Every month Jeremy kindly personally writes a new episode for thisisholbech.co.uk. This month we present...

Sponsered by 'A Neat Little Town' by Jeremy Satherley.

1. Episode 1 - Holbeach History
2. Episode 2 - No more leaves on the line, at Holbeach Station
3. Episode 3 - Shall We Dance – for 12 hours non-stop?
4. Episode 4 - Keeping the wheels of Holbeach turning
5. Episode 5 - The Holbeach card players

Episode 5 - The Holbeach Card Players

Legend has it that All Saints Church was once desecrated by the antics of the Holbeach Card Players, also referred to as the Holbeach Rangers, or Holbeach Revellers. Authorities differ as to the date: one says 1783, another believes about 1800 to be more likely. But consistent to nearly all the stories is the fact that the Revellers followed up a drinking session at the Chequers by breaking into the church and playing whist on the altar, in the company of a corpse awaiting burial.

Which Version to Believe?

Four persons were reputed to be involved. One story gives the names as L Slator, J Barker, T Codling and a local doctor, Jonathan Watson. Late-19th century local historian and Holbeach curate (1871-79) Grant Macdonald’s account, based on 'careful inquiry of one or two octogenarians', agrees on Watson’s and Slator’s names (the latter was also known as 'Lord' Slator). But the others, he states with equal certainty, were called Wheldale and John Key, while the year was ‘about 1783’ –the date he saw inscribed on a poem of the event which had passed into the hands of Canon Hemmens, vicar at Hobeach in the 1880s. Macdonald also claims that only three of the men went over to the church, damaging tombstones on the way, for which they subsequently paid.

In another version of the event, a man saw a light in the church late one night, shining nearest the altar. Propping a ladder against the nearest window, he scaled it just in time to see and hear a game finishing and the question being asked, 'Dummy, can you one?' This 'Dummy' turned out to be the corpse, which had been positioned in a chair beside the Communion table, with cards placed in its hand for a last rubber.

Poetic Licence

The poetess Eliza Cook composed some verses on the subject, having been inspired by information from a work entitled Sketches of a Seaport Town. In her version of the story, she describes the body being specifically disinterred from the churchyard for the occasion:

1. And away they strode to the old church wall,
2. Treading o’er skull and tomb;
3. And dragg’d him out triumphantly
4. In the midnight murky gloom.
5.  
6. They carry him down the chancel porch,
7. And through the fretted aisle;
8. And many a heartless, fiendish laugh
9. Is heard to ring the while.
10.  

However, it is more likely that the corpse was already inside the church when the gamesters entered, for, following contemporary practice, the body of a person who had died in the marshland was brought to the church on the eve of the funeral. This ensured that it was ready for the service in plenty of time, in view of the then unreliable state of the country roads. Other poetic licences taken by Eliza Cook are commented on by Macdonald, who says that the offenders’ lips could not have reeked of 'sacramental wine', as this would not have been consecrated until it was time for Communion.

As to the gamesters' fate, stories again differ. Cook has one of the players struck dead with remorse when the church clock chimes one. But a Mr Rawnsley’s verses (‘The Three Revellers; or Impiety Punished’) enlarge on the sensationalism, adding ‘fiends and spectres', who carry off the men 'Midst scenes which the senses annoy and appal', while:

Sad and silent old Holbeach appears,
As if doom’d to lament her hard fate from the Fall,
Like a Niobe* wash’d with her tears.
[*Niobe in Greek mythology was a daughter of Tantalus, who was turned into stone as she wept for her children, after they had been killed by Artemis and Apollo.]

Bragging Jemmy

Then again, Richard Harris, described as a visiting barrister, penned a poem that contrasted strongly with the rest. He has one of the four, referred to as 'bragging Jemmy', dying before the church scandal, less than a week after resolving to give up gambling, leaving one of the surviving three to die during the church game. But no mention is made of this final game being played with a corpse as the dummy. It was all part of the mix of gossip, fact and exaggeration which has surrounded this story over the years. Some say all the perpetrators were forced to leave town, but others that two of the men eventually became churchwardens, one of whom ended up a bankrupt. However, 'SE', contributing item 1359 to Volume 7 of Fenland Notes and Queries (1907-1909), declared that the last survivor of this group (Slator) died in 1829. Also more certain was the fate of Doctor Watson, who later committed suicide by cutting his wrists and, by doing so, denied himself a Christian funeral and was buried one mile north-west of the church, at a crossroads on Spalding Road in 1803. As for John Key, Macdonald says that he died at Holbeach in 1810, aged 47.

The Wagon on the Church Roof

Before we leave the subject of misdeeds in and around the church, it’s worth mentioning another event with which the name of Slator was also linked.

Inebriated night-time muckings-about in Holbeach, typified in present times by the transplanting of traffic cones and estate agents signs to encumber unsuspecting residents’ frontages and car roofs, are nothing new. The wagon on the church roof incident, supposed to have taken place sometime at the beginning of the 19th century, was attributed, along with other individuals, to William 'Lord' Slator, a farmer from Penny Hill. This name also came up in connection with the Holbeach Card Players. So if the same man had been involved in both incidents, it was surprising that he had not only been a churchwarden of All Saints since 1794, but also earned the privilege of a stone to his memory, set into the south aisle floor after his death in July 1829, aged 74.

Slator was reputed to be one of a party who dismantled a friend's wagon, laden with wool, and reassembled it, complete with its load, on the north aisle roof of the Church. At least that was one version of the story. Another was that the wagon was reassembled and left in the churchyard –but not placed on the roof– by a group returning home somewhat the worse for wear from an inn.

Either way, a critic later said, when writing to the editor of Fenland Notes and Queries in the late 1900s, the feat would have been a 'supernatural' one, even for a group of robust 'Holbeach roysterers' to accomplish. 'This would have been a great labour', continued the correspondent, referred to as 'WEF', 'owing to the churchyard wall then being a high one, and no wide gates as now. It would have been impossible for a few young men to have placed the wagon on the church and reloaded it in a night'.

Wanna bet…?