Old Hag and Turner’s Pool

Below the rocky escarpment known as the Roaches which is found in the Staffordshire Moorlands U.K., can be found a man made pool known as Turner’s pool, which seems to be a corruption of its original name of Thornehurst’s Pole. It is mentioned in a royal grant by King Henry VIII, to W.M. Trafford in A.D. 1534, and it is thought to have been constructed by the monks of nearby Dieulacres Abbey.

Turners Pool. Photo by Gary Tacagni.

The pool would have been stocked with trout and used as a valuable source of food for the monks with many fish exceeding 5lb in weight. These days it is still used for fishing purposes but is now stocked with carp, which fisherman pay for on a daily basis to fish for in these waters.

On the hillside overlooking Turners Pool can be found a house by the name of Old Hag, although having been totally modernised and bearing little resemblance to what it used to look like, we can be fairly certain it obtained its name from a witch living in this locality. It seems that she had the ability to change her appearance into that of a hare, this she used to do on a regular basis for men with hunting dogs, presumably for some sort of payment.

The house known as Old Hag. Photo by Gary Tacagni.

On one occasion she had taken the form of a hare for the men to send their dogs after her, but the part of the fence that she used to escape from the dogs proved her undoing, as on this occasion she got caught up in the fence which allowed the dogs to catch her. She managed to escape from them and by the time the dog handlers reached the spot they found that she had taken her old form as a Witch, but she was now nursing a head injury where one of the dogs had caught her while in the form of a hare!

In my search for the house known as Old Hag I came across an unusual boulder in a field not far from the house, the public footpath I was following took me past this boulder and then into a small wood where I found an ancient road.

Does this boulder mark the spot of an ancient packhorse trail? Photo by Gary Tacagni.

After having talked to the owner of Old Hag he told me that the ancient road I had found  was the remains of an old pack horse trail which had been used to transport goods off nearby Gun Hill, the remains of a Roman Fort can be found on Gun Hill so maybe this ancient road was also used to supply the troops with supplies, maybe the boulder which can be found in the centre of a field was used as a marker stone for the old trail.

Remains of the Old Pack horse trail. Photo by Gary Tacagni.

Another view of the pack horse trail. Photo by Gary Tacagni.