Georgian England

Cruelly Murdered: The Strange Fate of Henry Scarle

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An Unexpected Discovery

(Image: The grave of Henry Scarle. Source: E.Holohan 2026)

I was recently in Bungay in Suffolk for the Black Shuck Festival. Bungay is famous for its supernatural history, so this was naturally the attraction for me; however, while there, I also chanced upon another story which was completely unexpected.

While in town, I walked past another church, one that isn’t so much in the limelight as the one just up the road, St Mary’s, with its demon dog association. This church is Holy Trinity Church, an ancient building with parts of it dating to late Saxon times but with considerable restoration over the years. Its 11th-century round tower is considered to be the oldest complete structure in Bungay. The tower is eye-catching with its flintwork and traces of herringbone masonry.

I love to poke around an old church and graveyard, so I decided to have a look around. Sadly, the church was closed up for refurbishment, so I couldn’t see inside. I did, however, decide to explore the exterior and graveyard. It was here among the gravestones that one inscription immediately caught my attention. The stone didn’t simply record a name and date; it said the man buried beneath had been murdered.

The Grave of Henry Scarle.

The headstone is unassuming and weathered, yet remarkably well preserved considering its age. Lichen obscures some of the inscription but the name Henry Scarle stands out in large letters. It was the words beneath his name that really caught my attention: cruelly murdered.

The full inscription is as follows:

“To the memory of Henry Scarle, who was valued when alive, and regretted now dead, cruelly murdered at Wheatacre Burgh, on the 10th February, 1787, in the 23rd year of his age: honest and industrious men were never known to commit such a horrid crime as this.”

My interest was piqued. Who was Henry Scarle? How was he murdered? And why had his violent death been recorded on his gravestone?

Henry Scarle was a 23 year old man employed as a waterman by the owner of the Bungay Staithe Navigation, a man called Matthias Kerrison. Scarle’s job was to handle the boats that transported corn, wood and other goods along the River Waveney and the surrounding waterways between the many towns and villages.

The Murder

In 1787, Scarle was with one of the wherries he’d moored in Wheatacre Burgh Staithe (now known as Burgh St Peter), when he discovered two men planning to rob the cargo. According to later accounts of the murder, that night he watched and waited for the robbers, but sadly they spotted him first, grabbed him violently, and bludgeoned him to death before hurling his lifeless body into the river.

His assailants fled, while Scarle’s body was later found floating in the river. They were eventually apprehended at Botesdale, a Suffolk village south-west of Diss, reportedly fleeing towards London. They were then taken to Norwich Castle Gaol.

The murderers were identified as William Hawk and Thomas Mayhew. Hawk was a Beccles man and a miller by trade, while Mayhew was a local man from Bungay and a waterman like his victim Scarle. Mayhew had previously robbed Mr Kerrison, Scarle’s employer, of some corn. Both were tried at Norwich and found guilty of the murder of young Henry Scarle on the 29th of March that year. Simon Stannard was also accused as an accomplice, but was later acquitted and therefore dodged the noose. Hawk and Mayhew were hanged the following day, on 30th March 1787.

The Strange Fate of Henry Scarle’s Body

(Image: Three Tuns Pub. Source: E.Holohan 2026)

Henry Scarle’s employer, Matthias Kerrison, was said to be an enterprising man when it came to making money. According to later accounts, after his employee’s death, he realised he could profit from this situation and had his body exhibited on a bier in the Assembly Rooms at one of the local Bungay pubs, the Three Tuns. It is said he advertised this event as “a penny a peep” and many people from far and wide queued up to view the victim’s corpse. This must have been a horrendous and gruesome sight, as poor Henry Scarle had been beaten to death before his body was thrown into the river, where it remained for some time before being found. According to the story, the money raised from the viewings was used by Kerrison to respectfully bury the young man and to erect the gravestone that still stands in Holy Trinity churchyard to this day.

From Murder Victim to Ghost?

The Three Tuns pub, where Scarle’s body is said to have been exhibited, still stands in the centre of Bungay. The pub has since acquired quite a reputation for being haunted.  In 1969, one paranormal investigator reportedly claimed that they had identified 24 different ghosts there,  including highwayman Tom Hardy and Rex Bacon, who is said to have hanged himself at the top of the stairs there in 1682. I am sure you won’t be surprised to hear that another troubled spirit that is said to haunt the Three Tuns is that of our very own sad Henry Scarle.

A Story Hidden in a Churchyard

(Image: Holy Trinity Church, Bungay. Source: E.Holohan)

I had gone to Bungay for the Black Shuck Festival and certainly hadn’t expected to come away researching the murder of a young waterman who died more than 200 years ago.

