Loremen Podcast - Loremen S7Ep7 - Michelham Priory, Upper Dicker

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

A new contender for Rudest Place Name has entered the ring! (Don't get your tonsure in a twist, Upper Dicker is actually very polite). James provides a run-down of Michelham Priory's top monks*. Plus, a couple of mysterious spectres and a jug you do NOT want to drink from. *"Mooooonks!" - Alasdair Beckett-King. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠See Alasdair On Tour! ⁠⁠ Join the LoreFolk at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ko-fi.com/loremen⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check the sweet, sweet merch here... ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @loremenpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/loremenpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.instagram.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.facebook.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from Days of Yore. I'm James Shakeshoft. I'm Alistair. Boy, Alistair, I've got one that is going to be squeaking through the sensors.

I don't know. He got a saucy one. It is a saucy one. This is going to be... He's packing a little sauce. He's got a little sashet. of sauce. The rudest named one since Scratching Fanny

of Cock Lane. It is. Tear here to open. Let's get the sauce out. It's the ghosts of Micklem Priory. Upper Dicca. Top with that in the title though for SEO purposes. Hello there, Alistair. Hey there, James. How are you doing? I'm all right. How are you doing? I'm all right.

I'm over that cold. Do you remember I had that cold? Yes. Listeners will have been following the saga of James's cold. Lingering it was. Oh, it was a lingerer. Wait, no, no, my linger. Sorry, I'm sorry to, I'm sorry to dive into Pedant's Corner this early. What?

What? Mlingering, quite the opposite, is pretending to be ill when you're not, James. What, what? Have you just made a Freudian slip-up? Was that a fake cold? No. Because I've been saying for years in that red hot chili peppers song where he says, I'm malinger on your block.

I don't think he knows what malinger means. Sorry, were you pretending to be wounded on the block? So a malingerer is nothing to do with lingering? No, it's like, it's all part of the, you know, a tradition of like anti-disabled people propaganda that says, oh, you know, all these people you see with these things, they're just faking it for, you know, for money and attention, which has been going on for hundreds of years, like in the Beggars Opera, they, you know, people are pretending to have lost legs when they haven't really lost legs.

Oh. Although that's, I know that through the Three-Pony Opera. I actually know what happens in the Beggars Opera. opera. What, there's operas? In operas? Is this like an inception of operas? Yeah, Op. Perception, exactly. You'll be telling me there's an opera about Inception next or something. Is there? Don't know. We should copyright it. We should copyright it. We should copyright it films, but let's check. Let's say, I'm not a lawyer. Maybe we could copyright the idea of Inception, the Opera. I don't know if I want to own any of Christopher Nolan's ideas,

But okay, you know. But how can he, because he's all funny about timelines and stuff like that, he'll never be able to prove that he did the trust. Because we'll be like, oh, it's tenant actually. We're in Tenet World. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, maybe we did write Tenet. In which case, what the hell are we thinking?

Why did we do that? Why did we do that? It's the worst film I've ever seen. Why did we write that, James? I've watched it twice. It still doesn't make any sense. Once forward, once backwards? Not even.

Once normal. once with the subtitles on. Some kind of mumbling closed caption system. Just sort of... The closed caption guy being like, all right, now the backwards guy's jumping out and he's punching him, but he's the same guy. Look, you're on your own.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. What a terrible film. Yeah, the audio description is just like, I don't know, man. Have you seen any other films? Yeah.

I mean, Memento was good. That was fun. We all like Memento. That made sense. Oh. So, Malinga doesn't mean that, but carry on. I'm glad your cold has got better. My non-fake cold, I wasn't trying to get through like two kilograms of kids' school glue by pretending I had a cold.

It's like how you would fake it with PVVA. It's like if it was, if I was in a great escape scenario, but for some reason, instead of trying to get rid of the soil from the hole by kicking it out of my trouser leg, You were trying to get PVA glue out of a schoolroom. I was trying to get rid of two kilos of PVA glue by pretending I had a cold. Yes, yes, that's exactly what happened. I mean, that isn't what happened at all. I know, I just blew and shut myself again. Alistair, I did not bring you here to come up with amazing new intellectual properties, sadly.

Okay, all right, never mind. And also Inception the Opera. I've come to tell you a story because you're going on tour, on a comedy tour. Yes, I might even be on tour by the time this goes out. I think you will be. Almost certainly. I'm on tour right now. I've got a tale for you from one of the places you're going to or have been to or maybe are in at the moment. That ought to shift some tickets in the past, assuming Christopher Nolan is correct about how time works.

