The year was 1735, and the victim a man unknown, who on being charged with murder and robbery refused to speak.

Witnesses having been called to prove him no mute, this old and horrible sentence, proper (as the law considered) to his offence and obstinacy, was passed upon him.

The executioner, the story goes, while conveying the body in a wheelbarrow to burial, turned it out in the roadway at the place where the King's Head now stands, and then putting it in again, passed on.

Not long afterwards he fell dead at this spot.
The church of St.Mary, which rises majestically at the end of the Causeway, has a slender shingled spire that reaches a great height--not altogether, however, without indecision.

There is probably an altitude beyond which shingles are a mistake: they are better suited to the more modest spire of the small village.