The Meon Hill Murder 1945

In the closing months of the Second World War, an old hedger was found bludgeoned and hacked to death in a Warwickshire field. His name was Charles Walton and the place was the little village of Lower Quinton, under the shadow of Meon Hill. They called in the local CID; they called in Scotland Yard; they interviewed hundreds of people; they asked thousands of questions. But somebody wasn’t talking. The whole village was silent, as if someone had drawn down a blind. After the case was scaled down, the rumors remained. Was Meon Hill the center of a witches’ coven? And was old Charlie Walton, with his ability to talk to birds and toads and his magic watch, a witch himself? For eighty years, the supernatural has hovered over the murder of Charles Walton, with vague, haunted memories of secret rites and black dogs. Even the dead man’s grave has vanished. Rumor has been piled on innuendo, adding to the excesses of writers determined to make a supernatural mystery out of a very local tragedy, until the dead man himself has disappeared into a morass of hocus pocus. This is the first book to get past the nonsense, accessing original police files that say precisely nothing about witchcraft. Analyzing the facts from the time and removing the ever-more ludicrous layers of fiction, it gets as near to solving the mystery as we are ever likely to.

In the closing months of the Second World War, an old hedger was found bludgeoned and hacked to death in a Warwickshire field. His name was Charles Walton and the place was the little village of Lower Quinton, under the shadow of Meon Hill. They called in the local CID; they called in Scotland Yard; they interviewed hundreds of people; they asked thousands of questions. But somebody wasn’t talking. The whole village was silent, as if someone had drawn down a blind. After the case was scaled down, the rumors remained. Was Meon Hill the center of a witches’ coven? And was old Charlie Walton, with his ability to talk to birds and toads and his magic watch, a witch himself? For eighty years, the supernatural has hovered over the murder of Charles Walton, with vague, haunted memories of secret rites and black dogs. Even the dead man’s grave has vanished. Rumor has been piled on innuendo, adding to the excesses of writers determined to make a supernatural mystery out of a very local tragedy, until the dead man himself has disappeared into a morass of hocus pocus. This is the first book to get past the nonsense, accessing original police files that say precisely nothing about witchcraft. Analyzing the facts from the time and removing the ever-more ludicrous layers of fiction, it gets as near to solving the mystery as we are ever likely to.

UNDER THE SHADOW OF MEON HILL THE LOWER QUINTON & HAGLEY WOOD MURDERS By PAUL NEWMAN Who d kill a gnarled old man going about his daily toil in the late evening of his life? The murder was an outrage that seemed to run counter to the decorum of natural law. Within a few years, the shadows would have claimed him as their own and the earth taken him in gently. So why this violent intrusion, this flagrant disruption of the natural course, so that a person who had lived so humbly and inconspicuously, in apparent harmony with birds and nature, should meet a blood-spattered fate that more befitted a doomed tyrannical king in a Greek tragedy On February 14th, 1945, Charles Walton, aged 74, a hedger and ditcher of Lower Quinton, Warwickshire was found dead on Meon Hill. A pitchfork had been thrust through his neck, pinning him to the ground, and what looked like the sign of a cross slashed across his chest. Classing it as a major murder enquiry, the police selected the most famous detective of the day, Inspector Robert Fabian of Scotland Yard, to investigate. Employing modern techniques, Fabian combed the crime scene and surrounding area, using surveillance aircraft and metal detectors to search for clues. He interviewed locals, POWs from the camp at nearby Long Marston and individual soldiers, but found no convincing leads. Neither did Fabian find the locals especially confiding. Doors were closed in his face; people refused to talk and the atmosphere turned hostile. Abruptly the investigation took an unexpected twist after one of the detectives drew Fabian s attention to a work on folklore that suggested Walton had been killed in the way that witches once were stanged or pierced with a pitchfork on a sacrificial date. Eventually the enquiry turned devilish, bizarre and tortuous. Black dogs, bizarre coincidences and macabre threats were overwhelming the detective work. Years later, incredibly Aleister Crowley s mistress was cited as organising the crime. Academics and experts on witchcraft were invited to give their views, including the famous anthropologist, Dr Margaret Murray, and psychics held s ances to contact Walton s disembodied spirit. What started out as a hard-headed investigation dissolved into a disturbing occult morass. Making use of Fabian s original papers, the whole story is now set down for the first time in Paul Newman s bone-chilling account of this historically significant and gruesome enquiry. The second case highlighted in Under the Shadow of Meon Hill is the killing of Bella in Hagley Wood, near Birmingham, commonly twinned with the Walton Murder. Taking place two years earlier (1943), a group of country children, playing around the Clent Hills, came across the rotted body of a young woman stuffed in a tree trunk. Her hand had been cut off and she had formerly been pregnant. This hapless corpse was nicknamed Bella but who was she? A gypsy? A witch? A prostitute? A German spy? The investigation stoked up tales of vengeful magic, espionage and conspiracy. Who put Bella in the Wych Elm became a catch-cry. However, despite the thoroughness of the investigation, no one was able to identify Bella, and the case remains open.

On Wednesday 14 February 1945, the body of Charles Walton was discovered on the lower slopes of Meon Hill near the sleepy Warwickshire village of Lower Quinton, his torso pinned to the ground by a pitchfork. Myths and rumours soon swirled about the crime. Accounts claim Walton, a retired labourer and a lifelong resident of Lower Quinton, was believed by many to be a clairvoyant who could talk to birds and exercise control over animals. It has even been reported that many villagers attributed Walton’s death to ritual witchcraft. But what is fact and what is fiction?The most famous police officer in Britain, Chief Inspector Robert Fabian, was promptly dispatched by Scotland Yard to solve this increasingly peculiar and foreboding mystery. ‘Fabian of the Yard’ was not a man prone to superstition and had dealt with some of the most notorious killers of his time – but there was something strange about the Walton murder. Did the clues point to ritual witchcraft as the modus operandi, or was the black magic angle merely a ruse? With the villagers unable – or unwilling – to shed light on the matter, Fabian faced, for the only time in his glittering career, the daunting prospect of failure. The Case That Foiled Fabian lays out for the first time what actually happened and distills the truth from the many myths about this case that are today mistaken for facts.

