The Road to Bedlam: Courts of the Feyre, Book 2 (56 page)

BOOK: The Road to Bedlam: Courts of the Feyre, Book 2

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The stones that form the Way-points that Niall follows to reach North Yorkshire are also real. The Devil's Arrows are three millstone grit monoliths, over twenty feet tall which stand in a near-straight line crossing Roecliffe Lane at Boroughbridge in Yorkshire, near the A1 motorway. The Devil is supposed to have cast the arrows from a nearby hill at the village of Aldborough, but they fell short. There used to be four, but one of them is now believed to form part of a bridge over a nearby stream.

The other Way-point is the Rudston Monolith and is the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom at over twenty-five feet high. It used to be taller, but the churchyard it stands in was levelled around it and it lost almost five feet in the process. Dating from approximately 1600 BC, it is far older than the Norman church which stands beside it and the site was probably sacred long before Christianity arrived in Britain.

It is not known why the asylum at Charing Cross was originally called the Stone House, but it was rumoured to contain both the dangerously mad and political prisoners. In the 1370s, it was closed down by King Richard II because the cries of anguish from its inmates were upsetting his falcons in the nearby mews.

The inmates were moved to a hospital founded by Simon FitzMary in 1247 dedicated to the Order of the Star of Bethlehem. Simon had a particular affinity for the star, for when he was in the crusades he became lost behind enemy lines and was afraid he would stumble into Saladin's lines, but then he saw a star over Bethlehem, just like the one that had guided the three wise men, and so he navigated back to his own lines and safety. The Star of Bethlehem is still the symbol of the hospital today, and of course, Bedlam is a corruption of Bethlem, which is what the people of Shoreditch called the hospital.

The original hospital had room for about twenty people, and in 1674, it was recorded that the "hospital house was old, weak, ruinous and so small and strait for keeping the great number applying for admission that it ought to be removed and rebuilt elsewhere on some site grantable by the city". London was overflowing Bedlam and so it was decreed that it be moved to a "Palace Beautiful" at Moorfields which was built for the purpose.

Then followed the period in which the mad were exhibited. In 1753, the newspaper
The World
reported that "It was in the Easter week, when, to my great surprise, I found a hundred people at least, who, having paid their two-pence apiece, were suffered, unattended, to run rioting up and down the wards, making sport and

diversion of the miserable inhabitants."

Sixty years later, the Palace Beautiful had been subsumed in the urban sprawl of London. The roof leaked, the cellars were unwholesome and the whole edifice was in danger of collapse due to subsidence.

In 1815, the hospital was rebuilt once again, this time at St George's Fields, the building now used for The Imperial War Museum. There it housed the artists Louis Wain and Richard Dadd, among others. It saw action during the First World War as a respite for shellshocked soldiers – 80,000 recorded cases, of whom 30,000 ended up in institutions – and they were the lucky ones. Finally, in 1930 it was moved to Monks Orchard, where it is today. I am indebted to Catherine Arnold and her Excellent book,
Bedlam – London and its
Mad
(Simon and Schuster 2008), for much of the background and history of Bedlam.

I previously mentioned that Richard Dadd (1817-1886) was an inmate at Bedlam. In 1843, Dadd, convinced that his father was the Devil, killed him with a knife. He was imprisoned in the criminal wing at Bedlam for twenty years and then transferred in 1864 to Broadmoor. His painting,
The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke
is in the Tate Gallery's collection, though it is not always on show. It was executed in minute and exquisite detail – prints and pictures of it cannot render the texture, which has an almost three-dimensional quality. It is well worth seeing if you get opportunity, as is Patricia Alldridge's book on
Richard Dadd
(Academy Editions, 1974).

Porton Down is the 7,000 acre home to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and is one of the most secret facilities in the UK. Its primary role is defence against CBRN threats, which are Chemical. Biological, Radiological and Nuclear. It should be noted that it is not part of Porton Down's remit to develop weapons, but rather to develop defences against weapons that may be used against the UK or its armed forces.

However, it has a chequered and controversial history. In the 1950s Porton Down was involved with the development of the riot control agent, CS gas, and testing of the nerve agent, Sarin. There are alleged deaths associated with this testing. In 1961, a Land Rover vehicle was driven by scientists from Porton Down, from the village of Ilchester through Wedmore and into the outskirts of Bristol. They sprayed Zinc Calcium Sulphide into the air from the vehicle to simulate a germ warfare attack. The spread and concentration of the cloud was monitored at stations through Wiltshire and Somerset.

Clearly, the defence against germ warfare, nerve agents and dirty bombs has to be carefully considered and appropriate preparations made if the threat from rogue states and terrorist agents is to be countered or mitigated. The facilities at Porton Down are an essential part of these preparations, but if there was government sponsored research into paranormal creatures, then it seemed to me that Porton Down is where it would take place.

The high-tech, high-security facilities of Porton Down are in marked contrast to Oakham Castle, found just off the market square in Oakham, the county town of Rutland. Although hardly secure by modern standards, the castle does have one unique quality. Inside the main hall the walls are completely covered with horseshoes. It is not known how the practice started, but since the fifteenth century, any peer of the realm, no matter what their rank, has been obliged to present a horseshoe to Oakham Castle or to pay a forfeit in its place. The earliest record is from 1470, when Edward IV commanded that a horseshoe be put up in the hall and that shoe is still there.

Interestingly, the family to whom the castle belonged were called the Ferrers. These were descendents of Henry de Ferrers, Lord of Ferrieres in Normandy (an area known for its iron workings) who came to England with William I in 1066 or very soon after.

The Ferrers were a prestigious family and were granted land including Rutland, which itself is rich in iron deposits. Ferrer is also the Norman French word for a smith, from which we derive the word
farrier
, still in use today.

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BOOK: The Road to Bedlam: Courts of the Feyre, Book 2

13.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub