Explore every episode of the podcast The Local Mythstorian Podcast
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christmas Special 2024 - The Hauntings of Cheshire | 19 Dec 2024 | 00:16:19 | |
Bringing together a selection of unique curios and local tales concerning folklore and haunting from across the ancient county of Cheshire, join Eli by the fireside in this Christmas special from The Local Mythstorian Podcast. | |||
| Halloween Special - The Ghost of Barton Blount Manor | 17 Oct 2024 | 00:15:35 | |
In this historically themed Halloween special, it's a personal tale from Eli regarding a very uncanny experience that he and his father shared when he was just 10 years old way back in 1993! Not quite a ghost story, but something wonderfully odd and beguiling, it was an experience that, thanks to the wonders of Google Earth, has since kicked up the strangest of possibilities thirty years on from the event itself. | |||
| The Extraordinary Local Histories of Vale Royal - Live from The Grange Theatre | 24 May 2024 | 00:41:02 | |
Recorded live at The Grange Theatre, Hartford on May 16th 2024, the last regular episode in Season 2 of the podcast presents Eli's talk on the extraordinary local histories of Vale Royal. Topics covered include the Vale Royal Rebellion, the prophet Robert Nixon and the Devil in Cheshire folklore. | |||
| Prescription Poison - Who Killed Thomas Meakin? | 23 Apr 2024 | 00:16:45 | |
The story of Thomas Meakin's eighteenth century murder is a well-known legend of the Staffordshire Moorlands, yet there has never before been a full consideration of the circumstances surrounding his death, nor an inquiry into who may have killed him. | |||
| Rites of the Spring - Derbyshire Well Dressing and the Cult of Arnemetia | 28 Mar 2024 | 00:17:21 | |
A spring bonus episode of sorts, recorded for season one but never released, its seasonal theme sees it make it into Season 2... | |||
| The Last Day of August - Great Budworth's Civil War Secret | 01 Mar 2024 | 00:33:06 | |
The village of Great Budworth possesses one of the most remarkable churches in all of Cheshire, not just loved by locals but genuinely appreciated by history fans and enthusiasts of late medieval architecture right across the UK. Something visitors may not be aware of however is the visit paid to the village by Parliamentarian forces on the last day of August in 1644, and its place at the centre of a genuinely hidden history of the English Civil War. | |||
| The Hungry Prophet - The Legendary Sale of Robert Nixon | 01 Feb 2024 | 00:33:22 | |
The story of Robert Nixon, the 'Cheshire Prophet’ starved to death by the king, was once the best known legend of the county, retold and republished dozens of times across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Precisely who the man was however, has always been something of a mystery, with many assuming he was little more than a fairy tale. Yet research suggests that not only was Robert a real-life figure, but that his bizarre and tragic end might just have been a reality too. | |||
| The Local Crusader - Ranulf de Blondeville and the Saracens of Biddulph Moor (Live Special) | 23 Jan 2024 | 00:40:26 | |
There are few more curious associations in local legend than that of Saracen prisoners being settled on the land that is now known as the Staffordshire Moorlands village of Biddulph Moor. Travelling back to the thirteenth century to discover the untold story behind the legend, we reach a place where the adventures of the crusades meet with the dark realities of the medieval slave trade under the patronage of one of the most powerful figures in all of local history. | |||
| Invisible Fortress - The Vanishing of Shipbrook Castle | 01 Jan 2024 | 00:33:40 | |
The castle at Shipbrook near Davenham is long lost to us today, its last traces being cleared from the land in the 1790s. However, in balancing the brutal events of early Norman England together with the history of a key local family, not only can we better appreciate this often overlooked corner of medieval Cheshire, but perhaps for the first time, look to understand the story of Shipbrook Castle and its ties to a bloody revolt against King Henry IV. | |||
| Christmas Special - The Friar's Fool (Live Stream Event) | 14 Dec 2023 | 00:21:55 | |
