman temple of some sort rising commandingly on the high ground above the north bank of the Carron. In the Historia Brittonum by 9th century Welsh monk Nennius, the structure is described as a "round house of polished stone". Aside from King Arthur, the Oven has been attributed to Romans Julius Caesar, Vespasian, and the usurper Carausius, but the most likely builder is the Emperor Septimius Severus (145-211 AD), who campaigned north of the Antonine Wall across 208-2011 AD.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Septimius_Severus_Glyptothek_Munich_357_cropped.jpg

The war started well enough for Severus, who managed to quickly reach the Antonine Wall which had been abandoned around 160-65 AD, but when he ventured into the highlands, the campaign became bogged down in a guerrilla war and the attempt to fully conquer Caledonia was never accomplished.

However he did reoccupy many forts built by Agricola over 100 years earlier and stymied the ability of the Caledonians to raid Roman Britain for some years.

With some possible exceptions (such as the Mausoleums of Augustus, Hadrian and Caecilia Metella in Rome, also Lucius Munatius Plancus in Gaeta) the building had few parallels anywhere in the Northern Roman empire, certainly in its unique beehive shape.

On reflection though, the mausoleum where the Berber King Juba II (son of Juba I of Numidia) and Queen Cleopatra Selene II (daughter of Antony and Cleopatra) were buried, also bears a certain vague resemblance to descriptions of Arthur’s Oven.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_Mausol%C3%A9e_royal_de_Maur%C3%A9tanie1.jpg

In terms of the Oven, antiquarians left sketchy records of inscriptions, also carvings of eagles and victories. A single large stone slab lay in the centre of the floor forming a pedestal for a statue, one solitary bronze finger of which survived, lodged in a crevice. It is possible that the circular Roman building here was a temple dedicated to the goddess Victory or Mars, called a tropaeum by classicists..

Two other tropaeums include the rebuilt Trajan's Trophy in Romania and that of Augustus in La Turbie, near Monaco.

The Arthurian Connection

Arthur’s Oven lay close to the Roman fort at Camelon, the name itself prompting connections with the legendary Brythonic leader, although the name 'Camelon' may well have been coined by early antiquarians after the 15th century, with its earlier name being Carmore or Carmure. The myth of Camelon's twelve Arthurian (or Roman) brass gates was widespread but only commonplace items such as leather shoes and coins were found when a Tesco's supermarket was constructed in the area.

Scottish historian and folklorist Archie McKerracher (d. 2001) believed Arthur’s O’on was in fact Arthur’s famous Round Table where the King consulted his knights, who sat on a stone ledge reported within the building.

Septimius Severus: The Roman Who Tried To Take Scotland:

Arthur’s Oven was left largely intact when the Roman army withdrew from Scotland; maybe they couldn’t simply destroy a sacred structure especially if it represented not just a tropaeum but also served as a memorial to the men who had helped achieve the victory that had for a time secured the area.

Arthur’s Oven was denuded of its portable contents by the army before the legions decamped back to Hadrian’s Wall.

The indigenous population did not destroy the Oven once they had taken possession of it, a powerful sign of their triumph over the Romans? Perhaps as significant a symbol as the capture of a legionary eagle bestowing high honour on the tribe who held it?

The building remained impressive and its possession would have given distinction to any new owner, visible from a great distance, projecting an aura of power and influence over the surrounding land. It may have been used as a sacred shrine or a great hall – a meeting place of peoples and possibly a beacon for travellers. The O’on‘s hall-like chamber may have boasted an open fire set in the centre of the stone-paved floor, with smoke escaping through the top of the ‘beehive’. Dark Age Pictish society was after all hierarchical and status would be associated with symbols from the Roman occupation.

Arthur’s Oven survived through the following centuries, with even Edward I , ‘Hammer of the Scots’ leaving it undespoiled (unlike his theft of the Stone of Scone), presumably due to its Arthurian associations, which he wished to attach to himself, although some say he removed any remaining pagan symbols.

By the early eighteenth century, Arthur's O'on was one of the most celebrated antiquities in Britain. For the famed William Stukeley, it was "the most genuine and curious Antiquity of the Romans in this Kind, now to be seen in our Island or elsewhere.”

However, Sir Michael Bruce of Stenhouse, whose lands straddled the Carron, decided that his new mill needed a dam and rather than quarry fresh stone, he turned to the ancient structure standing nearby.