Oh, Chrissy Nolan's coming. You're going from Maitston to Brighton, but not. Not directly, right? Probably not directly. I'll probably go home in between. Well, if you were to go from Maidstone to Brighton and get lost on the way, you would end up at the location of the next episode of some stories from places Alistair is going to on his comedy tour. Again, I've got to praise the title.

Constantly evolving. This sort of subcategory of episode. Yes. But you are going to praise this title of this place. This is Mickleham Priory in the village of... Upper Dicker. Okay. All right.

Okay. Don't praise him too much, listener. He knows what he's done. He's very pleased with himself. Upper Dicca, you say. Upper Dicker. Yeah, there is a lower dicker, by the way. There's a pair of dickers.

But we're in the book, Ghosts in the Southeast by Andrew Green. So we are in the village of Upper Dicca, which is in the curve of the river Kukmere. Yes. All right, okay. I like the way you included the curve as well. Quite a sensuous shape.

Well, the reason it's there is because Mickleham, mickleham, is Saxon for a large bend. Oh, mickle meaning large. Ham meaning delicious. I mean, bend. Oh, I thought mucklement large. Anyway, well, mucklum, mickleum. Mickleum.

It's been about a thousand years. You can see how. it might have slightly changed. Yeah. Mickleham Priory, Upper Dicca by the River Cuckmere. Yes, that's where we are. And according to SussexLive.co.uk, or a headline from SussexLive.com.

Okay. May I interrupt? I just want to say Sussex Live is a very fine organ. Pardon? For some reason, yeah, you heard me. I saw a promoted piece from Sussex Live that said, this Sussex Town is the least desirable place to live in the country, and I clicked on it.

and the entire article didn't mention the town. Oh. It was a picture, and it just said, blank is the least desirable place to live in the country. And then it just started talking about York. It's like, I think AI wrote this article. This doesn't, the one thing I wanted to know is, like anybody, I wanted to know where the least desirable place to live in Sussex was.

Yeah. And I don't. Well, I presume it's not upper dicker or lower dicker. No, but no, unless maybe it was, maybe it was, Sensored. Maybe that's the reason the name of the place was missing. Yeah. Well, according to the headline that I clicked on,

Upper Dicker Village is amongst the rudest named in Britain. Oh, is it? And I clicked. I, too, got tricked to click by Sussex Live. Because I... They loved you. They loved to trick to click. I was tricked to click because I presumed that this would tell me

some of the other rude names that it was amongst. It didn't. Oh, wow. Come on, Sussex Live. One picture, I gleaned that there was a lower dicker because it was of a road sign within upper dicker. And it was pointing towards lower dicker. Oh, I'm not going south of the dicker this time, mate.

It's where a taxi driver might say in upper dicker. Yes. And the only bit of information I got from that article that I think is worthwhile repeating is that I quote, contrary to its name, the village is not rude at all. Oh, I like that. Yeah. That's almost a zing on the village, not really at all.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. Not even like some sore, silly shaped topiary. No pamper's grass in the front garden here. No. Not even if you looked at it from above. There's a couple of mini roundabouts and then like a long road.

Going off the end. No. None of that. No. So sadly, I trudged away from that. figuratively, and back to Mickelham Priory, which is in the middle of England's largest medieval water-filled moat, which is seven acres big this moat. Wow.

England's? England's largest. England's largest. Medieval. Medieval. Water-filled moat. So some of the moats are larger but drier. Some of them are larger, less medieval and filled with something else.

Well, grant you, it's a large medieval moat, but you've accidentally filled the whole thing with Marmite. So you're off the list, I'm afraid. That's filled with primary school glue. What's happened here? Who did this? Who could have done this? Yeah, no, the Priory.

So Mickleham Priory was founded at 1229, which is just about half past 12. Thanks. And it is the location of Thomas Beckett's First Miracle. Oh. One of his first miracles was performed at the mill house there when he was a lad. He'd been taken hunting and he fell into the mill stream

and Thomas Beckett was about to be dragged under the mill wheel and crushed. That was very, very bad in those days to be dragged under a mill wheel. And crushed. It seems to us like it would be fun, isn't it? You think it was like... It would be like being on the London eye,

but apparently being dragged under a mill wheel was bad. Real bad. Because of the crushing. Underwater crushing as well, which would be worse because you'd weigh less. So it'd be easier to crush you? I don't know. I don't know about physics. But just as he was about to be crushed, the sluice gates miraculously closed.

