Screaming Skulls at Launceston

One should always drop in at local museums, and so during our Cornish escapade while on an excursion to Launceston that was what we did. Launceston's is a slightly chaotic sort of wunderkammer with no sense of an overall scheme, but it is a rare museum indeed that furnishes nothing interesting, and, sure enough, here the visitor is provided with the Descent of the Top Hat, ranges of eccentric books, and rows of antique vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.



She is also treated to a sight of an age-browned portion of cranium in a display case with the caption, 'THE SCREAMING SKULL OF TRESMARROW'. And that's it. No explanation, no context, no idea of what or where Tresmarrow might be, whose skull it was, or why it might have screamed. I didn't photograph it because there's not a lot to see, really.

Being a Dorsetman I am familiar with the Screaming Skull of Bettiscombe Manor any attempt to move which results in dire manifestations, and I'm aware there are others round about the country, but had never heard of the one at Tresmarrow. It turns out that the tale comes from the 1913 Book of Folklore from the pen of that redoubtable collector and storyteller, Sabine Baring-Gould :

Near Launceston is the ancient house of Tresmarrow that belonged to Sir Hugh Piper, Governor of Launceston Castle under Charles I. By the marriage of Philippa, daughter and heiress of Sir Hugh, the house and property passed into the Vyvyan family; then it passed to a Dr Luke, whose wife was a Miss Vyvyan. He sold it to an old yeoman farmer of the name of Dawe, and it remained in the Dawe family till about five years ago, when it was again sold.

Now, in a niche in the old buildings for centuries was to be seen a human skull. All recollection of whose it was had passed away. One of the Dawes, disliking its presence, had it buried, but thereupon ensued such an uproar, such mighty disturbances, that it was on the morrow dug up again and replaced in its recess. The Dawe family, when they sold Tresmarrow, migrated to Canada, and have taken the skull with them.

Fr Baring-Gould was not one ever to let the facts get in the way of a good story, and it's remarkable that the legend seems only to be recorded by him: but odder far is what the skull is doing in a case at Launceston Museum if the Dawes took it to Canada. I wonder if it still screams, or even mutters in irritation at its current confinement.