In his eyes the Oven was a ready-made source of high-quality building material. Within a few weeks, easily the best-preserved Roman monument in Scotland was obliterated, the stones carried away for the dam's construction. A structure that survived nearly sixteen centuries of weather, warfare, and neglect was undone by the spade of its greedy landlord, enraging classicists.

Bruce certainly wasn’t poor, and at the time of its destruction some gentlemen offered to assist him, redeeming the oven, providing him with free stone from a quarry, but he refused this . He may have wanted to rid himself of an ancient monument that attracted too many unwelcome visitors trampling onto his land, obstructing his other money-making schemes.

According to the Rev John Bonar, then Minister for Larbert Parish Church, “The curious will regret that the owner of Stenhouse and Stenhouse Mill was so destitute of all regard for antiquity. He certainly was no dilettante, neither real nor pretended. He was not one of the admirers of the beautiful and of the rare in the material world.”

Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, a leading Scottish antiquary, accused Bruce of having "no other motive had but to procure as many stones as he could have purchased in his own quarries for five shillings." His friend and fellow antiquarian Roger Gale transcribed the news into the minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London, ensuring that the demolition would be remembered as a cautionary tale of wanton destruction.

William Stukeley was furious. In an extraordinary drawing, he imagined Bruce undergoing eternal punishment:

Stukeley's drawing of Sir Michael Bruce, "Stonekiller," eternally punished for his destruction of Arthur's O'on courtesy of Darrell J. Rohl

In a letter, he wrote, “I would propose, in order to make his name execrable to all posterity, that he should have an iron collar put about his neck, like a yoke; at each extremity a stone of Arthur's O'on to be suspended by the lewis in the hole of them; thus accoutred, let him wander on the banks of Styx, perpetually agitated by angry demons with oxgoads; "Sir Michael Bruce," wrote on his back in large letters of burning phosphorus.”

One poet imagined a traveler walking along the Carron, talking with the stones of the demolished Oven; each piece bemoaned its fate, recalling the monument's former glory and cursing the man who destroyed it.

Sir John Clerk of Penicuik cursed Bruce "with Bell, Book, and Candle". Five years later, he reported gleefully the mill and dam built from the O'on's stones had been destroyed in a great storm; poetic justice of a sort. Whether Bruce ended up in eternal torment is a different matter, although the destruction of the dam certainly smacks of Olympian displeasure.

At his estate of Penicuik House, Clerk instructed his son James to design a new stable block boasting a dome directly modeled on Arthur's O'on. Using existing drawings and descriptions as a guide, a dovecote replica perches above the stables, where it stands to this very day.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Penicuik_House_Stables.jpg

LINKS

The extraordinary story of Arthur’s O’on

IN the wake of the ’45 uprising – when the Hanoverian forces found themselves hampered by the poor mapping of Scotland – a great Military Survey of Scotland, “undertaken by order of William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland”, was commissioned. William Roy, a factor’s son from Lanarkshire, 19 at the time of Charles Edward Stuart’s expedition, was put in charge of the small group of men who were to undertake the physically exhausting, technically demanding work of surveying Scotland, under the supervision of the Board of Ordnance.

www.scotsman.com

View Of The Replica Of Arthur... | Image | trove.scot

View of the replica of Arthur's O'on. – an image record on trove.scot. See this and more than a million images from Historic Environment Scotland's archives on trove.scot.

Roman artefacts found at Camelon Tesco site

Archaeologists uncover evidence of at least two Roman forts at a supermarket construction site near Falkirk.

www.bbc.co.uk

Looking back on the industrial history of Camelon, 'the ancient metropolis of the Picts'

Although I was born in Dunrowan and therefore a Falkirk bairn, I was brought up in Camelon which I always think of as my ancestral home!

www.falkirkherald.co.uk

Arthur's Oven Temple - Roman Britain

Arthur’s Oven or O’on was a Roman temple which until 1743 stood on rising ground above the north bank of the River Carron not far from the old Carron ironworks in Stenhousemuir, near Falkirk, Scotland. A perfectly circular building with a single entrance facing due east, its walls were of finely-dressed masonry blocks 4 ft. […]

www.roman-britain.co.uk

Arthur’s O’on: A Scholar’s Return (Part 1)

