The Legend of Cally Banks

They say the old ironstone railway line in Finedon, Northamptonshire is haunted. Just a feeling. Maybe just a slight chill, or a feeling of being watched. Or the shock of an owl, apparently appearing from nowhere on silent wings on a still evening. Or the red kite that watches the end of the line, ever watchful for a meal, but flapping off if you give it any attention. But few know the true story.

Interesting little place, Finedon. Its main attraction these days is national semi-precious treasure* Revd Richard Coles. But it also has an odd obelisk, celebrating the recovery of King George III (he got worse again), a pub that claims to be the oldest in England (it isn't) and a stone called the Finedon Stone. Which I suppose it is. So one out of three ain't bad.

It also has a disused ironstone mine, now converted into a country park. And part of that park is the old ironstone railway, running down to a nature reserve.  It's a spooky walk, that old railway line. You constantly, gently, descend into increasing darkness. The plants are a bit spindly and sickly. The concrete sleepers still sleep where they have dozed this half a century and more. The bracket fungus could almost look like they're stained with the red of ironstone and human blood.

Bloody bracket fungus

And you always get the impression, when walking down there, as TS Eliot says in the Wasteland, that, "there is always another one" lurking somewhere just nearby. And the guidebooks will tell you that the reserve at the far end got its name - "Cally Banks" - because it is where the iron ore was melted down with limestone - or, as it is known in the trade, "calcined".

Well, that's what they say. And it's kind of true.

But they miss out the key bit.

There was a man who worked on the calcining ovens down there. His real name was Ezekiel Banks. A tough chap - strong as an ox, as you have to be when shovelling lime and ironstone. A bit of a loner, they said. So while others worked up the top end near the village - dragging the lumps of iron from the ground, leaving the great gaping canyon that nowadays threatens to pull the cemetery down into itself - Ezekiel worked at the other end of the line, out where the winding paths confuse the unwary purple-clad wanderer today. Where, when the ironstone train wasn't clanking along, you could hear the bells of Finedon or Great Harrowden churches, depending on the wind, and the gentle gurgling of the River Ise.

They called him Cally because he did the calcining. Also, being unlettered Finedon folk, they couldn't pronounce Ezekield.

Now Cally loved a young Mexican girl. What she was doing working behind the bar at the Bell in the 1930s was anyone's guess. But she did. And Cally spent many evenings, listening to the landlord droning on about how the Bell is the oldest pub in England (it isn't) just for the sweet moments when he could chat with Falina about the terrible fate that befell a young cowboy she once knew.

Not the oldest pub in England

But Falina had a track record of causing toxic masculine behaviour, as we'd now call it. A wild young engine-driver on the ironstone railway - Sam the Shovel - started coming into the Bell more and more often after work. And while Sam was rakish in his engine-driver's cap, and all his wild talk of his mile-long trips down the line from the mine to the calcining ovens - sometimes even hitting 15 mph - poor Cally's clothes were covered in rusty ironstone dust, and specs of lime. It wasn't so bad, except he once accidentally dropped a Coke down his coat. Fizzed for days.

Falina fell deeply in love with Sam. And the more she loved Sam, the more Cally's jealousy simmered.

One day he could take no more. He knew the rough time that Sam would be running the train down, laden with its load of ironstone. He lurked behind an ash tree on the bank, above the railway line, waiting for the moment that Sam the Shovel would appear. He watched anxiously as he saw steam swirling round the little cutting. Eventually, the little locomotive puffed into view, Sam's cap visible behind the controls. Cally flitted from his hideout, took a few paces down the bank, and leapt from a height onto the footplate. He pushed his rival out the other side. He planned to leap on his prone form, and finish him off with whatever lump of rock came to hand.

The falling figure gave a cry - a female cry - and crashed to the ground. As the train continued to race away at 5mph, Cally realised too late that it was his own Falina, wearing Sam's hat as a lover's token.

Sam had been engaged in getting the next shovel of coal from the tender. Realising what had happened, he turned and slammed the now-distraught Cally across the head with his shovel. Cally fell from the loco, bounced off a rock, and rolled back under the wheels of the ironstone wagons.

To this day, the kids say that the mysterious square hole in the Cally Banks nature reserve is the entrance to Cally's grave. They say the whole reserve is a kind of 20th Century burial mound, raised in honour of the smelter, failed lover and murderer.

Do not climb in to check

And they say that if you walk down the railway track, away from Finedon, of an evening or a gloomy afternoon, you'll always feel the presence of Cally - just behind you - just quietly watching. Waiting for that train. Swearing to himself that, should it ever come down that way again, this time he's going to get Sam the Shovel.

If I were you, I shouldn't wear a cap. Stick to a nice hoody.

* I realise I've partially been inspired by, partially plagiarised Richard's wonderful David here. I hope when I see David next he'll forgive me.