English folklore recounts Hertfordshire’s Jack O' Legs as a 14ft tall, 12th century ‘Social Justice Warrior’ who in the vein of Robin Hood, robbed the rich to give to the poor.
Jack lived in a cave in a wood at Weston village near the Knight’s Templar-founded town of Baldock, the name apparently derived from Babylon in Mesopotamia. Walter William Skeat wrote in his The Place-names of Hertfordshire (1904):
In Clutterbuck's Hist. of Herts., ii, 267, we find that Baldock was built by the Knights Templars before the reign of Henry III; he cites from Monast. Anglic., ii. 524—"patribus milit. Templi Salomonis … manerio, in qua terra ipsi construxerunt quendam Burgum qui dicitur Baudac." Thus the mystery disappears when we perceive that the name was conferred by the Knights Templars, who were necessarily as familiar with the O.F. name Baldac as they were with that of Solomon. The statement in Salmon's Herts. seems to be quite correct, viz., that Baldock was "an arbitrary name given by the Knights Templars when they made their settlement and built here." He adds that the grant of the land was made to them by Gilbert, Earl of Pembroke, in the time of Stephen; and he refers the name to "Bagdet or Baldach, near Babylon, whence they were ejected by the Saracens."
One year there was such a poor harvest, the local bakers hiked up price of flour, so Jack set upon the greedy boulangers on the road to Baldock, giving the flour he purloined to the starving townsfolk.
Seeking revenge, the enraged bakers caught and cruelly blinded the giant with a red hot poker, then hanged him on nearby Gibbet’s Hill. Before his execution, Jack asked to be pointed in the direction of Weston so he could shoot an arrow with his bow and requested that he be buried where it landed. His wish was granted.
He shot his arrow three miles, all into the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Weston - where he was buried to this very day; no-one appears to have tried to exhume him to verify the story though.
In the 17th century, the noted antiquary John Tradescant the Younger bought a thighbone supposedly belonging to Jack O’Legs from the church’s parish clerk, which he later gifted to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and displayed as a ‘Thigh-bone of a Giant’. Subsequent anthropological studies speculatively identified it as an elephant’s leg-bone and the exhibit was discarded, but not lost (see links).
No caves have been discovered in the area; the closest thing being the Weston Hills Tunnel constructed as part of the A505 Baldock bypass and opened in March 2006.
The final resting place of Jack O’Legs?
Jack’s dying wish mirrors closely the last wish of Robin Hood; shown at the very end of Richard Lester’s elegiac 1976 movie Robin & Marian:
Was the giant hanged here?
John Skelton’s 1521 poem Speak Parrot, states "The gibbett of Baldock was made for Jack Leg". The custom of seizing and swiftly executing a person caught in the act of stealing, called infangthief, stems from early mediaeval times.
Nathanael Salmon recorded the tale in his 1728 History of Hertfordshire:
“In Weston churchyard are two stones, or rather Stumps of Stones at almost fourteen Foot asunder, which the Swains will have to be on the Grave of a Giant... “About 70 years ago a very long Thigh-bone was taken out of the Church chest, where it had lain many years for a Shew, and sold by the Clerk to John Tradiskin, who, we are told, put it among the rarities of Oxford. “This Giant, called Jack O'Legs, as Fame goes, lived in a Wood here, was a great Robber, but a generous one, for he plundered the Rich to feed the Poor. He took bread from the Baldock Bakers frequently, who, taking him at an Advantage put out his Eyes and after hanged him upon a Knoll in Baldock Field. He made them at his Exit but one single Request, which they granted: that he might have his Bow put into his Hand, and wherever his Arrow fell he should be buried, which happened to be in Weston Church-yard.”
Brendan King, Chairman of the Local History Society based at Baldock Museum says that Jack may not have been quite the do-gooder he has been depicted as, more of a lanky voyeur:
“Another story says that he went round Baldock looking in upstairs windows, so maybe that was another reason they didn’t like him. But these stories are all just embellishing the legend and each person will embellish it in their own way. That’s why the whole thing is so difficult to disentangle. There may not be an ounce of truth in the whole thing but it seems to me that the very essence of it is a large robber who was well known for a long way around and about.”
Incidentally, Baldock is mentioned in Kingsley Amis’ darkly comedic ghost story The Green Man (1969). The town being the closest to fictional pub owned and run by the apparition troubled main character Maurice Allington (Albert Finney in the chilling 1990 BBC1 mini-series).
By the way, Jack’s name lives on in the strong ales produced locally; both Tring Brewery and Six Hills (named after the Roman tumuli I have previously investigated for PDN) Brewery make a heady beer called Jack O' Legs
Giants in Arthurian times? A scene from The Green Knight (2021):
‘Real’ Giants - still existing in Ulster’s Sperrin Mountains
The USA’s rather more recent, and definitely fictional giant - Paul Bunyan
LINKS
The Human League - Empire State Human
Stephen Arnell’s novel THE GREAT ONE is available on Amazon Kindle: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-One-Secret-Memoirs-Pompey-ebook/dp/B0BNLTB2G7
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