To protect him. From being crushed. Yeah. So that's the miracle. Thomas Beckett's miracles aren't great, if I'm honest. I feel like I've covered some of them in a previous episode. but I can't remember. They were all water-based as far as I remember.

Isn't he create a well? Broadly, it's his blood. Apart from that one, the only real ones I can see, which I found on our ladynewsouthgate.org.uk. Most of his other miracles involve his blood. Oh, dear. They like a bit of blood, though, the Catholics, don't they?

The Catholic Church loves a little bit of blood. Well, and apparently, on his death, this is again according to Our Ladynewsouthgate.org.org. on his death, the monks at Canterbury found that underneath his fancy Thomas Beckett clothes. Yeah, yes. He had a hair shirt that was infested with lice. Oh, because he was so holy. He wore a disgusting shirt.

Yeah. Ugh. Yeah. I don't like it. I don't like it, Thomas O' Beckett. I don't think you deserve to get murdered in the old cathedral. No. No, that's a bit.

much. But yuck. Do you want to run down to the priors while we're in? Yeah, please, please, yeah. First bunch of priors, you got Roger, followed by Peter, then another Roger, William, Nicholas, then a third Roger, and then Luke Delaguerre, which is French for Luke of the train station. That is, it's frustrating to have four Rogers and not one Richard prior. That's disappointing. That is. Those are the first bunch of prizes. Those are all around you know, the mid-12-hundred, mid-to-late-12-hundreds, they're just all called Roger. Some other random bits of Priory history. So that Nicholas, he was fired for unauthorised absences from being a prior.

Right. And at one point, the Priory had four trespassers imprisoned for three years. Three years? Yeah, for trespassing. That's like when someone sees, you know, like when your dad catches you smoking and makes you smoke the whole pack. You're going to trespass on the price. You're going to trash bars for three years.

See how you like it. You're going to stay right here. Yeah. Yeah, there was one nice prior who was called John Leam, but mostly it was bad priors. Oh dear. There was a William Landon who was removed after three years for ign- ignominy, ignominy, ignominy.

Ignominy. Ignominy? I think so, yeah. I mean, you're making me doubt myself. Ignaminy. Ignaminy. Is that better or worse than ignomaxi? Is it good to have a...

Is it because he was... Igno was so mini. You've got to have everything in balance. Yes. Igno midi, I suppose, would be the ideal amount. That was in 1438. He was followed by Lawrence... Winchelcy.

Winchers-less. Winchellus. I can't see what's written down just so the listener knows. I can't help him at all here. Winchels. Whether it's Winchel C or Wencesleslesles, I just don't know. Wyn.

C-H-E-L-S-E. Yeah, Winchell C. And he lost the magnificent seal of the Priory. Did he? From context. Yep. That's got to be about letters and wax and stuff. Are you hoping I was going to do an impression of a magnificent seal?

I assumed you wanted to, so I just... Oh, there we go. I suppose they could have been, you know, they had the big moat. Yeah, I suppose someone's got to get use out of that moat. Yeah. It had a bad rep this priory. A lot of the Friars were often found in local boozers, cavorting in a most unseemly fashion.

Not cavorting? Yeah, big time. Proper Brother Jakunda stuff. And post-disillusion slash Cromwell Times, which I do appreciate her about 100 years apart. You could hear the quills being sharpened by letter writers there. Thank you for saying that, James. It fell into the new catchphrase of this series.

It fell into mostly not being there anymore. I'm sorry. Are you modifying the catchphrase? The catchphrase. Yes. Catchphrase, I use the term loosely. It fell into not being there anymore to it fell into mostly not being there anymore. Yes, mostly.

There are a few buildings still left. They're just getting so much pithier. Every episode, our catchphrases get better and more memorable. Bruce Forsyfe, it fell into. And the audience goes, mostly not being there anymore. Mostly. So it was over the next few hundred years it was restored into a private house. And in 1923, bang up to date for us. Oh yeah. Yeah, very recent. The property was sold to Mr. Beresford Wright. And in 1927, there was a fire. And for days after, the horses were found shaking with terror and covered with sweat in the stables. And then weeks later, the horses were kicking off again in the stables. Yeah. What do these horses know? When they were clearly terrified. But I think most horse reactions can at best be, you know, interpreted as terror.

