THE BLACK MEN OF BIDDULPH:

RIGHT: ST CHADS CHURCH, BIDDULPH MOOR

ABOVE: A VIEW OF BIDDULPH

This could be a tale by Emily Bronte. Swarthy men with beetling brows, lost and isolated on the lonely moors.

Except that in this case there is not one Heathcliffe but a whole tribe of them, cut off in the wilds of north Staffordshire.

The moor concerned is at Biddulph, a mile or so east of the village of Biddulph and rising to more than 1,000 feet. In our overcrowded Midlands this is one of the few places where you can feel truly alone. It has an atmosphere.

The folk who live on Biddle Moor have always had a reputation for being different, and their dark complexion and red hair sets them apart from their Staffordshire neighbours.

A visitor to the community in the early 20th century describes the Biddle people as having “oval faces, brown, ruddy complexions, dark eyes and hair in shades of auburn”.

The older people in Biddulph are reluctant to talk of them.Given local reticence and the absence of solid facts, local legend appears to explain their presence.

The story goes that one of the lords of Biddulph, returning from Crusader duty in the 12th century, brought back with them 12 Saracen captives and settled them on the moor to look after his lands. 800 years later, such was the isolation of the area that those Saracen looks have not been watered down by inter-marriage.

The earliest account I can find of this legend is from 1791, but it is not the only local tale to explain the origin of the “Biddle-moor-men”.

South of Biddulph, in the county town of Stafford, curious things were happening in the 12th Century, and the evidence is still there to see in the two parish churches – St Chad’s and St Mary’s.

The latter has a very strange font, dated to around 1150, and carved with naked women and lions. This is really not normal behaviour for fonts, and must cause some embarrassment at christenings.

Across the road at St Chad’s, things get even stranger. This is a really wonderful church, much the best thing to see in Stafford, but little known to outsiders. So “high church” is it that they even do one service in plainsong. But the purity of the worship is somewhat offset by the very odd creatures creeping around the chancel arch.

The green men, beaked animals and dragons are not so surprising, since they turn up everywhere, but some of the other figures on the arch and adjacent columns are not quite so domesticated. One figure appears to holding up a severed head, while many of the others are wearing wrist-bands, short tunics and are bare-chested. There is nothing quite like them locally or nationally.

The St Chad’s legend tells that the church was built by mysterious craftsmen from the East. These were supposed to be Moorish stonemasons, brought back from the crusades by Orm of Biddulph. The descendants of these people are said to still live on Biddulph Moor, and were known, because of the exotic dark features as “The Black Men of Biddle” (as Biddulph was pronounced).

The full story, mentioning Orm, St Chad’s and the Saracen masons, was first published in W Beresford’s “Memorials of Old Staffordshire” in 1909. There are good reasons to suppose that Orm of Biddulph was the founder of the church, but is there any truth in the story beyond that?

Beresford tells of seven Saracens brought back from the crusades. Their descendants became the Bailey family. Beresford says “Amongst the children are seen the most lovely shades of red gold hair.”

Beresford claims that Orm was married to the daughter of Nicholas de Toeni of Stafford Castle, though this is disputed.

Following the theory that St Chad’s carvings were influenced by the east Beresford suggests that the strange font at St. Mary’s was originally at St. Chad’s. (The Norman style font in St Chad’s is a 19th century imitation.) This has often been claimed. The font at St Mary’s has often been claimed by St Chad’s and seems to be older than St Mary’s itself. It has been thought by some to be from Palestine.

D A Johnson, editor of the Victoria County History has claimed that this story is pure fantasy. He claims the idea of eastern carvers started when the vicar of Biddulph, Jonathan Wilson, claimed in 1791 that his church showed eastern influence in its apparently obscene carvings.

In fact Wilson did not claim any eastern influence, simply that though it was odd having a “priapic” figure as a waterspout on a Christian church it was common in the east to have obscene sexual figures representing divinity. It is hard to see any connection between this and the story of the Black Men of Biddle.

Biddulph church has even claimed to have a link with the crusades and the Knights Templar, because of a series of stone coffin lids with Norman cross and sword designs carved on them, now along the sides of the church. Though the Templars held an estate at Keele these coffin lids are not particularly associated with the Templars. They are common Norman style, and may not even be connected with knights or crusaders at all.

The story of the Saracens themselves is not Beresford’s invention from 1909, and there are members of the Bailey family today who would still support it. The first appearance in print of the Saracens is in Sleigh’s “A history of the ancient parish of Leek” of 1862.

“One of the lords of Biddulph, a knight crusader, is reputed to have brought over in his train from the Holy Land a Paynim whom he made bailiff of his estate, and from whose marriage with an English woman the present race of “Biddle-moor men” is traditionally said to have sprung. Probably this infusion of Saracenic blood may account for their nomadic and somewhat bellicose propensities.”

The “Baileys”, then, claim to be descended from this “Bailiff”. There is no mention of stonemasons here. There is no doubt of the existence of the Biddle-moor people. In 1909 S A H Burne discussed them in the transactions of the North Staffs Field Club. She visited them in 1893. They had “oval faces, brown, ruddy complexions, and hair in shades of auburn.” Burne’s variation on the story is that they are said to have been descended from 12 Saracen captives brought back by the Lord of Knypersley (the same person as Orm) from the 3rd crusade. Burne suggests they may have been gypsy, which seems the most logical explanation.

The Biddulph Moor people did, and do, exist. They could be gypsies, but there was a legend that they came from the east at the time of the crusades current in the 19th century.

Beresford, in 1909, suggested that Orm of Biddulph founded St Chad’s, and he may have invented the idea that the Biddle folk were stone masons. His main evidence for this was the font in St Mary’s, which he suggested started life in St Chad’s.

There are good reasons to suppose he was right about Orm, but he may have been wrong about the font. It is certainly exotic, showing curious lions and naked women. It has a partly damaged Latin inscription:

Discretus non es si non fugis ecce leones

(You are not wise if you do not flee the lions)

Tu de Jerusalem ror....alem me faciens talem tam pulchrum tam specialem

(Thou bearest from Jerusalem (the water of life) endowing me with beauty and grace)

In spite of the inscription there is no real evidence to suggest an eastern origin for the font. It may be Italian. Lionel Lambert, in his guide to St Mary’s published in the 1930s claimed the font dated from 1148, which would agree with the theory that it came from st Chad’s, as this is very much the date the church might have been built.

The idea of Moorish influence on the carving is not impossible in itself. Moorish craftsmen did work on Christian buildings in Spain, and there are signs of Moorish influence in the churches of Southern France which are contemporary with, and related in style to, St Chad’s.

However though there is a possible link between St Chad’s and Biddulph, through Orm, and though the “Black Men of Biddle” were genuine, there is no real evidence that they were Saracens, and we only have Beresford’s story that they were stonemason’s.

Some art critics have compared the carvings at St Chad’s to Middle-Eastern art, and even to the work of the Babylonians. This is surely going too far, but the un-Christian sculptures in Stafford are all part of the persistent legend of the folk on the moor. The captives bought back from the Crusades, they say, were put to work as sculptors or stone masons, and thereby introduced a little of the Oriental into Staffordshire.

I suppose that a spot of genetic investigation might confirm or undermine the story of the Black Men of Biddle Moor. But if they are anything like as fierce as their reputation, they may not have any inclination to take part.