Old Maid’s Walk is an odd name for a road, but it takes it from a fascinating story from the 17th century. The Old Maid in question is Clara Markye and she walks up and down this lane, pining for her young lover, Ralph Mortimer, who was buried following his suicide at the Corpse Cross (from which Copse Cross Street takes its name).
The story begins in Alton Court – a manor house in the depths of the green dingle, with Penyard Woods rising abruptly above. Its owner at the time was Mr Markye (the Markye of the Markye Chapel in St mary’s Church), a wealthy man with an obsession for his beautiful garden, who became so enraged when an early frost nipped and killed his choices plants that he fired the gardener.
He looked on a replacement, a handsome young fellow named Ralph Mortimer, who although poor was said to be the descendant from Mortimers of Wigmore, near Leominster. Under his care the Alton Court gardens flourished. Also blooming was the secret love between Ralph and Mr Markye’s second daughter, the strikingly beautiful Clara.
Ralph and Clara realise their relationship was doomed. Not even Cupid’s arrow would be able to shatter their class barrier. To complete their despair, Clara’s father arranged that she should marry a young man from the Rudhall family. Everyone viewed this as an excellent match – except the bride-to-be and her sweetheart.
Clara wept bitter tears and Ralph became distraught. An old woman, Nancy Carter, was accused, wrongly by locals, of bewitching him. Straws in the shape of a cross were cast in her footsteps and pins were plunged in her attempts to lift the so-called spell.
Within a few days, small boys, peeping over Wilton Bridge at the salmon wriggling among the crystal shallows spotted Ralph’s hat lodged against the central buttress. Upstream, near The Acres, was the young gardener’s body. His remains were taken to the Welsh Harp Inn on Alton Street, where Jack, “The Scape” Clement who lived in a Walford Road hovel, was hired as a sin-eater. A quart of beer – “Old Stingo” and the sixpence were passed across the corpse to the gaunt Jack, who agreed to take upon himself all the sins of the departed “I’ll take all the consequences and so I has all the beer”, he said.
After sunset, Ralph’s body was taken up the road where a stake was driven through his heart – “to be sure he would not walk and bite people in their beds” – and was then dropped, without the support of a prayer, into a hastily dug hole.
That’s how Corpse Cross (now Copse Cross Street) acquired its name. Suicides were interred there in a similar fashion for many years until 1823 when the law ended the odious practice. A few days after the gruesome burial, Mr Markye walked the inconsolable Clara down the aisle of Ross Parish Church. When asked to take Mr Rudhall as her husband she let out a piercing scream and collapsed. She was taken home where she lay in a trance. Half an hour later she disappeared, eventually being found at Alton Road crossroads looking for Ralph’s unhallowed grave. The family and friends tried various means to prevent a repeat, but at every opportunity she stole the way and would pace slowly up and down the lane leading to Corpse Cross.
She was allowed to have her way and continued to make her lonely trek for decades …until death eventually came and ended forever the “Old Maids Walk”…. (Source: The Hereford Times 14/08/1986)
Alton Court