White Gate Boggarts

I once worked in the Fylde/Blackpool area of Northern England for a couple of years, and so got to know it quite well whilst I was staying in a boarding house for that time ....

I've Drunk In The No3 Pub In Blackpool

.... so when I saw a magazine reference to strange phenomena on a White Gate Lane in the Fylde, Lancashire, I was just curious enough to wonder if it was related to the Whitegate Drive that I did recall from those years ago.

It turned out that it was, in that they were one and the same in 1898. White Gate Lane was finally renamed as Whitegate Drive ... thus motivated (I worry about my motivations some times!!), I felt that I may as well recount the story that had prompted me to look up this obscure fact.

Blackpool apparently had a population of about 400 in 1819, and was an area famed for the longevity of its residents, which is sadly the exact opposite of its health indices these days, where its one of Britain's worst for heath and longevity. Blackpool inhabitants also had a history of wrecking ships, smuggling, and earlier still, of retaining Catholicism and supporting Jacobitism, but by and large its small population for most of its early life, meant it had little to do with the outside world. 

Most people in the early emerging Blackpool were farmers, and either illiterate or near illiterate, with just a few merchants etc who were literate. The then White Gate Lane, was then not in Blackpool, but just a rural road on the Fylde coast, that was famously said to be haunted by two 'Boggarts', known locally as 'Hobthurst, the Lubber Fiend,’ and the 'Headless Lady'.

Hobthrust the Lubber Fiend

Now for those not familiar with the term a ‘Boggart’ is a generic term to describe the solitary supernatural creatures, that terrified some in the English Northern counties and parts of the Midlands in both Victorian (and in occasionally later), times.

• ‘Hobthurst, the Lubber Fiend,’ was described as a friend of the dairy maid and servant girl, but a not so friendly to the lazy master or slovenly farmer;
• While the ‘Headless Lady,’ was said to carry her decapitated head under her arm, and to keep kissing it (although how she could kiss her own head, and with what isn't explained).

In 1857 it added another apparition to the list when The Preston Chronicle and Lancashire Advertiser (2 May 1857), reported under the title ‘Superstition in the Fylde: Whitegate-Lane Boggart’, that a farmer and a butcher were said to have been drunkenly (the farmer had been on a 3 day bender after the death of his wife), walking the lonely road of Whitegate-lane [sic], which extended from their last drinking point, the No. 3 Public-house (Now in Devonshire Square), on the edge of Blackpool, to the farmhouse in Great Marton, a walk of around 1.2 miles. 

At midnight as they walked the dark and empty lane, they both saw the ghost of the farmers late wife, fully developed come in to sight. They both ran back across a stream (it was commonly believed that sprits couldn't cross running water), and then they took a circuitous route to the farm house. The butcher went home by an even longer route.

The widower farmer was reported in the tale as having deserted his children, and left the locality altogether following the encounter with his wife's shade, but though many disbelieved the tale (due to the excess drinking), the report stated that the butcher, who still resided in Blackpool, constantly affirmed the truth of the story, it was said that he has not yet dared to go alone in any lane after dark.

The Headless Lady Lives On ....

Some looking found that the background to the headless lady was not covered by anyone, so her story has died. However references to Hobthurst, the Lubber Fiend are thick on the ground.

John Hodgson 'A Topological and Historical Description of Westmorland' (P44) 1810 and 'The Beauties of England and Wales, Or, Delineations 1814' - 'the freaks of the local spirit , Hobthurst', so exquisitely described by Milton.' 

William Harrison Ainsworth (1854) also referenced 'Hobhurst the lubber fiend' in page 270 of 'The Lancashire Witches: A Romance of Pendle Forest'  - "The hinds stared aghast, for so grim was the appearance of the attorney, that almost thought Hobhurst, the lubber-fiend, was addressing them." - 'hinds' in this reference, is the peasants/rustics who are led by lords and bishops aka 'sheep'.

Transactions of the American Philological Association · 1895 Vol.xxvi  The Devil and his Imps pages 106 - 108 'Hob-thrust', a good-natured goblin who assists servant maids in their early morning work. Called also 'Hobthrush'. This is Milton's ; 'lubber-fiend' in L'Allegro. It also references 'Hobbe Hyrste' and claims the earliest references in any form of the name are 1489 (William Paston letters - an account of an insurrection proclamation in the North of England ... in which the author added ... 'And thys is in the name of Mayster Hobe Hyrste, Robin Godfelaws brodyr he is, as I trow'). 

While the latest was 1861 ('Mr Bateman opened a circular tumulus on Barlow Moor called 'Hob Hursts house') .... some say that a Hobthrust, is a  local  spirit or imp, famous for whimsical pranks. In some farm- houses a cock and bacon are broiled on Fassens Eve (Shrove Tuesday); and if any person should neglect to eat heartily of this food, then Hobthrust is sure to amuse himself at night by cramming him up to the mouth with bigg-chaff.

But some sources (Collier?) have stated that as he was always a goblin of the house and fields, and not of the woods, so the the term Hurst was wrong as it refers to woods.

Sadly all three of them will have long gone, not too long after the time of the change of street name in 1898, because by the 1920's, with the arrival of the motor car, they would have been run over on the old White Gate lane, as its one of the areas busiest roads.