They look terrified, whatever. Yeah, I mean, they are easily startled, aren't they? You have to give them little sort of hats for the eyes just to stop them seeing things that might terrify them. Yeah, you'd need it, yeah. But the stable boy said that they must be afraid of the huge white stallion that keeps on coming in from somewhere. Oh, sounds more like an unstable boy, if you ask me. Oh, nicely done. Yeah, you see what I did there.

And it's time for a flashback. Oh, whoa, flashback. I wasn't ready for it. You weren't ready for that flashback. Yes, this stallion, about 50 years prior to previous to that, I don't want to be confusing. 50 years previously at the Priory, some of the buildings were used as farms, and that farm was not sold to the local who'd been the tenant for ages, but to a different person known as the Iron Master. Kind of laid back sort of a chap. Yeah, who was from nearby Fowington, which is spelt Fokington.

Oh, we checked. Yes. Yeah. I'm saying we checked. James checked. Yeah. We got one right for once. Well done, James.

It was odd. Everywhere this was written down, they were really keen to say, it's written Fokenton, it's pronounced Fowington. You don't get that kind of generosity in place name pronunciations. It's usually like a little way to catch people out. Exactly. it's meant to be like a shibboleth, isn't it? If you don't know, you're not part of the in-group. How are you spelling that? Shibboleth? But yeah, so this guy, the Iron Master, turned up on a massive white horse. And the tenant farmer,

they evidently had a contratom because he didn't like him. And the horse returned to Fowington, riderless. Oh, so the Iron Master was killed? No. Or at least got off his horse. Yeah, it just says he eventually arrived home in a foul mood. Right, a bit less dramatic than I was thinking. Yeah, the quote is, in a rage, the like of which we had never experienced before, which I don't think does enough, because I thought, as you did when I was reading that, like, oh, he's killed him and it's the ghost of the horse, but no, it's the not ghost of a not horse. Can you have a ghost based on someone being really annoyed?

Does that produce ghosts? So. Yeah, I suppose they do say powerful emotion can leave its imprint even if that powerful emotion is falling off a horse and being really embarrassed.

Yeah, yes. Okay, end of flashback, but we're still in the past because that's where all our stories take place. So obviously they've got, it's on a moat, so it has a bridge to it and on that bridge is a gatehouse and that gatehouse

is the home to a ghost of a smiling monk. Nice, so they weren't all miserable. No, this one wasn't. So some of Beresford Wright's guests would report a smiley fellow, and I quote, a charming gentleman who smiled and pointed to where the house lay as if directing us. But he wouldn't say anything. And he had a tonsure and a dark cloak and open sandals, like classic monk gear.

If you saw him, you'd be like, monk, monk, monk, monk, monk. Monk, monk, monk, monk, until he went away. A monk? You'd be slapping the top of your head, monk! Yes, exactly, as we all do, whenever we see one. What we do when we see a monk? It's a motorway services, for example. Yeah, we just lean out of the window of the bus,

James and I go around him when we do live shows. And they go, monk, monk, monk. As sometimes we drive near monasteries just to do that on purpose as well. They're just hearing the sound of screeching ties. What's going on out there? We're like, munk. Monks is the law boys. Get out of here, your scandals!

If I'm going to break my spouse silence for anything, it's going to be this. Leave us alone. Just be a little monks. It doesn't mean you abuse us like this. We're not a figure of fun. Sorry, monks. You're off loud mirrors. Yeah.

And then you screech away and the wind blows all of their toga things up. They've all got little bum tonsiers. They'd have to have quite a hairy bum to be able to shave a tonsia. You should see someone about that. That's not right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's too hairy. That's too hairy.

People would mistake that for a hairy pair of pants full of lice. They would. And then when the doctor saw it, it, it'd be like, munk, munk, munk. And then they'd be slapping you on the boss. Slap, slap, slap. You were like, I don't need this from you as well. Would you shave it? What are we talking about?

I think we were talking about bum pattern baldness. But yeah, so the guests would sort of be guided in in what seemed like a sort of themed manner by a monk who was weirdly silent and they'd turn back to thank him and he would have vanished. Gone, he would have fallen into not being there anymore. Yeah. Or the moat.

Yeah, I really want to know if there was a huge splosh every time. Some people think that was the nice prior, John Leam. Some people who might think that might have been the ghost of him because he was nice. Certainly sounds like him. And another ghost that could be seen there was on the bridge near the gatehouse. And this was a woman in a grey gown who was looking sorrowfully at the moat. And guests would be like, hey, who's the Debbie Downer over there?