A new assessment of the Falklands War from the Argentine perspective. In 1982, the United Kingdom and Argentina fought a war over an historical disagreement over the colonial “ownership” or rights over the Falkland Islands. Within months of the Argentinian defeat, General Edgardo Calvi, then the Argentine Head of the Army Joint Chief of Staff, was instructed to undertake a wide-ranging and formal inquiry to investigate the performance of the Argentine Army during the Falklands. Calvi concluded that while the Army had the motivation, it lacked the organization, equipment, training, and ability to oppose an army capable of operating in a variety of environments. The war exposed political, military, and public weaknesses in a period of considerable internal unrest during the seven years of the Dirty War. Several senior officers who fought in the Falklands were imprisoned for offenses committed during the Dirty War. Secrecy and political disagreements isolated the Service chiefs of staff from the logistic and operational planning. This book tells the story of the Falklands War from the Argentine Army perspective.

Foul Deeds and Suspicious Death in Stratford and South Warwickshire is an exploration of the darker history of the area. Behind the famous tourist industry of Shakespears everyday life on farms and factories carried on just like anywhere else. Ancient superstitions and curious legends provided inspriation for the great bard and other authors but real life was punctuated by sudden death, jealousy and ruthlessness. This book examines some of the most dramatic incidents in detail. Dranw from contemporary sources, newspapers, legal documents and coroner's records; each case provides a glimpse into life and death in its historical setting. The changes in the town, both in its architecture and social values from the background to the lives and deaths of its citizens.

Thought to be the father of modern witchcraft, Gerald Gardner published The Meaning of Witchcraft in 1959, not long after laws punishing witches were repealed. It was the first sympathetic book written from the point of view of a practicing witch. The Meaning of Witchcraft is an invaluable source book for witches today. Chapters include: Witch's Memories and Beliefs, The Stone Age Origins of Witchcraft, Druidism and the Aryan Celts, Magic Thinking, Curious Beliefs about Witches, Signs and Symbols, The Black Mass, Some Allegations Examined. The Meaning of Witchcraft is a record of witches' roots-and a tribute to a founding pioneer with the courage to set that record straight.

Steve has spent over 10 years researching the settings Professor Tolkien turned from reality in the Cotswold shires into fantasy fiction. It is the reversal of the map from Oxfordshire through to the Severn Estuary that serves as the true inspiration for the Shire in these well known and much acclaimed works, translated into virtually every language worldwide. The Lord of the Rings is the best selling book of the 20th century. By reversing the Map of the Shire and looking at it back to front, Steve has identified the Cotswolds and many other parts of the Four Shires (Worcester-, Gloucester-, Oxford-, Warwick- shire) comprising the Shire in the legendary story. These four are marked on the stone very near to Bree (Moreton-in-Marsh), used by Professor J.R.R. Tolkien as his model for the Three Farthings Stone in The Lord of the Rings. Apart from the countless secrets of geography hidden in the epic story, there are allusions, never revealed before this brand new perspective, to personalities contemporary with Professor Tolkien’s writings: from Churchill(at The Yale and Brandy Hall, otherwise Blenheim Palace) to the notorious Mitford sisters (at Stock, otherwise Swinbrook) to Oswald Mosley(at Crickhollow, otherwise Wootton-headed) and to Vita Sackville-West (of the High Hay hedge) . . . to the Professor’s true-life role model for Aragorn, Roy Campbell, a much admired poet of the day . . . such that in many ways the Lord of the Rings may be read as a parody of England in the 1930’s and the War years . . . The backdrop to Steve’s work is the sometimes chivalric language of a number of the classic romantic poets (Tennyson, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Coleridge), poets local to the Shire( Houseman, Shaw, Auden) as well as favourite contemporary lyricists, which means Dylan. There is also a lively dialogue between Gollum and Smeagol, meant to lighten the load on an arduous quest. Cotswold places under review (but with many, many more) include Chipping Norton (Hobbiton), The Bywater Pool (a relic of the Seventeenth Century), The Rollright Stones (Barrow Downs), Moreton in Marsh (Bree), Meon Hill (Weathertop), Bredon Hill (The Trollshaws with Bert, Tom, and William the stone trolls), Upton on Severn (The Ford) and the Malvern Hills (The Misty Mountains), with Great Malvern very clearly mapped for Rivendell. Over the Welsh border, Steve foresees the Wye Valley about Tintern Abbey for Lothlorien and The Forest of Dean for Fangorn Forest. Steve's journey may eventually extend down into Continental Europe, through Northern France (via Cair Andros, Paris), over the Pyrenees (Ered Nimrais) and through Minas Tirith (Rome), onwards Mordor . . . where lie the shadows . . . in Germany. 'The Lord of the Rings' is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; . . . the religious element is absorbed into the story and symbolism.' (Letters, J.R.R. Tolkien) The Author makes some attempt to explain what Professor Tolkien may have meant, with special reference to Providence; but the Author also dabbles in Witchcraft. * The Author offers the assurance that, at least on Mother-earth, we may all know the way a little better following ‘The Secret Shire of Cotswold.’