A Victorian Mystery

The River Yarrow is one of Lancashire’s tributary rivers. It rises at the high moorland pass of Hoorden Stoops in the Western Pennines and meanders down to the Douglas near its confluence with the Ribble, and from there to the Irish Sea. About half way along its course, just south of the little market town of Chorley, the Yarrow flows through a densely wooded vale that makes up part of the former Duxbury estate.

Both British and American historians have long been fascinated with this place, its “big house”, Duxbury Hall, being home to the Standish family, and possibly the birthplace of Myles Standish, one of America’s most celebrated founding fathers. Myles’ English ancestry has been much debated, but the problem is that while it seems very likely he was indeed born somewhere in this area, the documentary evidence that would clinch it has been mysteriously lost. Some say this was the result of nineteenth century skullduggery, when various usurpers were presenting themselves as rightful heirs to the estate. Others say the records, basically seventeenth century Parish Registers, have simply perished as a result of nothing more sinister than natural decay.

I’m telling you this in order to put Duxbury on the map for you, but the pedigree of Myles Standish is not the only mystery here, and certainly not the one I want to talk about. The one I want to talk about concerns a dog.

I grew up in and around these woods, and a grand place for boyhood adventure they are too. But if you brave the mud of Duxbury park today, you’ll find little to suggest this was once the private domain of one of England’s oldest aristocratic families. Time has certainly taken its toll; the big house, Duxbury Hall, was pulled down as an uninhabitable wreck in 1956; the landscaped grounds to the east are now a golf course, and of the wooded park’s former manicured glory, there remains only an anomalous stand of soaring pines amid the native birch, a few alien rhododendron bushes scattered among the wild balsam, and a curious old plinth, marking the grave of a dog called Beavis. The memorial reads:

“All ye who wander through these peaceful glades,
Listening to the Yarrow’s rippling waves,
Pause and bestow a tributary tear.
The bones of faithful Beavis slumber here.”

1842

This remembrance erected by Susan Mrs Standish, 1870

The story of faithful Beavis goes like this: one night, the big house caught fire and Beavis raised an unholy din, rousing the incumbents from their slumber, thus saving them from an inferno. The house was partly destroyed and had to be substantially rebuilt. In gratitude, Beavis was rewarded with this fine riverside memorial.

A touching little story indeed. But there’s something wrong with it.

Unfortunately, the original statue of the hound did not survive. Beavis lost his head, then the rest of him disappeared. By the time I came along in the ’60’s only the inscribed plaque remained, though a more recent statue of the dog has now replaced the one that was carried off by vandals. You’ll often see flowers by the memorial, a tradition that suggests throughout the trials and tribulations of history, and even the eventual demise of the Standish family itself, the memory of Beavis has been kept very much alive. It surprises me then that no one else has commented on the anomaly.

It’s the dates you see?

The memorial appears to be telling us poor Beavis barked his last in 1842. If that’s so, then Beavis couldn’t have been around on the night of the fire, which records tell us broke out the night of March 2nd 1859. He’d been dead for sixteen years. The legend is wrong, yet it persists. We must be missing something. But what?

Is it the date of the fire? Could it have been earlier? 1839, perhaps? But several sources confirm the night of the fire was March 2nd 1859. One of these sources is the journalist George Birtil (now deceased), a much respected local historian. It was George, writing in his column for the Chorley Guardian, who also reminds of the tale of Beavis’ barking, rousing the house on that dread night, but George does not query the fact that Beavis, according to the memorial at least, was already a long time dead!

Was there another fire, earlier? And why wait so long to commemorate the hound’s bravery? 27 years seems curiously neglectful if indeed, as myth suggests, the Standishes were so grateful for their skins. Did the stone-mason make a mistake and chisel 1842, when what he meant was 1862? Surely Mrs Standish would not have permitted such an error to go uncorrected!

Questions. Questions. Questions.

And the answer? Well, I really don’t know. It has me stumped.

All I know is when I’m here, this long dead dog haunts me. His is a myth still weaving its mischievous way through time. And in the shapeshifting way of all myths, it’s a curious twist that Beavis achieves more by way of immortality than any of the illustrious Standishes who once hung their hats here. Walking through Duxbury at twilight, listening to the Yarrow’s rippling waves, it’s hard not to imagine the barking of a lithe hound as it flits playfully through the shadows, always just out of view.

I know what the mystery of faithful Beavis suggests to me. It’s a little corny perhaps, but a serviceable yarn in the making, though one I hesitate to pen for fear of tainting the purer myth of this magical place with a more recent invention of my own. But is this not how myths survive, by endless embellishment down the centuries?

How would you explain the dates? Where would you take the story from here?