Inkberrow Siting Legend

In his‘English Fairy and Other Folk Tales’ (1890), Edwin Sidney Hartland gives the following account of a siting legend. ‘In days of yore, when the church at Inkberrow was taken down and rebuilt upon a new site, the fairies, whose haunt was near the latter place, took offence at the change, and endeavoured to obstruct the building by carrying back the materials in the night to the old locality. At length, however, the church was triumphant, but for many a day afterwards the following lament is said to have been occasionally heard:

“Neither sleep, neither lie,
For Inkbro’s ting-tang hangs so high.”

The church is a large and handsome edifice, of mixed styles of architecture. It is supposed to have been built about five centuries ago, but has undergone much alteration.