Almost hidden from sight by the thick woods at the base of the massive Whitestone Cliff on Sutton Bank lies Gormire Lake. Science tells us it was formed over 20,000 years ago by glacial melt waters from the last ice age, but imagination and legend have embroidered far more uncanny stories around this broad and still lake. Perhaps because of its quiet seclusion in the trees, or perhaps because it has no apparent stream of water flowing in or out, or perhaps because it is so still and dark, there are many fanciful stories about the place.
My favourite Gormire story is that of the medieval Rector of nearby Cold Kirby, James Tankerlay, who regularly returned to the village after his death to visit his mistress, and who on one such haunting blew out her eye. The remedy, it was decided, was to exhume his body and pitch it into Gormire Lake which was reckoned so deep it was an entrance to hell.
I don’t visit the lake often but I was there today and heard a different tale, a new one to me, it concerns a character curiously named ‘Circling Jake.’ In his lifetime he was plain Jack, a farm labourer from back in the early 1800’s.
The story goes that he fell in love with the daughter of a wealthy local farmer, and she returned his affections. They met secretly at the lake knowing her father, who was a hard and proud man, would not approve. The evening they were due to run away together and be married they agreed to meet, as they had done many times before, at Gormire. Tragically for them someone had gotten wind of their scheme and told her father who immediately took matters in hand by locking his daughter in the cellar.
Now here is where the accounts differ, apparently some say that the young man not knowing the reason his beloved did not appear doubted she ever had loved him and fell into such a deep despair he made and end of his life in the cold waters of the lake. Others say the father went there to remonstrate with him and a struggle ensued in which the youth killed the father and in horrified remorse threw both the father’s bloody corpse and himself in to the lake clutched together.
Whichever concluding version of the story is correct it is said Jack in years since has been seen walking round and round the lake searching for his sweetheart, convinced that one day she will come to him.
Who knows what actual histories stand behind such stories, if anything actual at all?
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