SHUCKLAND       Introduction        Alphabetical List of Locations
Location: Great Wakering, ESSEX
Legend: A phantom black dog is said to pad along Star Lane [part of the B1017] on certain nights each year." (1)

"The residents of Gt. Wakering also speak of the black dog of Star Lane, which their forefathers swore they had seen. The lane is named after a long-defunct inn..." (2)

"Another story told by an old inhabitant is that Baker's Grave or Baker's Corner, as it is now called, is haunted by Baker's big black dog. This is probably a fusion with another legend, that of the black dog of Star Lane, North Shoebury, not far away, and dating back to the time of the invasion by the Norsemen." (3)
Sources: (1) Letter from W. D. in the 'Southend Standard', 16/6/1976.
(2) Jessie Payne: 'A Ghost Hunter's Guide to Essex' (Ian Henry Publications, 1987), p. 120.
(3) Ibid, p.102.
Place Name: Wakering - OE 'Wacer's people'
Other: Baker's Grave is a threeways where a baker from Barling is said to have hung himself from a tree (now long gone), and haunted the spot thereafter. But 'The Place Names of Essex' suggests that the place is probably connected with the 14th century Clement de Bakere. [Info from Jessie Payne above, p. 101-2.]
Location: Great Wakering
Encounter: In 1970, then aged 60, Leslie Cripps recorded for the BBC an audio cassette telling of his younger days spent shooting rabbit, duck and fox in the Wakering area. He also included a few ghostly anecdotes, including one that he had trouble believing himself. One moonlit night around 9pm he went out to bag a duck or rabbit towards the coast, taking with him in his car his gun and his friend's dog. At about 10pm he exited the vehicle, only to see a black and white dog leaping towards him two feet (60cm) above the ground. Soundlessly, the hovering dog bounded past him and vanished in the direction of the sea.

Then two months later, at the same spot but slightly later at night, Mr. Cripps was in his car with his own dog when he saw the black and white dog curving towards the vehicle from behind. He later found that a friend had also seen the dog at least once, but neither of them had dared tell anyone about it.
   
Comments: The exact location of these encounters is not given, but they apparently occurred at what was once a storage area for bricks, made by the kilns that stood nearby. The two main brickfields in Great Wakering were at Landwick and Millhead, so the scene must have been at the edge of the marshy lands between the village and Havengore Creek, just east of Wakering Common.
Source: Dee Gordon: 'Haunted Southend' (The History Press, 2012; ebook version), referencing 'Rabbiting in Great Wakering', SA/24/452/1 in the Sound Archive at Essex Record Office.

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