The Local Guy Fawkes story

Elizabeth, the virgin queen, died in 1603 and the Stuarts came to the throne from Scotland. Religious intrigue flourished once again and came to a head in 1605 with the gunpowder plot. As Guy Fawkes was arrested trying to blow up the houses of parliament, his fellow conspirators fled, some it is thought to the channel ports in order to find refuge in France. It is this supposition that has given rise to Tatsfield's ghostly horseman! Thomas Bates, a servant of one of the conspirators or, in another account, Robert Tresham, a wealthy catholic conspirator, who in the end betrayed the plotters, apparently set out on a lonely path from London, via Bromley and Biggin Hill and found himself flying by Tatsfield along church lane and down the hill below the church. The hoof beats supposedly reverberate down the centuries and can be heard at dusk along Church Lane on November 5th. Quite sober, well-respected villagers have attested to this phenomenon and many avoid driving the route at that time on that day!