Jeremy Harte, Surrey:
Church guidebooks often tell us that a door in the north aisle was called the Devil's Door. You get the impression that this was a standard mediaeval fitting, as ubiquitous as rood-screens or Easter sepulchres. I have even seen pagan writers draw the conclusion that these north-side doors were provided for devotees of the old religion to come to church in their preferred manner. Now, after reading of Devil's Doors here, there and everywhere without any real evidence for the name, dark doubts begin to arise. Is this merely an antiquarian fancy?
I have come across two reliable references to a Devil's Door tradition. The first dates from 1856 and was presented by Thomas Wright in Essays on Archaeological Subjects 2, p. 150: he records the name at Littlehempston church, near Totnes. The second is from Welcombe, on the opposite coast of Devon, near the Cornish border. This devil's Door was opened during the baptismal service for the spirit of evil to take flight. The source I have found - there must be an earlier one - is Tyack's Lore & Legend of the English Church (1899), p.171. In both instances the name is mentioned as a local peculiarity.
However, Tyack mentions the same tradition (p.66) as prevailing "in some places". This must simply be an extrapolation from the one instance known to him, and for which he gave the proper account in its own chapter: but clergymen of a romantic turn of mind, reading the passage, might well assume that every north-aisle door had originally been a Devil's Door. Hence the proliferation of the things in guidebooks, for which there is no folkloristic authority. Am I right? Can any readers come up with another genuine local tradition of a Devil's Door from before 1899?
Noon Hills
John Billingsley:
A common place-name in the Pennine highlands is Noon Hill. This name would obviously suggest some kind of interest for an earth mysteries investigator. Often, however, I find that the Noon Hill is not really a 'hill' at all; in fact, most commonly in my part of the Pennines, Noon Hills are the slope of land between where two hill streams meet, no higher indeed at their 'summit' than the surrounding moorland. It has been suggested in the past that the name indicates Iron or Bronze Age settlement, as in the Noon Hill tumulus near Rivington, Lancashire, but this doesn't seem likely in most cases I know. Ekwall's Place Names of Lancashire equates Noyna, near Colne, with Noon and describes the meaning as "a hill situated south of a certain place so that the sun is seen above it at noon" - in this case Earby and Thornton-in-Craven. This is very logical, but is it too simple? My query here, however, is whether other Noon Hills fit the location and type of terrain I describe above. Comments and local observations would be very welcome.
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