Fifteen years after my MA thesis on Arthur’s O’on, I revisit a lost “wonder” of Roman Britain—blending story, scholarship, and reflection.

darrellrohl.com

Sir Michael's dam brings sad end to Arthur's O'on

In 1743 the Laird of Stenhouse Sir Michael Bruce ordered his workers to demolish an ancient building on his estate and cart the stones to the nearby river Carron where his damhead needed repairing.

www.falkirkherald.co.uk

BBC News | UK | Table turns for King Arthur

news.bbc.co.uk

Michael Bruce - Old Ways New Roads

oldwaysnewroads.co.uk

Arthur’s Oven

A Battle Won – and Lost The immediate vicinity of Stenhouse may be regarded as one of several Iron Age tribal centres located in the Falkirk district. Unfortunately the evidence for thi…

falkirklocalhistory.club

Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain by Charlotte Higgins, which includes Arthur’s Oven

STEPHEN ARNELL’S NOVEL THE GREAT ONE IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON KINDLE

Amazon.co.uk

www.amazon.co.uk

SAMPLE, READ BY ACTOR RICHARD INGS

From **Arthur's O'on: A Scholar's Return, 15 Years Later** by Darrell Rohl

Sunday, 5 April 2026

THE HAG GODDESS AND HER DAUGHTER

In Celtic cultures, the goddess of winter is the Cailleach, the old hag. The Cailleach is a wrinkled old woman with blue skin, rust colored teeth, and one immense eye in the center of her forehead. Her hair is long and wild and bone white. The goddess of winter appears at Samhain (Halloween) and rules until Beltane (May Day), when she is superseded by her daughter, Bride, the goddess of the spring.

As Patricia Monaghan writes in The Goddess Companion, quoting a Scottish song about the Cailleach:

“Her face had the blue-black shine of coal.

Her one bony tooth was red like rust.

Her hair was thick and dense and gray

like brushwood in a dying forest.

In her head was one eye like a pool,

swifter than a star in the winter sky.

That one stone eye in the hag’s head

moved quicker than mackerel after a lure.”

The Cailleach is more than a weather witch. She is a Neolithic Scottish creation goddess, a sort of giantess with amazing size and strength. The hag fashioned the Scottish mountains with her hammer. The goddess made the islands by dropping chunks of peat and rock from a basket on her back. Hikers see her hand print or footprint on rock formations.

Along with deliberate landscape fashioning, the winter goddess sometimes created land features by mistake. For example, after a long day of milking her deer herds, she lifted a rock on the side of Ben Cruachan to reveal a spring of fresh water to drink and bathe in. She was so tired, and the water was so refreshing, that she fell asleep without replacing the rock cap. When she awoke, the waters had rushed down the side of Ben Cruachan to form Lake Awe, the largest fresh water lake in Scotland.

The Cailleach, also known as the “Veiled One,” functions in many roles, including as a kind of wise old grandmother goddess. The hag crone gently encourages those whose earthly time is ended to cross to the spirit world while she stretches her veil across the winter landscape. Her association with Bride, however, indicates the promise of rebirth. She is a guardian and midwife of spring, for she protects the seeds so that they may sprout when her daughter comes to power.

The hag goddess of winter rides a wolf and has a particular affinity for black cats. She is also a fierce protector of all animals, especially horned animals such as wild cattle, goats, and deer. When her singing is heard in the forest, Scottish hunters give up their quest, knowing there will be no meal to catch.

Once, a desperate man with a large family to feed kept on searching until night fell, though not a deer was to be found. Eventually he built a fire, and inspired by the Calliach’s tune ringing through the forest, he sang a song about her clever ways. When he looked across the fire, the old hag was there with a twinkle in her eye. She explained that her herd was growing too large and she could use a brave hunter to cull it. If he would follow her song the next day, she would lead to him a deer he could shoot. From that time forth, he was always a successful hunter, thanks to the Cailleach’s respect for his cleverness in calling on her by singing her praises.

As the goddess of winter, the hag brings the wind, snow and ice. She plunges her staff into the ground to freeze it. Her magic can thicken lakes into icy slabs by dropping her plaid into the water. The Cailleach is also the goddess of the harvest, urging folk to gather in the crops when her gusts turn cold and the morning fields are rimmed with frost. In some places, a farmer’s wife makes a corn dolly, tossing it onto the field of a neighbor who has not finished his harvest. That neighbor, in turn, finishes and tosses it to another. Farmers are in fierce competition to not be the last to have the corn dolly, for then they will have to keep it throughout the winter, meaning they have to feed and house the winter hag all season as well.