Beresford Wright would be like, well, there's no sad guests here. I'm paraphrasing this bit. The last sad person died a hundred years ago. Yeah, he sort of tracked it down to like a previous family. there was someone who had like a very sad reason for staring morosely at the moat and it could have been them. And then the property changed hands in the 50s. And I tell you what, Alistair, I like my coffee like my 1950s owners of Mickleham Priory, Hot Black. What? Is that their name? Hot Black. Mrs. Hot Black. Mrs. Hot Black. Wow, that's an incredible name.

I'll give her full initials because they don't give you full names in these books. Mrs. R. Hot Black. Yeah. And she donated the Priory to the Sussex Archaeological Trust. I assume she outbaird like a milky white,

someone with a much blander name. A Mick Iato. Oh, yes, too frothy. Too frothy and pretentious for Britain in the 50s. No, but she donated it to the Sussex Archaeological Trust

and they did some digging. And they found some stuff but because of the moat, it kept getting covered up with water. Unsurprisingly. They kept digging a hole in water. No, near with the water.

And then once they got lower than the water, it would fill up with water because that's how water works. Yeah. Yes. But they did find one of their most exciting finds, as I refer to our guide on this, Ghosts in the Southeast by Andrew Green. One of the most recent exciting finds, recent take that with a pinch of salt, however, was only discovered when laying new drains to the priory itself in 1972.

A small group of workmen instructed to use only spades and forks because of the possibility of damaging valuable remains were carefully digging a trench when suddenly one of them saw the top of an old jar sticking out of the soil near the outer wall. The object was gently eased out of the earth and found to be a perfect specimen of a bellamini jar. What's that? Or bellamine jar or bellamine jug. Do you know what that is? No, I still don't know. It's one of them jugs that's got like a man's bearded. face on the neck. Oh, so is this like an ancient Mithraic or Roman thing? They're sort of

1600s, 1600s. Oh, much more recent then. But still. And it's, well, according to this book, which I haven't really seen backed up anywhere else, Bellarmine jars are made with the image of Bishop Bellarmine as a derogatory feature to lampoon him. Wow. Oh, when your enemies whip out the jugs. But this was a real man. who was satirised by way of jug. Yeah, I don't know about that. So what the jugs were used for is interesting, because they were used. Is it wee-wee?

Is it wee-wee, James? It's putting wee-wee in the jug. No. That would be more satirical. It's witchcraft. Witchcraft. So this Bellamini jug contained a large number of badly rusted pins stuck into a round, black and lump of unidentified substance.

You know you're dealing with a sort of pop-uped situation. here where that clay used to form the shape of a person, surely. And sometimes it was like little animals and stuff like that, and it was used, yeah, for witchy stuff. Maybe some wee then. They might have put some wee in one of the persons. Popped a bit of a wee in there. So, you know, don't rule out they're being wee inside the jokes.

I'm not going to. I'm not going to. So Bishop Bellamyne, like, really preached against witchcraft and stuff, unsurprisingly. He would hate you doing witchcraft in a joke shape like his own head. That's the last thing he would want. Some people believe it was sympathetic magic to harm this bishop. But it was also just bellamy and jugs and that were just used in general for witchcraft. Is that a bit like Molotov cocktails?

Oh. Weren't they named the people who made them didn't like Molotov? Oh. Right? I don't know. I don't know. I can't remember. But my memory of it is Molotov was dropping bombs and saying they were food packages.

And so people threw back Maltov cocktails and said that they were cocktails. Have a drink of this, mate. I think that was the idea. Whitty? Very witty. And violent. So it's a little bit like that where you, it's not at all like that now, I think about it, unless that guy had.

Firebombed. Had weed on someone and then said that, that was just my face. And then I said, well, now we're going to we in. I know it wasn't mainly for weed. in, but I'm getting the impression that they did some weeing in to the jugs. We can only assume that there would have been in that witch's brew. You know what witches

are like! Yeah, they're weeing and everything. I'm sorry, but you know what witches are like. They love to wee in things and you have wee in their spells. But it was found near where the priors lodgings would have been so people think it might have been someone trying to curse the prior because they had such a bad rap.

