Waddow Hall, Ribble Valley 18th Century

“‘peg of the well’ is a name of which nearly everyone in Clitheroe and the surrounding area knows, a character from local folklore whose history is somewhat vague and the nature of which is thought to be malevolent.” - Northwest Nature and History

A well with a statue of a headless woman?! Of course my interest was peaked! We’re travelling to Lancashire, and this is one of those folklore stories that has fallen victim to adaptation and exaggeration over the years. Which, I suppose, is the lure of folklore in the first place.

It is widely accepted amongst historians that the name ‘Peg’ usually derived from Meg or Margaret and the well that features in this story is none other than St. Margaret’s well, an old spring from pre-Christian times. So, the headless statue at the side of the well must’ve been St. Margaret, right?

Well, as with folklore, other tales gained more popularity than this simple assumption. The most popular yarn cites that a servant, Peg O’Neil, serving at the nearby Waddow Hall, was sent to fetch water from said well one stormy night. The hall itself was owned by the Starkie family, and if you recognise that name it may be because of Roger Nowell Starkie (one of the men to preside over the Pendle Witch trial). Peg protested the request, claiming the weather outside was far too dangerous to be hiking over to the well. The mistress of the hall supposedly shouted “I hope you fall and break your neck!”, not very nice, and with the universe being such a fickle thing, the very thing happened to Peg. She unfortunately met her demise at the well and her vengeful spirit stuck around to haunt the well.

Another tale states that the mistress, after shouting the very thing that killed the servant, ended up blaming a water spirit named Peggy… (could this be an evolution of the known water witch Jenny?!) A Puritan preacher had been invited to the hall, and upon fearing his state when he didn’t show up in time, the mistress sent out servants to help. Once found and brought back to the hall, he appeared completely sodden and shaking from the cold.

He claimed he was crossing the Brungerley hipping stones and was knocked into the water by a sudden wave, to which the mistress exclaimed ‘that’s Peggy’s work!’. Paranoid at what else Peggy might do, she ran to the statue of St. Margaret and took an axe to her head. Not entirely certain what that would accomplish other than pissing the water spirit off…

It is said that the head, removed by the mistress, was retrieved and kept at Waddow Hall up until the 1800s, but no one can quite say with certainty what happened to the head after this date.

Could this statue, which still stands guard by the well, be cursed? People claim the spirit of Peg comes back every seven years to strike again. Anfield Cemetery, in Liverpool, has a monument for two boys who mysteriously drowned in the Ribble in 1892, attributed to Peg. In 1899, seven years after the drowning of the two boys, a fisherman drowned in the very same Ribble over in Lytham. The mysterious nature of this death once again being attributed to Peg.

There’s more questions than answers with this tale, but that is exactly how I like my folklore to be. Let us puzzle this one for eternity!