"At Blickling Hall [TG178287] during the 19th century Lord and Lady Lothian demolished some partitions to make a morning-room. 'I wish these young people would not pull down the partitions', said an old woman in the village to the clergyman. 'Why so?' 'Oh, because of the dog. Don't you know that when A. was fishing in the lake, he caught an enormous fish, and that, when it was landed, a great black dog came out of its mouth? They never could get rid of that dog, who kept going round and round in circles inside the house, till they sent for a wise man from London, who opposed the straight lines of the partitions to the lines of the circles, and so quieted the dog. But if these young people pull down the partitions, they will let the dog loose again, and there's not a wise man in all London could lay that dog now'.'" (1)

"An unusual feature is that this creature came out of a fish. It seems likely that this was the result of fishing on Sunday...It seems, too, as if the room that was altered must have originally been circular." [The Lord Lothian involved in this story is alleged to have been Schomberg Henry Kerr, 1833-1900, Ninth Marquis of Lothian.] (2)

"...once, long ago, an evil man dared to taint the fair spot [Blickling] with wickedness so great that none could speak of it." Following his unmourned death at last, a dog came whining to the sexton's feet the morning after the burial, and an hour later the sexton was found 200 yards away, gibbering and pointing to the churchyard, where the corpse of the evil nobleman lay in the June day, torn from the ground and its lead casket. "Mother earth had refused her son." They then tried to bury the body in common ground, in a copse in the park, but again the earth spat him out. Finally they weighted the body with stones and dropped it into the lake.

A week later, the keeper was fishing in the lake when he caught "a monstrous eel", which though it was ugly and sinister-looking, he took back to be stewed. But while it was still gasping in a dish, the eel disappeared, to be replaced by "a black dog with the dead man's eyes." No one could stop or trap the dog as it roamed around the house and grounds, and while it roamed, there hung a curse over the whole estate. The nobleman's young son and heir caught smallpox, the keeper killed himself, the cook went mad, the milk turned sour and the crops were blighted.

Finally a famous 'wizard' came from London, and "at his seventh whistle the dog fawned at his feet." Touching the dog with his wand, it followed the wizard to the south-east turret, "where he kept guard over the wizard's hat and stick." The village stonemason then bricked up the door, peace returned to Blickling, and the curse was lifted. In time the estate passed to other families, and the evil remained locked in the turret.

But in the 1860s, the father of the writer F. J. Meyrick was 'Rector-Designate' of Blickling, and was spending a week at the Hall with his former pupil, the young squire. One evening he was in the drawing-room with three sisters of the squire, when one exclaimed "Did you see that dog?" She was convinced that a black dog had run across the room and disappeared behind a tapestry, and an inquiry showed that her sister's own pet dog was still asleep upstairs. Next morning the squire, who knew nothing of these events, said "By the way, yesterday I had the old turret opened. It was, you know, bricked up 150 years ago." (3)

F. J. Meyrick's father was Rector of Blickling from 1868 to 1906. Counting back 150 years from 1868 puts the events of the tale at 1718. But that 150 is a suspiciously round figure, so I started looking for a squire of Blickling who had died anywhere between 1690 and about 1730, and who could have been the original of the 'wicked nobleman.' It turns out that there was only one candidate from anywhere around this time span, and that was Sir Henry Hobart, 4th Baronet of Blickling, who died in 1698. He was a politician, apparently not very likable, forever in debt, who used parliamentary privilege to avoid paying his creditors, was fond of persecuting his neighbours, and who died in a duel, being buried in a lead coffin in August 1698.