Now, by the seven, this place is turned into a tourist attraction, there's a ticket kiosk. And in 1972, during the summer, on a glorious summer day, in fact, at that very ticket kiosk. If you trust that Gen X's, every summer day was glorious in the 1970s. On this one, approaching that ticket kiosk was a woman in a grey gown who looked thin and ill. And she had a small black and white dog with her. And the kiosk attendant said, or you can't bring dogs in here, but she just seemed to glide past a couple of other visitors

who were waiting for tickets and didn't stop. And the attendant wasn't that worried because they knew that this woman's going to be asked to leave as soon as she was seen by one of the guides. There's something odd about her. Those two other visitors

that they glided past were a middle age couple. And the woman turned to her husband and said, no, she's wearing an odd dress. The woman in grey there with the dog who'd push past and a husband didn't know what she was talking about. Hadn't seen her at all.

he was completely unable to see the figure. I wouldn't rule out that just being classic husband business, though. Classic 70s husband. Yeah. Oh, didn't you think she was wearing an unusual dress? And it's just like, I don't know, I know about dresses. But at that moment, to the consternation of the visitor and the attendant in the kiosk, both the female apparition and that of the dog just faded away.

So definitely a ghost then. It was sad, ghost lady from earlier, we think. And then also in 1972, quite a mad thing happened in the main hall of the Tudor House, which had been completely rebuilt after that fire that scared them horses that time. A young couple were reading one of the signs, you know, that tells you what's going on on that. And they turned around to look at the room and kind of get their vibe of the thing. When they saw descending from the ceiling in a diagonal direction, the figure of a middle-aged man rather handsomely dressed and wearing.

a cloak. And as he neared the floor in front of the inglenook, he jumped without a sound as if from an invisible step and glided silently, but very quickly through the end doorway. And they looked at each other in absolute amazement. And then, before they had time to move, another figure, that of a middle-aged woman in a Tudor gown, suddenly rushed out of the farthest room and hurried past them as if in silent pursuit of the now vanished man. So the first guy was gliding diagonally through the air? Yeah. Like on a zip line.

Yeah. A zip line or a death slide or whatever they're called. A death slide? I don't know if that's my mom's propaganda, but I knew them all as death slides, those things. What? Has anyone ever died on a zip line? Except for in that episode of Death in Paradise? Well, that happens.

Probably a 99. No, they wouldn't have died in a 999. probably casualty? Someone's come close. Yeah, absolutely. Were they trying to sort of work out what went on? Had there been a staircase there who was the man who was chasing him? The people that lived there, the custodians admitted that the room had been rebuilt

and there wasn't any record of the original staircase there. But that was a long time ago. There's no logical reason why there should not have been a staircase there, probably an external one. And thus the woman might have originally been in the garden. So they're sort of putting about that stone tape theory type vibe. Yeah. Okay.

I've got to say, I'm not hugely convinced by the sentence, there's no logical reason why there couldn't have been a staircase there. That's a bit of a stretch. It's sound, you know, it's in itself. I accept that that's true. And yet, that doesn't mean there was a staircase there. Yes, yes, yes. But those, Alistair are the ghosts of Mickleham Priory, Upper Dicca.

Well, I'll look out for them. when I absolutely don't pass through this place. Yeah, you're not going to sail down the river Cuckmere. Diagonally. Diagonally through the air. There's no logical reason why I couldn't do that, but I'm not going to. Will you score this tale at least? I will, actually, yes.

Okay. First category, naming. I'm just going to come in straight out with a five. It's brilliant, very, very good. Yes, we can't really go into why they're such good names. They don't need to break it down. It's unnecessary. also the listeners have recently completed collating all of the scores across all the episodes, including the ones where we did seven categories and the ones where we did three categories

into a spreadsheet. Yes. And even though you've told more stories than me, I have a higher score than you. And I always thought you were the tougher scorer. But I've realized you've been giving me higher scores than I've been giving you. So I'm feeling a little bit guilty and ashamed, James. but even if I weren't minded to be generous, this would be a solid five.

Come on, come on. This isn't a pity five. I'm not taking a pity five for up a dicker. The full five, full five, full fat five. And the Iron Master. Great, great name. The Iron Master. Mrs. R. H. Hot Black.

Mrs. Hot Black. Mrs. Hot Black. Sorry, you sounded like you were sort of scolding her, Yeah, I am a bit. Mrs. Hot Black. Mrs. Hot Black. Great. Thank you very much.

