Recently I chanced upon the 1 June 2016 posting about the Hungerford Colston Memorial in Great Breach Wood which appeared in ‘Off the Beaten Track in Somerset’.  Although it’s now ten years later, I believe I can add an unusual and curious footnote to this tragic shotgun accident on October 30th 1852 which resulted in the untimely death of William Hungerford Morris Colston.

I unexpectedly came across the Hungerford Colston Obelisk in about 1980 when walking my dog in Great Breach Wood and I read the brief inscription on it.  Clearly the shooting had been a tragic accident and I assumed that the victim and his unnamed friend whose gun had caused the accident were both young men who might have lacked shooting experience and discipline.

The inquest from The Times of November 8th 1852 —which I hadn’t read—tells that this was not the case.  Hungerford Colston was 35 and his friend Mr Tudway, MP for Wells, was presumably of similar age.  The inquest was told that Mr Tudway had just shot a woodcock and was looking for the dead bird when his gun went off accidentally.  To those of us who are familiar with shooting woodcock flying through woods or else flying out of woods, that particular bird often presents a distinct safety hazard.  One should never shoot at a low-flying bird if only trees can be seen behind it.  To do so, one risks hitting a fellow gun hidden behind the trees or else, maybe, a beater who is driving game through the wood.  A more likely explanation for this shooting accident is that Tudway shot at a low-flying woodcock and hit the unfortunate Hungerford Colston —unseen by him among the trees— instead.

Several years after I’d first found the monument in the woods (which I see is marked ‘Mon’ on the relevant Ordnance Survey map) I met Charles and Bibi Austin who, like me, had sons at Hazlegrove prep school near Sparkford, Somerset. The family lived in a large country house called The Old Rectory which was about 15 miles from Hazlegrove and I and other parents often helped with the shared school run.  Their house was in West Lydford but it was not until a few years later that it dawned on me there was a direct connection with the Hungerford Colston memorial in Great Breach Wood.

My wife and I visited the Austins at The Old Rectory several times in 1984 and 1985 and got to see both the house and the extensive garden which borders the River Brue and has in it the largest and oldest Gingko tree in the country.  Bibi Austin (née Sundqvist) who came from Sweden, loved the house but knew little of its history.  She told me there was something strange about one of the rooms but no one could say what it was. The room had once been a bedroom but apparently no one liked it or ever wanted to sleep in it.  Bibi was a sensitive soul, perhaps even a psychic, and she could sometimes hear from that room a low sound which no one else could hear.

Occasionally, when other members of the family had all gone out and the house was entirely quiet, Bibi could just hear the faint sound of a woman crying which went on and on. The sobs were so faint that she wondered if it was just her imagination.  The crying would fade away, perhaps returning later, but if she entered the room there was nothing there to see or hear.

I suggested she should research the history of The Old Rectory, and who had lived there, by visiting Somerset County Records in Taunton.  Some weeks later she went to Taunton and found out that The Old Rectory in West Lydford had once been lived in by the Rev William Hungerford Colston and his family.  That included his son William Hungerford Morris Colston who had been killed in a shooting accident in 1852.  What Bibi found out seemed to confirm that there must indeed have been extreme anguish in the household following the awful shooting accident. Apart, possibly, from the rector’s third wife Mary, the only woman living in the house then was William Hungerford Morris Colston’s twin sister Georgiana Sophia Colston, born like him in 1817.  

The twin sister must have been very close to her bachelor brother and his terrible death would likely have caused her inconsolable distress. Georgiana Sophia was, of course, was the one who had had the memorial obelisk erected in Great Breach Wood at the place where her brother was shot. I think one can safely assume that she was the ghostly unseen woman heard sobbing by Bibi Austin in West Lydford’s old rectory 130 years or so later.