THE SKULLS OF WARBLETON PRIORY

 

 

The skulls at Warbleton Priory were regarded with awe in quite recent times. These are two skulls kept in the Priory ruins (now part of a farm), and the story was that if anyone tried to move them from their place, let alone bury them, ghastly noises would break out in the night, the cattle would fall sick, and ill-luck would befall the hand that moved them.

 

They are said to be the skulls of a former owner of the priory, foully murdered, and of the murderer; needless to say, there was an indelible bloodstain on the floor of the room where the murder took place.

 

As late as 1947, a writer in the Sussex County Magazine found the legend very much alive, although he had also spoken with an old lady who had held the skulls in her lap for a full twenty minutes when she was a little girl without suffering any ill-effects or causing any calamities.

 

Indeed, he also tells how the skulls were once taken out of doors and lodged in an apple tree, the only result of this profanation being that a blue tit built its nest in one of them, using the eye-socket as an entrance.

 

 

 

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