There are many stories about the Clopton family relating to various tragedies drownings and unfortunate deaths.  This is perhaps the most famous of them....

The Cloptons were a local family that were more than just slightly comfortably off. There is a Clopton Hill, Clopton Woods, Clopton Road, Clopton Bridge - you get the picture....they were not paupers.  But just like everyone else at the time they were subject to the vagaries of fate.

During the great outbreak of plague that decimated Stratford killing one tenth of the local poulation, the Cloptons suffered just as much as every one else.

The youngest daughter of the household, Charlotte, had been picking white star shaped flowers enchanted by their delicacy and scent.  She carried them towards the house and was forbidden from taking them inside by her mother. The flowers were in fact White Bryony which local folklore said was an arbinger of death and certainly an ill omen if they had been taken inside the house.

Soon, Charlotte began to show the early symptoms of the plague; sneezing and a a fever. It was then that they noticed black lesions starting to appear on her skin. Charlotte had the plague.

She was sealed in isolation in the family home but within a few short days she succumbed and died from the plague.  The family were distraught.  They hastily built a wooden coffin and placed her inside.  Then they carried her from the house through the streets of Staratford to Holy Trinity Church where the family crypt lay.

The crypt was hastily opened and the body was laid to rest within its thick stone walls.

A few days later the family was struck again by illness, this time it was Charlottes mother who was sick, she started to sneeze, came down with a fever and then the black lesions appeared. Charlottes mother had contracted the plague.

Once again death had struck the Clopton family.  A wooden coffin was made and the body placed inside.  Then the body was carried through the streets to teh Church where the cryptwas hastily reopened.

Legend has it that the 4 strong men who were used to carry the coffin into the crypt recolied in horror at the sight which met them and they started to wretch. What could have been so terrible that these men left the vault in terror?

Charlottes body was not in its coffin. It was upright against a wall. The fingers streaked with blood - Charlotte had been buried alive. But worse than that, the top fleshy parts of charlottes arm had bite marks in it from where she had tried to sustain herself.  Or just maybe her madness at being locked in total darkness had driven her to bite into her own flesh.