SHUCKLAND Introduction Alphabetical List of Locations | |
Location: | Northrepps, NORFOLK |
Legend: | Shuck's Lane, behind Northrepps Cottage (TG238402), was said to be haunted by Shuck, "a two-headed dog, [which] had eyes like saucers, sometimes turned into a ball of wool and caused any man who saw it to drop down dead within the twelvemonth. Women were excused."(1) |
Place Name: | Northrepps - 'north' + prob. related to OE 'ripel', a strip of land or wood. |
Comments: |
![]() This particular beast may have been invented, or at least used, by smugglers to scare people away at night. In the early 1820s there was actually a battle fought in Shuck's Lane between smugglers and preventive officers, with two fatalities. This is the only two-headed Shuck I've come across, and the shape-changing makes it sound more like a 'bogey-beast', perhaps similar to the Padfoot of the north of England, which was sometimes known to appear as a "rolling wool-pack". There's not enough information to record this as an encounter, but apparently the then-proprietor of the Cottage, a Mr. Hoy, told Alexandra Walker in about 1969 that he had seen a large black dog in his cellar, which had then disappeared.(2) |
Sources: |
(1) Verily Anderson: 'The Northrepps Grandchildren', (Mallard Reprints 1979, orig. Hodder & Stoughton 1968), p.46, 153-4. (2) Facebook post by Alexandra Walker, 7/9/2022, on the 'Norfolk Tales and Myths' page. |