It Should Never Happen to a Vicar – Gidleigh is a quiet picturesque village on the eastern side of the north moor and is noted for its ancient castle and church. As with many things “every rose has its thorn,” and in the case of Gidleigh it was the Reverend Arthur Peregrine Whipham. The Gidleigh estate was purchased by Dr. J. Whipham in 1819 and was the family estate for nearly one hundred years. 
In 1832 Arthur Whipham achieved his Bachelor of Arts degree from Trinity College, Oxford. In the December of 1834 Arthur Whipham BA., Trinity College was ordained a priest by the Lord Bishop of Gloucester at Gloucester Cathedral. In 1836 he became the rector of the Holy Trinity Church at Gidleigh, a post he was to retain until 1862 On the 17th of August 1843 he was married to Frances Huxam a solicitors daughter from Bishopsteignton which was to be  the beginning of this sad saga. During their early marriage they had eight children, sadly their daughter Clara died in 1851.
In the October of 1858 the Reverend Whipham was sued at the Crediton County Court by a merchant5 from that town for non-payment of goods sold and the interest to the value of £8. 15s. – judgement was entered for the plaintiff. This was the beginning of what was to become a well-versed acquaintance with the judicial system.
On the 22nd of June 1861 the Rev. Whipham appeared at the Exeter County Court where a Mrs. Sparshott of Southernhay had summons him for the recovery of £47. 4s. and 6d. This sum was in respect of  the lodging and board for his wife and daughter along with a loan for some clothing. A Mr. Froud for  Mrs. Whipham’s defence stated that around 1858 Mrs. Whipham, being in a state of ill health left her husband and was given an allowance of £1 guinea a week. Six months later the allowance was stopped and from then on she had managed to exist by her own means and lived with her parents for a short time until they refused to support her anymore. After taking advice she notified her husband that she would return to their house at Holy Street in Chagford. She soon found that the house was damp and unfit for habitation and that her husband had instructed the staff leave the house and to have nothing to do with her and then he left for London. At the time her nine year old daughter was in a state of ill health and the only support she got was from an old family servant, Mrs. Betty Govier for two to three weeks. At this time she could get no local credit and left with just one habitable bedroom and no money for food. On the advice of her proctor she moved into Mrs. Sparshott’s lodging house ion Exeter. After a month a claim was sent to the Rev. Whipham for the costs of the board and lodgings along with some money she had been lent for clothing. The Rev. Whipham replied that he was not liable for the monies, hence this case.
Mr. Froud then cross-examined Mrs. Whipham where she stated that after her allowance had been stopped she went to teach the children of Mr. Saunders, the Archbishop of Canterbury for the sum of £1. guinea a week. She then moved to Germany to stay with her father and stayed there until the January of 1860. Then she moved back to London where she stayed at her mother’s lodgings until May when her mother moved to Spain. Following her mother’s departure Mrs. Whipham travelled to Ostend where she taught Prince Doria’s family until the October when she returned to Holy Street. Again she confirmed much of Froud’s opening statement adding that when her husband returned from London he ordered all the bedroom furniture to be taken to a labourer’s cottage called ‘Leigh’. Finding herself in dire circumstances she sent a letter to her husband via a woman called Becky Bourne, it read; “Dear Arthur – Your conduct obliges me to write to know the cause of your unmanly and cruel treatment of me and your child, by deserting us, withholding from us proper support and keeping us in a house which you know is not fit to live in. I wish to know if it is your intention to render us suitable support; if not I have no other course but to begin proceedings against you.” Needless to say there was no reply to the letter and Mrs. Whipham and her daughter moved to Mrs. Sparshott’s lodgings.
Having related her pitiful story it then was the turn of Mr. Fryer for the defence to cross examine Mrs. Whipham where circumstances took a sudden turn. Mrs. Whipham stated that the first disagreement in their marriage took place in 1857 and concerned “a gentleman living at Moretonhampstead.” and following later disagreements she left her husband in 1858. The reason for her departure was given as “improper behaviour of Mr. Whipham with a common servant girl.” as confessed to her by the girl herself in the June of 1858. There was also an accusation that her husband had caught a ‘disease’ from the girl. In that September rumours had reached the Rev. Whipham via “wicked men,” that there was a connection between his wife and another clergyman of the neighbourhood. There was some degree of reconciliation until  Mr. Whipham’s imprisonment in 1859. This sentence was for contempt of the Court of Chancery regarding a bond he gave for his brother. The upshot of all this was that Mrs. Whipham, due to the circumstances noted above moved into Mrs. Sparshott’s lodgings.  The decision reached by the judge was; “I am of the opinion that Mr. Whipham’s conduct in leaving his wife without any provisions, and quitting the house at night, unprotected by any man and without reasonable excuse for him going to sleep in another house in the neighbourhood, was such conduct as to justify Mrs. Whipham in seeking a home elsewhere. Judgement for the amount claimed.”