What started with an interesting inscription on an old gravestone led me to a brutal murder, the rather macabre tale of Henry’s body being put on public display, and finally the suggestion that he may still haunt the very pub where his body was exhibited.

Whether Henry Scarle really does haunt the Three Tuns is another matter, but his story is certainly a fascinating and rather sad piece of Bungay’s history. It also shows exactly why I can never resist having a poke around an old churchyard. You really don’t know what stories you might stumble across.

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    Face to Face with the Uncanny Wax Lady of Stow Bardolph

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    (Image: Effigy of Sarah Hare. Source: E.Holohan 2026)

    When I was a child, I had a fascination with the strange corners of history, and this, of course, has continued on into adulthood. The books I borrowed from the library were full of ghosts, folklore, unexplained mysteries and curious historical oddities. Among all the photographs that lodged themselves in my imagination, save for the spontaneous human combustion foot photo, one stood out above the rest. It was the wax effigy of Sarah Hare.

    I remember being quite unsettled by it. In a time before I’d ever heard the phrase “uncanny valley,” I already knew exactly how it felt. She looked too real to be a statue yet far too lifeless to be a person. I found her slightly repulsive, but I could never quite look away.

    So, when I recently found myself in Norfolk, visiting Holy Trinity Church at Stow Bardolph was top of my list. I wanted to see whether the real thing would have the same effect as those childhood photographs. And it absolutely did.

    (Image: Inscription on Cabinet. Source: E.Holohan 2026)

    Sarah Hare was the youngest daughter of Sir Thomas Hare of Stow Hall. She never married, so was what was once called a “spinster”, and lived a fairly ordinary life. In 1744, aged 55, she died from blood poisoning after pricking her finger while sewing. Later, locals claimed it was divine punishment for the crime of sewing on a Sunday, although the far more likely explanation is that the wound simply became infected.

    The year before her death she wrote a remarkably detailed will. Alongside gifts to the poor of the parish, she made one very unusual request. She wanted her face and hands reproduced in wax, her own hair placed upon her head, and the finished effigy displayed in a mahogany cabinet with a glass front close to where she was buried.

    She wrote: “I desire to have my face and hands made in wax with a piece of crimson satin thrown like a garment in a picture, hair upon my head and put in a case of Mahogany with a glass before and fix’d up so near the place were my corps lyes as it can be with my name and time of death put upon the case in any manner most desirable…“

    If she did not arrange it during her lifetime, she instructed that it should be done after her death. Her family honoured those wishes. If you don’t ask, you don’t get, I suppose. And oh boy, did she get.

    Today visitors to the Hare family mausoleum find a plain mahogany cabinet tucked into one corner. Nothing about it hints at what lies inside. Then the doors are opened, and there she is…

    No photograph quite prepares you for seeing Sarah face to face. Her blue eyes seem fixed upon you. Her skin shows every wart and blemish. Her double chin has not been smoothed away. She wears one of her own silk gowns along with the crimson satin she specifically requested, and what is thought to be her own hair frames her face beneath an old fashioned wig.

    (Image: Effigy of Sarah Hare. Source: E.Blackshaw 2026)

    It is an astonishingly honest portrait, unadulterated by an idealising sculptor. In a time when many memorials celebrated wealth, beauty or achievement, Sarah chose something altogether different by asking to be remembered exactly as she was.

    I wondered what her motives were. Was it vanity? I doubt it. If anything, the effigy avoids vanity completely. Nothing has been softened or flattered. Every blemish and imperfection remains. Perhaps it was simply a desire not to disappear entirely. After all, most of us hope to leave some trace that we were here, whether through family, creative work or acts of kindness. In Sarah’s case, she chose wax.

    The effect is incredibly eerie. There is something deeply unsettling about meeting the gaze of someone who died almost three centuries ago, particularly when they appear so strikingly human.

    There is also something strangely moving about it. Sarah has spent nearly 300 years silently watching visitors come and go. Seasons have changed and decades have flashed by. Yet Sarah still waits behind those cabinet doors. Time has not been entirely kind. The wax has required careful conservation and rodents once damaged her clothing before restoration work in the 1980s. Even so, she survives as the only funerary wax effigy in England outside Westminster Abbey.

    Sarah Hare achieved the immortality she wanted, although probably in a way she could not have ever imagined. Thousands of curious visitors now make the journey to Stow Bardolph simply to meet her and look into her eyes.

    As I left the Hare Chapel, I thought back to the child who had first stared uneasily at her photograph all those years ago. The real Sarah Hare was every bit as uncanny as I’d hoped she would be. Sometimes the strangest places really do live up to their reputation.

    And occasionally, they exceed it.

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