Talland Church Headstones

Headstone 335

~ Slate ~ Triangular top and central cross motif with the inscription: St Mark Ch.xiii V.xxxv

This stone was erected by Robert Scott, Rector of Duloe.

Mary Slade (1824-1846), daughter of Samuel Slade and Jane Hambly, see Headstone 336.

Mary Slade is said to haunt Duloe vicarage: ‘twice a maid, in mob cap and old fashioned print dress, went into their room and disappeared’. ‘The story was that she choked and died while eating fish, and that Bishop Temple, then a curate, ran all the way to Looe to fetch a doctor, who arrived too late.’

‘A Talland Childhood’ – recollections of Muriel Jerram

But there were other stories:

Mary allegedly died in mysterious circumstances at the age of 22 while she was employed as a servant to Robert Scott, Vicar of Duloe 1840-1846 and a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. Scott had already outlived two wives both named Mary, and there is a suggestion that Mary Slade became the third Mary in his life.

Duloe rectory is now Duloe Manor, a holiday properties development. It is said that Mary’s ghost, ‘a good looking housemaid in old fashioned dress’, haunts what was once the old rectory. Mary died of a burst blood vessel apparently following a quarrel with another servant. At the time of the ‘accident’, the Bishop of Exeter and future Archbishop of Canterbury, Frederick Temple, was staying at the rectory and ran the three miles to Looe in the middle of the night to fetch a doctor, who arrived too late to save her. Mary is buried at Talland rather than Duloe and [Rector Robert] Scott was responsible for erecting her memorial and additionally inscribing her headstone with words from St Mark Chapter 13, verse 35:

“Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the Master of the
house cometh, at even or at midnight, or at the cock crowing,
or in the morning. Lest coming suddenly he should find you
sleeping”.

The circumstances of her death were told in a letter printed by the Cornish Times in 1945.

‘The Slade Family and a Mysterious Death’ – Polperro Family History Society J5

Three old ladies, the story goes, came to call at the vicarage one sunny afternoon, as they did so they met a little servant girl, who smiled and stood back so that the three ladies could pass. At the vicarage they went into the drawing room and one of them said ‘I’m so glad you’ve got a maid at last. I do think the cap and apron is such a wonderful idea’.

When Mrs Timberlake repeated this to a local resident, she was told that the servant girl in question was Mary Slade who had died in childbirth at Talland vicarage where she had been brought. According to the legend, whenever there is a change at the vicarage, ‘she walks’.

Ghost story recorded by James Derriman (1922-2007) recited to him by the daughter of Rev. John Timberlake, Vicar of Talland – Polperro Family History society J43