As a goddess, the Cailleach has many complicated qualities that can be called upon by the worshipper. She has fierce strength, the power to both destroy and build, the power the protect life, whether of the animals or of the seeds, the power to grant the rejuvenation of deep sleep.

Deep in Glen Lyon, inaccessible by car, lies the tiny Glen Cailleach where an ancient indigenous shrine to the Cailleach can be found.

Legend has it that if the small stone statues of the Cailleach and her husband and children are placed carefully inside this small turf roofed stone hut at Samhain (Halloween), the land will prosper. These same statures are brought out into the meadow in front of the hut at Beltane (May Day) to protect the land during the spring and summer months. The local people re-roof her hut at this time in a ceremony of gratitude to the Goddess. Researchers think this ritual has been performed at this site for thousands of years, and it is still performed today.

Matriarch of the glen: walking the Highlands’ hidden pilgrim trail

A walk to a remote pre-Christian shrine leaves our writer reflecting on the power of a mythical Highland woman – and how she is the perfect role model for our times

www.theguardian.com

The Cailleach has a famous daughter, the beautiful spring goddess Bride (known as Brigid in Ireland). The Cailleach is threatened by her daughter’s beauty, for it is so great that she is able to make ice melt and flowers grow merely by her glance. The Cailleach’s fear forces her to keep Bride imprisoned on the top of Ben Nevis, Scotland’s tallest mountain. Every day the hag forces Bride to do impossible tasks, and then punishes her when she fails.

One day, while Bride is trying unsuccessfully to wash the Cailleach’s plaid in the lake, a kindly old man appears. He is sympathetic to her plight and hands her a bouquet of snowdrops, suggesting that she show them to the Cailleach. The girl, determining she has nothing to lose, does so. The Cailleach, who knows that the flowers mean her power is beginning to wane, is furious. She rides to every corner of Scotland, shaking her staff and burying the land in snow, ice and frost.

Scotland — Ben Cruachan, highest point in Argyll and Bute, home of the Cailleach nan Cruachan, By Graham Lewis - Ben Cruachan, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26172267

The kind old man turns out to be Angus, the prince of summer, in disguise. He rescues Bride from the imprisonment of the Cailleach and flies with her to the Isle of Summer. They dwell there happily, but the goddess Bride misses Scotland, so the couple returns to visit again and again. Each time, the sun shines brighter, the earth warms more, the trees bud and leaf, and the flowers grow more plentiful. The winter goddess throws wind and cold at them with less and less success, until finally the Cailleach gives up in exhaustion on Beltane (May Day), going to sleep again until Samhain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joKYWzzjuro

Bride, the Celtic goddess of spring, is welcomed across Scotland and Ireland on Imbolc (February 1) because Angus first rescues her then, and also because it is when ewes first give milk. Bride is not only the goddess of spring, but also of fire, of the forge, of light itself, of dawn, of fertility, of healing, of water (she has many holy wells and rivers associated with her), and of inspiration, especially for writing poetry. She is also associated with serpents, because they shed their skins and are thus symbols of regeneration.

Bride is a liminal goddess, meaning that she reigns over the in-between. Spring is a slow and subtle time between winter and summer. Dawn is a subtle time between night and day. Bride, according to legend, was born in a doorsill, thus neither inside nor outside.This goddess governs becoming, emerging, forming. She governs the forge, in which metal is formed, and poetry, in which meaning and image are formed. She governs water, which is the original womb of all life on earth.

One of her most ancient names was Breo-saighead, the fiery arrow, the goddess who brings light from darkness. The season of Imbolc does not bring the bright sun of summer, but rather the subtle shift of the angle of the sun’s rays slowly marches toward the equinox and eventually the summer solstice. Once again, she is a subtle goddess, the slow birther.

As a goddess associated with light, Bride is involved with spiritual wisdom, truth, healing, prophecy, and divination. These arts grow slowly to fruition, though their ultimate flowering may appear as a sudden burst. This is also true of the plant and animal kingdoms, where the slow period of gestation ends with the sudden birthing of a baby animal or a flowering tree. She is thus associated with healthy livestock and crops.