A mid-season bonus episode - a recording of The Local Mythstorian website Zoom live stream event from December 7th; The Friar's Fool - A Brief History of English Devil Lore and Its Place In Cheshire Legend. | |||
| A Ghost Story for Cheshire - The Bones of Marbury Park | 01 Dec 2023 | 00:35:11 | |
The haunting of Marbury Park is one of Cheshire’s most enduring legends of the supernatural. Most retellings however, if not all, have simply sought to repeat the basics of the tale without looking deeper into the history of the protagonists within. When we do, and look to consider the legend within the context of its earliest form, we find a very different tale to tell, and one that is all the more fascinating for it. | |||
| Scholar of Magic - Ranulf Higden and the Wands of Chester Cathedral | 09 Nov 2023 | 00:27:23 | |
The Cheshire monk Ranulf Higden is remembered to historians today as the author of a distant world history from the fourteenth century. However, beyond his daily religious work in the abbey at Chester, he was an inquisitive and curious man of his age; traits that can help us understand better why such a figure of Christian piety would come to be buried with a notorious totem of the magical arts. | |||
| Blood In the Barley - The Hidden Story of the Vale Royal Rebellion | 07 Oct 2023 | 00:38:19 | |
Welcome to Season 2! | |||
| Five Minute Mythstoria - Booth's Cheshire Uprising | 30 Mar 2023 | 00:06:16 | |
The Battle of Winnington Bridge in Northwich, Cheshire is widely considered to be the last battle of the English Civil Wars, yet it is little known in comparison to many events in the conflict. It is a story which provides a crystallisation of a unique moment in English history and one that illustrates well the fears, passions and confusion of the times. | |||
| Five Minute Mythstoria - The Slaughtered Lambs of Tideswell | 24 Mar 2023 | 00:05:25 | |
Tideswell in Derbyshire is a gem of the Peak District and home to the 'Cathedral of the Peak' - a church of grandeur which acts as a signpost back toward the village's rich medieval history; one of its most curious tales being that of the thirteenth-century feud between Lichfield Cathedral and Lenton Priory that centred on the village's prized livestock. | |||
| Five Minute Mythstoria - The Bridestones Hidden Ritual Landcaspe | 16 Mar 2023 | 00:06:13 | |
The Bridestones is the most well known totem of prehistory in Cheshire, and indeed the Staffordshire Moorlands, standing as it does on the border between the two - but could it be that the countryside around it contains a number of other, as yet to be confirmed ritualistic sites? | |||
| Five Minute Mythstoria - The Eagle Centre Poltergeist | 10 Mar 2023 | 00:06:42 | |
The Poltergeist is a form of supernatural phenomena recorded throughout human history. Scary, fascinating and frustrating in equal measure, it can prove a genuine nuisance; no more so than when such goings-on were apparent on such a scale that Derby City Council had to issue a leaflet on the matter to businesses in a local shopping centre! | |||
| Five Minute Mythstoria - The Ghost of Molly Leigh | 03 Mar 2023 | 00:07:45 | |
Today, Molly Leigh is remembered to residents of Stoke-On-Trent as the Witch of Burslem, but the true story of her life and death suggest she was far from the malevolent force the label suggests. Famed locally for her 'cross-ways' grave in St. John's churchyard, could it be that the particulars of her final resting place actually relate to one of the most dramatic April Fools pranks in British history? | |||
| Five Minute Mythstoria - The Great Age of Mary Brookes | 25 Feb 2023 | 00:04:42 | |
In a series of bite-sized episodes to bring season 1 of the podcast to an end, Five Minute Mythstoria looks to share snap-shot tales of curious history from across Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire. | |||
| The Meltdown Murders - Castor's Bridge and the Borderland Smelters | 09 Jan 2023 | 00:29:19 | |
In the last regular episode of the season, we look at how throughout the three-shires border region, where East Cheshire, Peak District Derbyshire and the Staffordshire Moorlands intertwine, tales of yore are peppered with dark legends of cannibalism and murder, and ask if there could there be more to the historical rumours than mere fear mongering and folk warnings of the wild? | |||
