Infrastructure- Old Portsmouth Road-Hindhead Common-Surrey.
Visited October 2024.
Almost a year to the day of my last visit, I went back to Hindhead to see the parts I had missed.
First up, The Sailors Stone.
The inscription on the front of the stone reads:
ERECTED
In detestation of a barbarous Murder
Committed here on an unknown Sailor
On Sep, 24th 1786
By Edwd. Lonegon, Mich. Casey & Jas. Marshall
Who were all taken the same day
And hung in Chains near this place
Whoso sheddeth Man's Blood by Man shall his
Blood be shed. Gen Chap 9 Ver 6The back of the stone reads;
THIS STONE WAS ERECTED
A.D. 1786 BY JAMES STILLWELL ESQRE. OF COSFORD
AND WAS RENOVATED SEP 24TH 1889 BY
JAMES JOHN RUSSELL STILLWELL ESQRE OF KILLINGHURST
THE DESCENDANT AND REPRESENTATIVE OF THE STILLWELLS
OF COSFORD AND MOUSHILL
THIS STONE
was Erected
by order and at
the cost of
James Stilwell Esqr.
of
Cosford
1786
Cursed be the Man who injureth
or removeth this Stone.
Then on to Gibbet Hill. The walk up here was lovely. Damp and copper coloured with the last of the ferns for the year.
The Gibbet moves on from The Sailor Stone as it was here that the three men who in 1786, brutally murdered the sailor, were tried and then hanged on Gibbet Hill.
After the hanging, fears and superstitions arose around Gibbet Hill and in 1851 Sir William Erle, an English lawyer, judge and Whig politician, paid for a Celtic cross to be erected to banish these fears and raise the local spirits. SOURCE.
It is just such a weird place and each time I visit, it gets more whispery as you walk through the woods.
Go HERE to learn more about The Sailors Stone and HERE to learn about The Gibbet.
