St Peter’s Church Ruins, Stanton Low

It’s the day after the winter solstice. We’ve just had the shortest, darkest day of the year, and made it through the longest night. I don’t follow any particular spiritual path – I’m one of those annoyingly open-minded people who just thinks that everyone should be nice to each other, and if they have a god to walk alongside them and help them to do that, then all to the good – but I find the solstice days are always a bit special, and feel like a good time for reflection. It’s actually one of the reasons that we chose December 22nd as the date for our wedding, all those years ago. At this end of the year, it’s the first day coming out of the long darkness and into the light – it’s when everything starts to get a little brighter, and you can feel that there’s hope creeping back into the world.

Today would have been my 17th wedding anniversary.

I wanted to mark the date with a long, contemplative walk today, so where better than the ruins of a 12th century church? St Peter’s Church sits on Stanton Low, a Park’s Trust park to the North-East of the city, and it’s a really special peaceful spot. My route there takes me along the canal and it was a stunning winter morning, all blue skies and bitter cold with beautiful low, slanting sunshine. I was the only soul up at the ruins and spent about an hour walking around by myself, taking photographs and trying to make out the weathered lettering on the gravestones. it was surprisingly warm inside the ruins and out of the wind so I sat for a while and did some writing: I’m working on a horror story at the moment for a collection due out early next year, and it seemed a perfect space to tell a story of sinister hauntings.

As you’ll expect (why else would I be telling you about the place?!) St Peter’s has something of a dark history but not what you might expect… not ghosts this time, but a werewolf. Back in the 1400s, fears that werewolves might be preying on your community had swept across Europe, but these ‘werewolf panics’ were quite rare in Britain – I guess we just didn’t have as many non-were-wolves around to make it feel like a credible threat. St Peter’s had been built to serve the people of the nearby Stantonbury Village, and back then, there were apparently numerous instances of livestock being slaughtered and even cases of local children going missing from the village. The rumour was that they had a werewolf in their midst who was responsible for these devastating events, and people believed it. Over a few years, this fear grew so great that people began to leave in search of somewhere less supernaturally afflicted, and by 1516, the village was deserted. However, the story doesn’t end there, and as I’ve been using the brilliant Mysterious Milton Keynes website as my source for everything I’ve told you so far, I’m going to just quote from James Willis’s words here:

In 1520 one Thomas Pipe – a seasonal farmhand – was captured by a militia and accused of shapeshifting. He was taken into St Peters Church and restrained by the mob as two priests attempted some kind of exorcism-cum-interrogation. During the ordeal, in which Pipe  was blamed for the demise of the settlement and the scattering of its families, the holy men attempted to cast the demons from his body.  Pipe was said to have writhed and snarled, cursing that Stanton Low would never again thrive as a homestead, and that the church building would ‘crumble to dust.’ He emitted a long, wolf-like howl, then died.

Over the next 400 years the area was repopulated at least twice, but each attempt was doomed to failure, and the village was mysteriously deserted again on every occasion.  The only constant throughout this time was the church, but by 1950 – after seven hundred years of religious service – this too was abandoned, and quickly fell into disrepair.

(By the way, I cannot recommend James’s book highly enough. Back when I was putting together my own book of stories about MK, this was my go-to text for an expert view of everything strange, spooky and unexplained in the city. It’s a fascinating read, and if you enjoy this blog, you’ll love it.)

The story I was writing isn’t about werewolves, and even with the usual steady stream of dog-walkers over on the horizon by the canal, I didn’t hear a single howl in the distance all the time I was there. (I did meet a very cute long-haired French bulldog on the way home who rolled over for belly-rubs!) However, even on a bright December Sunday morning, I felt a definite eerie atmosphere as I sat with the wind whistling through the ruins and crows hopping around the gravestones. Eventually, my hands got too cold to type any more, so I walked back through the park and up to the shops at Oakridge. As I walked by all the smart new-build houses and passed shoppers in their Christmas jumpers, bustling into Asda for the last few bits of festive shopping, I couldn’t help but think about those long-ago days. It only takes a few minutes from the church to plunge back into everyday normality, but once upon a time, a full moon here would have been anticipated with dread. After dark, normal people just like these would have been genuinely afraid of something wild and hungry, prowling restlessly out there in the night. It really was the perfect spot to spend some time to reflect on the dark past, the hopeful present and the unknowable future.

And if you’ve read this far, then thank you for supporting this blog. It’s been around for ages, but I brought it back from hibernation at the start of the year to document the places I explored during my long months of compassionate leave. I’ve shared ten new posts in 2024, which, neatly, is the same number as I’d shared in all the time since I started it in 2015. I’ve really enjoyed my hours out criss-crossing the Redways, I’ve loved taking and editing all the photos, and putting time into writing these posts is always a joy. This blog will be ten years old in 2025 and I can’t help wondering what I’m going to find next. I’m sure this city of secrets still has a few more to share with me, and it would be great if you could come along for the ride.

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Update Saturday, April 19th 2025.

This is somewhere I still visit regularly, and today I was sitting quietly in the middle of the old nave with my phone, recording a trailer for my new project, when I heard a commotion on the other side of the wall. There were voices speaking German, scrabbling paws, a shout… and a creature appeared!

It’s ok. It wasn’t the reappearance of the werewolf after all these years… just some visitors and their very exuberant, very energetic dog 🙂