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North west Bristol Ghosts
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The Ghosts of Clack Mill
Many years later the area was known for its sheep and the Saye Mills (from which the district of Sea Mills is named) and the haunted part of the river bank (behind Bell Barn Road) became the site of the Clack Mill
(demolished 1937) one of several mills producing Saye cloth, a rough serge.
The Clack Mill boasted two ghosts. The first was a man who hanged himself behind the mill and the second was an old lady in black who appeared one night at the bedside of a boy living at the mill.
When unable to persuade him to follow her she disappeared through the wall where a door had once been.
The White Horse
A wooded uninhabitated region lay between Stoke Bishop and Shirehampton where the River Trym flowed from Henbury through Combe Dingle to the Avon.
Flooding was frequent and when a travelling showman allowed his horse to graze on the river bank it became stuck in the mud.
The place was so remote that no help was available and the poor beast died of exposure and starvation.
When mist was hanging over the valley the ghost of a white horse was said to appear.
Shenkins Ghost
This story of imported pigs being driven across the Downs would seem to date from Georgian times, as the footpad Shenkin Protheroe was hung in 1783 at Gallows Acre Lane (now Pembroke Road) for killing Evan Daniel, a pig drover, although the murder site is not recorded.
Shenkin was a deformed dwarf with very long arms. He was both a grotesque and a pitiful sight.
Clifton Down was his territory and it was here that he accosted lone travellers. He begged for money and robbed his victims if they were unsympathetic.
He was the last man to be hanged at Gallows Acre and after his death his body was left to rot away, as was the custom, hanging in an iron cage as a warning to other criminals.
The lane leading to Gallows Acre (otherwise Clifton Down) Gate became a no go area as people claimed Shenkin's ghost climbed down after dark to roam the Downs.
Parrys Ghost
Stoke Bishop and Combe Dingle seems to have been especially haunted in Victorian times.
Parry's Lane is named from a well once standing near the top of a hill approaching the Downs.
The ghost of a man named Parry was said to sit beside the well, where he cut his throat.
He also haunted Parry's Lane, where, as a suicide, he had been buried at the crossroads near Cross Elm Cottage.
The name Parry's Well alternated with Paddy's Well, for Irish drovers were said to water pigs there.
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