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Swinscoe

Round Barrow(s)

Folklore

Black Dogs. The Padfoot or phantom black dog is common enough in this county. His chief attribute seems to be the guardianship of graves. The retreat of Prince Charlie's army through the Moorlands in 1745 left quite a crop of these spectres. At Swinscoe on the Leek-Ashbourne road three Jacobites were ambushed, and a phantom black dog guards their grave.
I'd like to make a bet the dog guards this barrow, as many of his canine cousins do elsewhere. The barrow's not far from the road, and there's no graveyard the soldiers could have been buried in.

According to the scheduled monument record on Magic, the barrow's on the crest of a prominent ridge in the landscape, and is nearly 1.5m high. "Limited antiquarian investigation at the monument's centre located a rock-cut grave containing a partly disturbed inhumation. A cremation, Romano-British pottery, a piece of iron and a flint were found above the rock-cut grave."

From Notes on Staffordshire Folklore
W. P. Witcutt
Folklore, Vol. 53, No. 2. (Jun., 1942), pp. 126-127.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
12th January 2007ce
Edited 12th January 2007ce

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