Fire, of course, melts snow and warms things. The Druids, who worshipped Bride, are said to have kept a perpetual fire alive in her honor. Such fires may have been burned for her up to the fifteenth century, by which time she had been conflated with Saint Brigid of Kildare and had found favor with nuns. The Druids also associated the goddess with their important bardic traditions, which preserved history through the recitation of poetry.

Today in Scotland, it is common to leave a strip of cloth or a piece of clothing outside on the eve of Imbolc so that it collects dew overnight. Bride bestows this dew as a blessing for the health and well-being of the family. People fashion special “Bride’s crosses” (AKA “Brigid’s Crosses”) from reeds or straw and hang them on the door for protection. Traditionalists eat special bannocks (Scottish quick bread), and may drink the milk of ewes if it is available. They cleanse the hearth of old ashes and lay a new fire for Bride. In homes lacking a hearth, people light candles in her honor. Young girls make Bride dolls of straw or reeds and carry them from home to home to bring blessings.

The weather on Imbolc determines the length of remaining winter. If the weather is sunny, the Cailleach is gathering a large amount of firewood and winter will be long. If the weather is foul, she gathers less and spring will come sooner. This Scottish tradition is the precursor to the American tradition of Groundhog Day. In this small way, the goddesses of Scotland still influence those of us in the “New World.”

How Wily Welsh Trickster Jack o’Kent Outwitted the Devil

Jack o' Kent or Jack-a-Kent is a folkloric character from the Welsh Marches bordering England and Wales, either a cleric or wizard, but primarily a trickster known for regularly beating the Devil in various challenges and wagers.

Jack’s tales are used to tell the origin of many of the geological formations around the region, ascribing them to his contests with The Horned One. Jack is said to have bet the Devil that Monmouthshire’s Sugar Loaf Mountain (Wales) was higher than the Malvern Hills of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and northern Gloucestershire in England.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Malvern_Hills_-_England.jpg

When Jack proved the Devil wrong, Old Nick tried to put more earth on top of the Malvern Hills, but his wheelbarrow broke and dropped it, forming a lump. The cleft in the western part of Skirrid in the Black Mountains is said to have been caused by a presumably giant-sized Jack's bootee as he jumped onto it from the Sugar Loaf Mountain.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ysgyryd_Fawr_-_the_Skirrid_viewed_from_Pandy_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3633209.jpg

Trelleck’s Standing Stones are said to have been thrown there by Jack, resulting from a stone-flinging competition held on Trelleck Beacon between him and his adversary.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harold%27s_Stones,_Trelleck_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6449077.jpg

He first appears in print in the play ‘John a Kent and John a Cumber’, by playwright/spy Anthony Munday, from around 1590, with Jack as an aged hermit with supernatural powers. Real-life figures on whom o’ Kent could be based on include John Kent, a Robin Hood-like figure of the Late Middle Ages who roamed the Welsh Marches, Dr. John Gwent, a Welsh Franciscan and worker of miracles who died in 1348, Dr John Kent Caerleon, an astronomer, who wrote a treatise on witchcraft in the thirteenth century and Father John of Kentchurch, a Franciscan friar, bard, and Oxford Professor who lived and died in the fifteenth century.

As Jack o' Kent appears in a sixteenth-century play, it could be taken that he was well known in local culture before this time, used as bogeyman figure until the early twentieth century, or even later. There is also speculation that Jack could be Welsh language poet Siôn Cent (c. 1400–1430/45 or or 1367–1430) or Welsh freedom-fighter Owain Glyndŵr, (1359–c. 1416), who was supposed to have an affinity with the supernatural, hence, his boastful claim, “I can call spirits from the vasty deep” in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One.

However it is more likely that Jack was a syncretic amalgam of a number of people and myths from the Welsh Borders.

Sidebar The Swansea Devil: a true story

The Swansea Devil, also called Old Nick, is a wood carving of the Devil in Swansea, Wales. It was carved by an architect whose design for St. Mary's Church in the 1890s was nixed by a committee. Some time later, when designing an office building across the road, the rejected architect placed a carving of Satan facing the church and prophesied "When your church is destroyed and burnt to the ground my devil will remain laughing". This prophecy came true when the church was bombed during WWII.

