BOATDATE: 07082019
CANAL: Trent and Mersey
LOCATION: Rugeley
Turned onto the Trent and Mersey canal at Fradley junction and continued up to Rugeley mooring up between bridges 67 and 67A. This must be pronounced Rougeley, like lipstick, and they look at you funny if you don't. A long line of trad boats came passed with their roses and their castles and their chuggy engines and whatnot. The Trad Brigade {TM] can be a funny lot sometimes. Some of them look down their noses at mere leisure craft.
The problem with living with both feet in the past is that it's not balanced and you tend to fall over: also you are nowhere near the past and the harsh and often brutal existence led by the men, women and children from the era when working narrowboats on our inland waterways were a vital part of the country's commercial infrastructure. Hey ho. We are stopping here for a bit so I can replace the dilithium crystals and the warp coils. Aye Aye.
Rugeley has a 12th Century Church, now known as The Old Chancel which I visited briefly. Mostly derelict, it has a tomb of two sisters......
"Elizabeth Cuting, who died in 1695, and Emma Hollinhurst, who died in 1696. On its top are carved effigies of two figures, each tied at the top and bottom in a shroud. These curious effigies are behind a local legend that the sisters were buried alive in sacks by Oliver Cromwell – despite Cromwell having died earlier, in 1658.
The true story of the tomb is connected to a Parliamentary Act of 17 years earlier, which required corpses to be buried in wool. These ladies, among others, preferred to be buried in linen, and defied the Act, as the burial register shows.
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