| Butterton Live Special - Mythstoric Origins in the Staffordshire Moorlands | 12 Dec 2022 | 00:39:22 | |
A live recording from Eli's talk with Butterton History Group in September 2022, and touches on three topics from the Moorlands that haven't been covered in the regular podcast episodes; the Saracens of Biddulph Moor, the murder of Thomas Meakin and the brutal Civil War folklore of the village of Bagnall. Mythstoric Origins - Exploring the Extraordinary Local Histories Behind the Legend and Folklore of East Cheshire, Peak District Derbyshire and the Staffordshire Moorlands is available here! | |||
| Death of the Jagger - John Turner and the Mysterious Birth of Jenkin Chapel | 01 Dec 2022 | 00:16:27 | |
The manner of John Turner's death and the creation of Jenkin Chapel are two of the most curious bookmarks in the history of Cheshire's peak border region. But by considering both events together with the darker history of the area, we may discover that old country superstitions still had remarkably strong ties to local belief structure during the early part of the eighteenth century. | |||
| Changing Gods - Mercian Christianity and the Fallen Stones of Arbor Low | 01 Nov 2022 | 00:17:50 | |
Arbor Low is regarded as one of the most important prehistoric sites in England and a bastion of our ancient cultural identity. It is most definitely a place of wonder, but its vision comes complete with the seemingly unanswerable conundrum as to how its once magnificent stone circle came to be pulled down and laid flat. Could the mystery become a little clearer when placed against the location’s direct and intimate connections to the religious wars of Dark Age Britain? | |||
| The Phantom Rebel - In Search of the Headless Horseman of the Staffordshire Moorlands | 11 Oct 2022 | 00:37:37 | |
The story that originally inspired The Local Mythstorian project and a tale quite unlike anything else in the British Isles! The Headless Horseman of the Staffordshire Moorlands is one of the best known pieces of folklore in the region, but where did it come from? Tracing the story of the horseman back through 650 years of local history, via Victorian ghost sightings and Arthurian literature, we uncover the shocking true story of medieval murder that lies at the heart of the spectre’s inspiration. | |||
| Industrial Magic - The Real Wizards of Alderley Edge | 01 Sep 2022 | 00:12:08 | |
The image of the wizard has become synonymous with the Cheshire village of Alderley Edge largely thanks to a nineteenth century legend. Yet the deeper history of the area suggests that this connection to such magical figures is far from fantasy, and in fact may be the result of a very real, if extraordinary, historical legacy. | |||
| The Magic Hatters - Understanding the Story of the Bakewell Witches | 11 Aug 2022 | 00:20:12 | |
The story of the Bakewell witches is unique within the annals of English witchcraft and a tale thought by some to be so fantastical that it may not even be true. Yet research cannot only place the event firmly in the context of the times, but it can also help create a picture of the events that originally brought the story into being. | |||
| The Talbot Curse - Lady Gwendoline and the Legend of the Chained Oak | 17 Jul 2022 | 00:09:14 | |
The Chained Oak of Alton may be a unique piece of British folklore, but its creation story suffers from such a swathe of supposition that many have come to assume there is no genuine historical basis for the legend at all. Yet in the tragic history of the family who sit at the heart of the piece we may well find that the tale is indeed rooted in reality, as we look to uncover why an ancient oak tree has been wrapped in iron chains for the better part of the past 200 years. | |||
| King of Chaos - The Strange Lives of Samuel Johnson | 14 Jun 2022 | 00:12:17 | |
The figure of Samuel Johnson serves to both intrigue and fascinate, but so little of his story has been properly examined that ultimately he is little understood beyond triviality. Seeking to address that balance by casting a light across the life of one of the most remarkable and bizarre characters in all of Cheshire history, we discover that sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction. | |||