Fimber Crossroads

The following extract is taken from ‘History of Fimber. A treatise on Agricultural Improvements, Memories of Remarkable Events and Village Tales’ by T. Edmondson (1857), in which he describes local folklore concerning the haunting of the crossroads at Fimber.

‘A railway station . . . [is] placed on that lonely plot of ground, known by the name of Fimber Cross Roads; where formerly the inhabitants saw nothing but ghosts and gobblings on a dark winter’s night, and the adjoining valley, called Besendale Valley, which was formerly considered a lonely road for travellers pass to in the dark of the night. While living in the little village of Fimber, I have often been amused with our old neighbours while listening to the long parables they had to repeat on a winter’s night, respecting the different shapes the Cross Road and Besendale ghosts had made their appearance to the passing inhabitants and travellers, while crossing this lonely plot of ground; some professed to have seen them in the shape of a female without head, and others professed to have seen them in the shape of a woman on horseback riding at a furious pace, and some professed to have seen them in the shape of a black cat, and others in the shape of a white cat. Such was the groundless fears of some of the village inhabitants respecting these nightly ghosts, when crossing this lonely spot, that imagination worked on their minds so powerfully, as to lead them to believe they saw something in the shape of a ghost, which led them to take to their heels, and run home with their hair standing erect, grounding their fears upon the superstitious belief that they had seen the Cross Road ghost’.

The crossroads where the B1248 and B1251 meet is now a roundabout and the Sledmore & Fimber Railway Station mentioned in the above extract closed in October 1958.