Jay's Grave is supposedly the last resting place of Kitty Jay, a young suicide victim who is thought to have died in the late 18th century. As a teenager, she was raped by a young farmhand and became pregnant. Such was her shame that Kitty Jay hanged herself.
The three local parishes of Widecombe-in-the-Moor, North Bovey and Manaton all refused to bury her body within consecrated ground, so she was buried at a crossroads, the point at which the three parishes joined. Her remains were discovered in 1860, placed in a coffin and reburied.
The flowers that regularly appear there are the subject of local folklore. Motorists, passing at night, claim to have glimpsed ghostly figures in their headlights or a dark hooded figure kneeling there.
Jay's Grave is supposedly the last resting place of Kitty Jay, a young suicide victim who is thought to have died in the late 18th century. As a teenager, she was raped by a young farmhand and became pregnant. Such was her shame that Kitty Jay hanged herself.
ReplyDeleteThe three local parishes of Widecombe-in-the-Moor, North Bovey and Manaton all refused to bury her body within consecrated ground, so she was buried at a crossroads, the point at which the three parishes joined. Her remains were discovered in 1860, placed in a coffin and reburied.
The flowers that regularly appear there are the subject of local folklore. Motorists, passing at night, claim to have glimpsed ghostly figures in their headlights or a dark hooded figure kneeling there.
(from Wikipedia)