Following that court case in the July of 1861 the churchwarden on behalf of all the adult parishioners of Gidleigh wrote a letter to the Exeter & Plymouth Gazette testifying to Whipham’s good character, it read: “Sir, – Our esteem for our respected pastor, who had been publically accused of immoral habits, and convicted for cruelty to his wife, induces us to request you insert the following declaration in your next paper.
We, the undersigned, being all the adult inhabitants of the Parish of Gidleigh, hereby declare that the Rev. ARTHUR WHIPHAM during the last 26 years that he has been our beloved Rector, has never, to our knowledge and belief committed one single act derogatory to his character as a clergyman and gentleman.
We consider the Rev. Gentleman to be a man of the highest integrity, scrupulously strict in his morals, and of a kind and benevolent nature.
The patience which he has submitted to gross and repeated provocations from his wife, which several of us has witnessed, are well-known in the neighbourhood. We believe him to have been a forgiving and indulgent husband, and his devotion to his children proverbial.
We have felt for him under his pecuniary difficulties which we understand to have been increased by acts of kindness to a deceased brother, and we now fear the course pursued by his wife against him will reduce himself and family to abject poverty.” – all the signatories can be seen above.
In the July of 1862 the Rev. Whipham found himself at the Exeter District County Court answering an action brought against him by Messrs. William and James Pearse, general drapers from Exeter. This was for the recovery of £16 0s. 7d. which was for clothing supplied Mrs. Whipham on his account. There followed a lengthy discourse as to whether the clothing she purchased was necessary and if so should the reverend be liable. The judge examined the bill which was for a cloth mantle, four pairs of coloured crepe gloves along with other articles to ascertain if they were necessary whilst living at a farm house. In the end the judge decided that the reverend Whipham was not liable for his wife’s debt.
Shortly after the above court case Whipham left Gidleigh and was replaced by the new rector Owen Owen. It was said that just before his departure the attendance at his church services had dwindled dramatically.
On June 12th 1863 Arthur Whipham presented a petition the dissolution of his marriage at the London Court of Divorce. The grounds of the petition were that of his wife’s adultery with Phillip Rowe, farmers son, residing at Berrydown, a farm near Gidleigh. James bird, policeman in the Devon Constabulary gave evidence stating that he was “stationed in the neighbourhood of Gidleigh, I knew the petitioner who was the rector of Gidleigh. On the 31st of August, having been instructed by Mr. Whipham, I saw a man named Hill. From what Hill told me I went to Mr. Whipham’s house. Hill accompanied me to the house. I also saw Mary Hill and Joseph Dicker. It was about half past twelve at night, I told Hill and Dicker to remain outside. I went to a bedroom, having first taken off my boots. I opened the door and by the light of my lantern saw Phillip Rowe and Mrs. Whipham jumping out of bed. Mrs. Whipham came to the door to push me out. She told me not to come in. She raised an alarm and awoke the child who was sleeping in the cot. I told her not to be frightened; that I was sent by Mr. Whipham. Mrs. Whipham had her nightdress on when she came to the door. Her bosom was open. Rowe had only his shirt on, he was behind the bed and afterwards he got under the bed. I pulled him out from under it. I made him dress, his boots were in the cupboard which was shut, I took him to Mr. Whipham. He said; “I would not be caught for £300.” Several other witnesses collaborated the policeman’s evidence and the judge pronounced a decree nisi with costs against the co-respondent.

The Reverend Arthur Peregrine Whipham died in the November of 1882 only to reappear in the November of 2011. In the October of 2011 an extensive restoration project was being conducted at Gidleigh Church. During the work a small loose stone was discovered in the floor of the chancel and on its removal a long forgotten medieval crypt was discovered. By lowering a fluorescent light down into the crypt and with the aid of a mobile phone camera it was revealed that there were two coffins inside. One of them was an adult-sized lead coffin and the other a child’s small wooden coffin. Chris Chapman, a local photographer and historian was notified of the discovery and immediately went to the church – “The hole through the floor was very small, so I put the widest lens in my possession onto my stills camera and squeezed the two into the chamber, ensuring that the camera strap remained firmly round my wrist. By the light of the tube, and with the ISO set high, I pressed the shutter again and again, shooting blind but carefully scanning the camera around the crypt. Back at my studio I examined the results.
 he ‘lead’ coffin was curious. At some point it had been dropped, but the character of the indentation was not what you would expect from lead. I searched on the Internet for the invention of galvanised iron and discovered a date of 1837. If this was a ‘ tin’ coffin then who ·on earth did it contain? Older gravestones, dating from the 17th century and later, had been placed against the outside north wall of the church and are known to have been removed from the floor of the nave. Directly under the chancel screen my photographs also revealed an arched doorway and steps, now blocked with granite but once leading up into the central aisle of the nave. I processed the pictures and sent them to the church architect Allen Van der Steen, expressing my belief that the adult coffin was in fact a galvanised one and not lead, as was first thought.”
