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The Carpenter Ghost

Of North Wootton, Somerset

North Wootton is as peaceful a rural spot as one would wish to see, but this quiet village was not so tranquil in 1869.

The Shepton Mallet Illustrated Magazine of 1884 relates the story of a village ghost which had the people of North Wootton worried about in 1869.

It appears an old carpenter died suddenly in the village without leaving a will, and gossip had it that he had concealed a considerable sum of money in his house. One villager was supposed to have seen the ghost, and others heard it in the carpenter's shop, and it was alleged to be that of the old craftsman.

The person who said he saw it was a farm labourer who was trudging along with grist on his shoulder to the mill when he saw the carpenter sitting on the grindstone. 

"Down went the corn," states the article, "and away went the man across the field towards his home, and he did not stop till he reached it, burst open the door, and fainted away, and kept to his bed for a week afterwards. "Since then, noises have been heard in the carpenter's shop several times a week; the horrid din of sawing and hammering and chopping commencing about 10 o'clock in the evening and lasting an hour or more."

Apparently, the carpenter's unmanned sister and nephew, who carried on the business, continued to live in the house and during these visitations, the female occupant flies to the mill and the nephew to the inn. There is now scarcely a heart in the village stout enough to pass the ghost shop along after dusk.

The article ends with. perhaps, an explanation of the visitations.

"Some of the villagers think me old carpenter has come back to finish a waggon he had begun just before he died; others suppose his spirit cannot rest because his death was so sudden that he had no time to dispose of his gold concealed on ins premise.