Gloucestershire Folk Tales

Gloucestershire Folk Tales gathers thirty stories rooted in the county’s landscapes, settlements and older traditions. Anthony Nanson ranges from Sabrina, the spirit associated with the Severn, and the Nine Hags of Gloucester to sky-ships reported over Bristol and a silk-caped wraith said to haunt Dover’s Hill.

The collection moves between Cotswold legends, Cirencester’s dark-age drama of snake and nipple, and stories connected with Berkeley Castle and Gaunts’ Chapel. A lonely ghost at an ancient inn and reports of twenty-first-century beasts in the Forest of Dean extend the book’s scope from medieval memory to modern folklore. Towns, abbeys, woodland and open country all become settings for tales of faery influence, tragedy, romance and haunting.