Why there's a devil looking down on everyone from a Swansea shopping centre

Old Nick's story stretches back more than 100 years, includes a shocking prophecy that came true and a disappearance, but not everyone wants him here

www.walesonline.co.uk

Back to Jack

The myths surrounding John o’ Kent tend to revolve around his outwitting the devil. This power perversely stemming from him having sold his soul to the devil as a young boy to gain supernatural power or to have the ability to use Satan as his servant for a fixed period of time, Faust-style.

Jack used his power on occasion for public good; the best-known one associated with a bridge over the River Monnow between Kentchurch and Grosmont. With the Devil’s help, Jack built a bridge in a single night, on the promise that the Evil One could have the soul of the first to cross. With the bridge complete, the devil impatiently wanted his reward for keeping his side of the bargain before daylight approached, wanting Jack to be the first to cross his new bridge. Not a total halfwit, Jack spotted a poor old starving dog nearby and threw a the bone across the bridge and the hapless mutt chased after it. As the cock crowed, Satan was forced to take the soul of the harmless creature as his reward.

Do Animals Have Souls? What the Bible Says

If you are defining the soul as the place where your emotions flow out of, where you think, reason, and make decisions, then absolutely animals have souls. If you are equating the soul with the spirit, then I would say that animals don’t have souls.

www.biblestudytools.com

On one occasion, when passing a field when seeds were sown with his evil companion, Jack offered the Devil a choice at harvest-time, of having half the crop and offered the top or the bottom. Satan, thinking it would be wheat, barley, oats, rye, peas, beans or some such, opted for the top. When the harvest came, he discovered it was a field of turnips. Jack made the same offer again and the Devil chose the bottom half, only to discover at harvest-time that the crop was wheat. Silly Devil and rather petty Jack, methinks.

Jack o’ Kent was said to have stabled great horses with magical powers of flight in Herefordshire’s Kentchurch Court. One day he set off at dawn with a steaming mince pie to take to the King for breakfast in London for some reason; he reached the city with the pie still hot – though he had shamefully lost his garter on the way, caught on the weathervane of a London church as his mighty steed leapt over it.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kentchurch_Court,_Herefordshire.jpg

On another occasion, Jack was employed by a farmer as a crow-scarer. Deciding he wanted to go to the fair that had just arrived in the local Welsh town, he summoned the crows and put them into an old roofless barn, where they stayed. At the fair, he bumped into the farmer who furiously hauled Jack back to the farm. But when Jack led him to the barn: all the crows were quietly gathered, despite the want of roof.

And you’ll probably guess how this one goes: Jack and the Devil agree to split a drift of pigs. Satan agrees to take all the ones with straight tails, but o’ Kent feeds them all with beans and drives them though a stream, apparently resulting in the requisite kinks. Nice one Jack.

By this point, one might be feeling a trifle sorry for Old Nick, so one may sympathize with his plan to get his own back on the Welsh trickster.

The Devil informs Jack that he will have his soul whether or not he is buried inside or outside a church, and will personally carry him off, body and soul, to Hell for a smorgasbord of legendary torments.

Crafty Jack’s answer was to be buried inside the thickness of the wall at Grosmont Church (or was it Kentchurch Church?), so neither inside nor outside the church, but in a liminal space between.

According to local folklore, there’s some proof that Jack escaped the fiery depths: in Kentchurch Court on stormy nights, a ghostly figure walks out of the wall and plays tricks, which could be a form of eternal damnation, if you ask me.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._Nicholas_Church,_Grosmont_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1070723.jpg

It’s also recounted the spikes on the top of the walls of Grosmont Church are where Jack’s innards and eyes were placed after his death. Akin to Prometheus, a crow and a dove return each evening at midnight to spar over his spiritual remains. If one wins, the old rogue’s final fate will be at last be decided…

In St Nicholas’ churchyard, there once was a medieval preaching cross which had crudely carved depictions of Christ crucified and Mary the Virgin with baby Jesus. It was locally called Jack o’ Kent’s Cross.

Cross Ash School, Churches And Castles — Within the Grosmont Skenfrith and White Castle Trilateral, (1985) tell us about a local giant, saying that: “Under the wall of the South Transept, according to legend, lies the body of the giant, Jack of Kent, buried half inside the church and half outside the church, where his tombstone can still be seen.”