I'll take that five. And now we're going to move to Supernatural. Well, you know, I don't normally believe in ghosts. But there have been several compelling accounts of ghosts in this episode. Lots of good daytime encounters with ghosts that then vanish before people's eyes. Almost 50 years apart. Waking up in the middle of the night and seeing someone in the room. Yeah.

Yeah, you're right. There's a time gap and the ghosts resemble one another. So, yeah, some great ghosts, some good, solid ghosts. And I enjoy the spoof key shenanigans with the little wee-wee-pots. The bellarmine jars, yeah. Yes, the David Bellamy jars. But we'll know what they're called when we see one at someone's house with a little beard on the top. We'd be like, oh, that's a Bellarmine jar.

In the 70s, one person thought it was named after a bishop, because I couldn't find that anywhere else that it was named after this bishop guy. really, really. It's either just an Andrew Green thing or it's just a, it was a short-lived idea in the 70s, like stent tape theory. So how many points am I getting for supernatural, spook-natural? I think it was very, I think it was very spooker-natural. Yeah, I think it's a four.

Yes, okay. Yeah, I think it's a four. I'm only really docking one point for the, might have been a staircase there, hypothesis. Oh, good. I thought I was going to be losing points for the confusing horse. Oh, wait, I forgot about the ghost

of a man falling off a horse. That's not a thing you can have a ghost of. Too late. I've already rendered my judgment. It's four out of five. Thank goodness. Because my next category is amount of confusing horse.

Okay. Well, how much confusing horse was there in this episode? But it was one big one. One big confusing horse. That horse was 100% confusing because it was confusing when he turned up on it. Like, you're moving into a new place.

You've got to assume there's going to be a bit of, you know, they're not going to welcome you with open arms. Not necessarily. Described it as coming in like he was on a war horse. Don't come on your biggest white horse. Well, I've got to say, James, I don't think the horse was that confusing. I think it was mainly confusing

because of the way you told a story with a sort of Christopher Nolan infused time element. Come on. Well, I know, I just think you've fallen back into your old ways. What? Yeah, I think...

I'm yet to get to my old ways because of the nature of times a bit weird. I think you're falling forwards into the old ways you will have in the future. So I'm inspired for what I said about giving you more generous scores. It's going to have to be a two. Ah, damn it.

Needlessly confusing horse is my review of this episode. It need not have been confusing except that you didn't make it clear. Even if people go back and listen to the episode again with subtitles on, that horse is not going to make any sense. He tried to bamboozle us with a horse. I'm not having it.

Nurt. Okay, what's the final category? It's got to be monks. Monks. Well, that's something I said, and I'm way more enthusiastic about it. So it's another five for monks, monks, monks, monks, monks, monks. Monks. Monk.

Monk. You got a monster. You got some sort of chain made out of wood or something. I don't really understand. Mugs. Oh, you're hoeing in the garden. Oh, my monster garden. You're brewing your own beer.

Monk. Mugs. Munks. Munks. Munks. For the people that are collating the spreadsheet from the Discord, is that just what the word monks wants? or is it as many times we said it

and that is the name of the category. Does it actually have to link to a new spreadsheet? No, I'm just full of the word monks. It's just the word monks in capital letters with four o's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which will read like mounks, but it is monks. Yeah. Should we spell it with a load of U's instead?

Should they spell it with U's? I leave that up to the Coletus. Yeah. That's for future generations to decide. I am brewing up to do a deep dive into the stats on that spreadsheet. Do you remember when we did one of the lives, we did a no-contextal-man guessing game? I think we can do a similar guessing game based on some of the categories that we have 100% forgotten that we used. Definitely, that's a very good idea.

So I'm going to collate that for a future live. Oh, yeah. Well, apparently it's the 300th episode coming up soon. What? Yeah. Three-hundred episodes, are this nonsense? episode proper as well because there's more than 300

if you count all the like the minisodes and stuff all the many bonuses that you've put out, yeah. Yeah. That's very impressive for a podcast that is basically

about remembering things that happened in Back to the Future. Yeah. Ah, if I knew we have more time. We do. We've got all the time we want.

We've got a podcast, as the doc didn't say. Yep, yep. And then a little license plate that says lawmen spins. James Shakespeare's after for Nellister Beckett King, the podcasters? This is where we become president,

joint president of America. Hey, it's your cousin. Marvin, ShakeShaf and Becky King. You know that idea for a podcast? This is a real stretch. You don't know that idea for a podcast. You want to listen to this. There you go.

That was the source pot. Absolute top tier. I don't know.