The loose stone was then replaced and mortared in but a few days later due to the workmen trundling wheelbarrows to and fro a small portion of the crypt’s roof collapsed. The resulting hole was big enough for someone to get through so Chris Chapman returned to the church. “Donning a hard hat and with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, I asked to be lowered in; and, careful not to disturb anything, I cast my eyes around. Beyond the child’s coffin and towards the east window was evidence of another small chamber, and on examination the block of stone that prevented a view inside was unmortared, displaying the familiar stonemason’s marks of feather and tare and hinting at a 19th-century disturbance. The crypt itself had been limewashed, and what I had thought to be curious black ‘corbels’ on either side of the arched doorway was in fact black paint, which continued up and onto the nave side of the granite arch The adult coffin was indeed galvanised and, on lifting the lid, another coffin was revealed, made of oak and with a heavy brass plate naming the deceased as ‘Aurthur Whipham Born July 6th 1810 Died November 18th 1882.” Clearly whoever engraved the brass plate had an issue with their spelling. – Many thanks to Chris Chapman for sending me his article which appeared in the summer 2012 edition of the Dartmoor News.

Anybody who has read the book or watched the film of, ‘The Name of the Rose’ will not be surprised at anything medieval monks got up to. Dartmoor has its own version in the, ‘Mad Monk of Gidleigh’, well to be exact, ‘The Mad Monk of Haldon’ but as the story began at Gidleigh that is where it can stay. The amazing fact of this tale is that its true and is documented in the Register of Bishop Grandisson of Exeter.

The story begins sometime in the 1200s when a small, private chapel was built just outside Gidleigh, it became known as the, ‘Chapel of La Wallen’ and was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Incidentally, it has been suggested that the term, ‘La Wallen/Walland’ is an early Norman descriptive of a walled area of a field. During this period it was often the practice for nomadic monks to install themselves in such chapels in order to say daily masses and generally maintain the building. Robert de Middlecote was one such monk and on the 28th of March 1328, did, according to the Bishop’s Register, ‘mistreat Agnes at the small chapel’. Agnes was the daughter of Roger the Miller whose mill was located near to the Chapel of La Wallen. Seemingly, Alice was pregnant and Robert de Middlecote somehow murdered her unborn child and if that is what was deemed as, ‘mistreatment’ I dread to think what actual murder must have been. The monk was duly indicted for trial infront of Thomas de Chageforde, the King’s Justice but somehow he managed to escape before any trail took place. It seems that Middlecote headed for the coast as there are reports of several houses being burgled in the coastal area of the river Teign, householders claimed that money and food had been taken. A few weeks later the monk was apprehended somewhere on Haldon Hill which is a few miles south west of Exeter. Following his capture Middlecote was given the nickname of, ‘The Mad Monk of Haldon’ and this was obviously due to the location of his capture. He obviously knew his law because as a monk Middlecote claimed benefit of clergy which at the time meant he had opted to be tried by canon law and not secular law. Usually this meant a much more lenient sentence being handed down by the ecclesiastical court and so it seems was the case here. A trail was set for the 1st of June 1328 and that was the last documented record of Robert de Middlecote. It may well be that the trial took place and Middlecote managed to convince the court that his accusers were committing perjury or even the monk managed to escape custody and flee for his life. There is a possibility that his case was hushed-up and he was sent to another area, perhaps his guilty burden was so heavy that he committed suicide, nobody knows. What is known is whatever the outcome it displeased the folk of Gidleigh because the tiny chapel was desecrated and left abandoned in the same year.
Apart from what happened to Middlecote the other burning question is why did he commit such an awful crime? Had he broken his vows of chastity and the unborn child was his? Did the monk consider the woman had conceived the child out of wedlock and administer some kind of divine justice for her sins. Or, was he mad and in a moment of insanity attack the girl? This story was the inspiration for Michael Jecks’ medieval murder mystery – The Mad Monk of Gidleigh which was published in 2002. I can thoroughly recommend this book if you would like some ‘flesh’ put on the original story as it adds a plethora of images to the tale.
I have come across a description of one man’s discovery of the chapel back in 1921 which reads:
“Almost opposite Gidleigh Pound, facing the Throwleigh road, is a gate which opens on to the old Church path connecting Gidleigh village with the other or N.W. side of the parish known as Moortown. By following this path through three fields we arrive at an ancient stone stile which admits us to the first of the Gidleigh Wallands, its correct name being ” Walland Meadow.” There is little in its present condition that would suggest a meadow, for here, nature, for a considerable time, has been permitted to run wild. On the left we look upon a small picturesque glen through which falls the gurgling Chapple Brook, while on the right, bushes, brambles, and tall bracken grow in such density it is almost impossible to find a way through. Yet behind this jungle effectually hidden from our view—on the other side of the brook—is an interesting ruin which was doubtless once used for religious purposes. 
