The Ghost Of Lindow Pete

This month’s walk takes us to Wilmslow, to explore an area of natural beauty, but with a name known for macabre reasons. Words and photography by HOWARD BRADBURY.

- Howard Bradbury

MENTION Lindow Common and many of us will conjure visions of the bog body found by peat-cutters at nearby Lindow Moss in 1984.

The victim of murder most foul, perhaps even a ritual killing, Lindow Man - Pete Marsh as some flippantly dubbed him - had lain undiscovered for around 2,000 years, the acid mush of the peat tanning his body like leather. The body remains in the collection of the British Museum.

But there’s more to the history of Lindow than this ancient unsolved crime. Lindow Common was a place for the grazing of cattle, its name derived from llyn ddu, Welsh for Black Lake, the blackness being the result of peat. As you will see on this walk, Black Lake is teeming with bird-life and also a place where you may spot toads and the increasingly rare water vole.

Lindow Common has, since the turn of the last century, been a place of recreation for the people of Wilmslow, and Black Lake was once used for boating, fishing and ice skating. Before being restored in the 1980s and lined with waterproof clay, the lake often dried up, becoming a swamp.