The legendary black servant's skull turned out to be a European woman from thousands of years ago
The 'screaming skull' legend of Bediscombe manor was dramatized as the story of a black servant's wronged ghost, but forensic examination showed the skull actually belonged to a European woman from thousands of years ago.
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The skull legend arose from the English Civil War
The story's protagonist, Theophilus Brougham, was originally a Royalist, but after witnessing atrocities by the King's forces against prisoners during the English Civil War, he switched sides to join the Parliamentarians. After the war ended, he went into retirement at Higher Chilton Farm in Somerset. When Charles II was restored, people like him who had supported Parliament were treated as traitors, laying trouble for his final years.
Fearing desecration after death, he beheaded himself first
Brougham feared that Royalists would dig up his body and behead him as a spectacle—this was not mere fantasy. Three years after Oliver Cromwell died, his grave was opened; his corpse was hanged at Tyburn, then beheaded, and his head was displayed in Westminster Hall, with two of his associates suffering the same fate. So before his death in 1670, Brougham asked his sister to behead him after death and keep the head at home, with his body buried in the church vault and his skull preserved separately.
The skull was repeatedly buried and repeatedly haunted
After Brougham died, successive residents of the house wanted to bury the skull, but each time it was buried, strange noises and an unsettling atmosphere would emerge, so they would dig it up again to keep it in the house. Once, a resident wanted to bury the skull in the church graveyard ‘to let it rest in peace,’ but the person burying it was killed on the spot by a stone slab that fell from the church roof. A 2022 report claimed that when the church was renovated, Brougham's grave was found to be empty, but no records were found in the contemporary archives to verify this account.
All who mocked the skull suffered accidents on the return
In the folklore itself, the skull was not difficult to manage: in 1826, two workers once used it as a drinking cup for beer, and after putting it back, all was well. But in 1977, when two London researchers visited and publicly questioned and even mocked the legend, on their way back one mistook oncoming headlights for an approaching vehicle and crashed into a tree, suffering severe injury, while the other caught his pant leg in a fire and suffered severe burns—both accidents were attributed to the skull's vengeance. The homeowners, however, regarded Brougham as the house's guardian.
The real foundation of the 'black servant skull' legend lies elsewhere
Another skull came from Bediscombe manor in Dorset, with legend saying it belonged to a black servant or enslaved person—he had asked to be buried on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean after death, but was buried on the spot instead; after that the manor was constantly haunted until the skull was kept separately. The true family history involves the manor's owner, Azariah Penny: at age 23 he participated in the Monmouth Rebellion and was sentenced to death; his family used connections to change the sentence to transportation to Nevis as an indentured servant, but before his sentence was up his family bought him out; once free, he went on to make his fortune opening a plantation there.
One phrase ‘like a black skull’ cemented the entire legend
In 1883, the Garnett family used the pretext of borrowing milk to call and see the skull; a medical student among them declared after examining it that this was a black person's skull, only then did the manor's mistress reveal the murder rumor—in different versions, the killer was variously said to be either a servant or a priest, and this version of the story made no mention of the Penny family at all. More than two decades later, judge John Udall, while on circuit in Nevis, happened to discover that the Penny family indeed had a plantation there, and found in the 1765 plantation records a slave named Bediscombe registered, and only then could he piece together the legend with the real family history, though he himself admitted this was all speculation.
Forensic examination revealed the skull belonged to a European woman from thousands of years ago
In the 1960s, Gilbert Causey of the Royal College of Surgeons conducted a formal examination of the skull, with a conclusion that nearly overturned the entire legend: this skull did not belong to a male who died in the 18th century at all, but to a European woman aged between 25 and 30 who died thousands of years ago. In other words, it almost certainly has no connection to Nevis or slavery, and probably died in Dorset itself from the beginning. In a 1999 BBC documentary on the slave trade, a descendant of the Penny family also clarified that while the family plantation did hold slaves, they did not engage in the slave trade business itself.
In their own words · checked verbatim
There are told of certain houses in different parts of the country, many weird skull stories. The popular idea being that if any profane hand should be bold enough to remove or in any way tamper with such gruesome relics of the dead, misfortune will inevitably overtake the family.
he doesn't like being handled too much. If he objects, he soon lets us know. But as long as he is treated with respect, he never causes trouble.
I don't mean to laugh at the dead, but it sounds like when you're talking about a difficult cat.
Brougham's Head, a skull recorded by Collinson, 1791, which has defied many attempts at burial.
One of our party, who was a medical student, examined it long and gravely, and then after first telling the good woman that he was a doctor, pronounced it to be, in his opinion, the skull of a Negro.
The story of the Bediscombe skull at once flashed across my memory, and I thought, how strange, and with all interesting, it would be if I had come across the actual home or source of the legend.
this was not the skull of a man who had died in the 18th century. It was dated as being much older, perhaps thousands of years old. And it was also determined to be a woman's skull, most likely European, who had been between 25 and 30 when she died.
Figures
| Theophilus Brougham's death | 1670, aged 69 | 7:10 |
| Brougham's promised annual pension | £20 per year (1650s) | 12:22 |
| Azariah Penny's age when participating in Monmouth Rebellion | 23 (born 1661) | 17:25 |
| Followers of Monmouth Rebellion tried after the Bloody Assizes | 600 | 18:25 |
| Slaves registered in plantation records, 1765 | 3 | 19:28 |
| Age of skull victim per Causey's forensic examination | 25-30, European female | 28:43 |
Glossary
- Screaming Skull
- A type of English folklore about a skull believed to cause hauntings and that cannot be moved or buried.
- Monmouth Rebellion
- The failed rebellion in which the Duke of Monmouth, illegitimate son of Charles II, raised arms to contest the throne.
- Bloody Assizes
- A series of death-penalty trials conducted against hundreds of Monmouth's followers after the rebellion.
- indentured servant
- A laborer legally bound by contract to work for a fixed period in repayment of a debt or criminal sentence.
How to listen
Audiences interested in English folklore and ghost stories, the aftermath of the English Civil War, or the history of colonial slavery, and who enjoy reversals like 'legend debunked by evidence.'
19:28-21:34, the details about how the Penny family manor changed hands across generations are fairly tedious and can be skipped.