Continuing our journey across ” Wallands Meadow ” and over the stepping stones of the brook—the old clapper bridge of which was broken years ago—the path now leads us to slightly rising ground with a field wall close on our right. This wall forms the boundary of our second Wallands, for behind it lies ” Higher Wallands,” while the field beyond, towards Chapple, is “Lower Wallands.” A few yards further on the Church path brings us to a gate which opens upon a cart road connecting Moortown and Chapple. The road runs almost parallel with the Chapple Brook, the space between being occupied by the Wallands’ fields till we reach Chapple, consisting of two farms named East and West Chapple, but in an ancient charter of the Earl of Mortain, called Chapellond. By following this road a short distance the gate of ” Lower Wallands” is reached, in which field our ruin is situated.
In design the ruin is oblong, the ends occupying positions almost due East and West. Its South and North walls which rise to the height of about 8 feet, are nearly three feet in thickness, and consist of massive granite stones, which, with the exception of the corners, are simply undressed boulders. At the South-East corner the stones are squared and are similar to those used in the tower of Gidleigh Church. In the South wall and near the East end, the stones have fallen down, leaving a wide space, but the window nearly opposite to this in the North wall is fairly intact. This window is square, four feet from the ground, the measurement being 4 feet high by 3 feet 8 inches wide. The small window in the East wall is interesting. Its height is about 3 feet, the base is one foot 10 inches wide, narrowing toward the head to one foot 6 inches. The flat stone which forms the head of the window is supported by two upright stones which form the sides of the window.Though very primitive in design and rude in execution this window lends quite an ecclesiastical effect to the building. The outside measurement of the South wall from East to West was found to be 26 feet 6 inches, while the width of the structure was 14 feet. Curiously enough the North wall measured from East to West only 21 feet. Another peculiar feature of the ruin which bore witness to the fact that for generations it had remained undisturbed was that the interior is occupied by 6 oak trees, five of which are fully grown and attain the height of between 35 and 40 feet. Measured two feet from the ground they vary in girth from 4 feet 7 inches to 2 feet 7 inches. As silent sentinels these oak trees have guarded and protected the sacred place during the long period it has remained neglected and forsaken by its lawful custodians. Even the ivy growing over the end walls has attained the proportion of trees, some of the stems measuring 6 inches in thickness… Probably this ingenious farmer’s intention was to convert the ruin into a useful linhay or cattle shed, but someone, I can well believe, discovering his sacrilegious designs, interfered, and in order to prevent any future desecrations of the place, had the interior planted with oak trees, and the walls hidden by creepers.” Rawson, pp 129 -138.
It has been suggested that the chapel was desecrated sometime between 1328 and 1332, additionally the oak trees inside the building are now long gone. The ruin can be found at Ordnance Survey grid reference SX 6693 8893

The above is the Dartmoor version of affairs and as far as Middlecote was concerned once he left the area – good riddance to ee. But there is another part to the story once he had moved to the Exeter area, according to local tradition the monk found himself another chapel from whence he could perform his ministerial duties. Lidwell chapel was located in a very remote spot just north-west of Teignmouth near the farm of Lidwell. It is said that the name derived from the ‘Lady Well’ which was associated with a holy well near the chapel. Supposedly, by day, Middlecote appeared as a very devout man of God and served those attending the chapel with compassion and caring. By night however he would go in search of weary travellers and offer them food and shelter at his chapel. He would then prepare them a meal that was laced with a soporific drug and once unconscious he would then butcher his victims with a knife and after robbing them of any valuables dump their bodies down the well. For several years he murdered and robbed unwary travellers until the day he chose a sailor as his next victim. As he was about to attack the man with his knife the sailor managed to see the approaching onslaught and fended him off. After a violent struggle Middlecote ended up being tossed down the well and whilst trapped down their the sailor summonsed help from the nearby farm and the monk was hauled out and handed over to the authorities. It has been suggested that there are some historical documents that record how Middlecote was hanged from the Exeter gallows in 1329, another version of his demise was that he died down the well.
If this story is correct then it would fill in the missing blanks which appear in the Dartmoor version, namely that he died one way or another in 1329.

Croxford, C, A, 2002. A Walkabout Guide to Gidleigh. Chagford: Gidleigh Parochial Church Council.
Rawson, J. 1921. The Chapel of La Walland – Devon & Cornwall Notes % Queries Vol. XI. Exeter: J. Gommin