Abbot of Ashwood Priory

In the mist-shrouded hamlet of Bradworthy, Devon, where ancient stone walls carve the land and time lingers like dew on hedgerows, Abbot’s Lane stretches as a silent scar of history, haunted by the ghost of Father Benedict Warrick, the last abbot of Ashwood Priory. Since the brutal Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, when King Henry VIII’s commissioners razed his sacred home, Father Benedict has walked this path, bound by a defiant vow to guard its ruins until restored—a promise that chains his restless spirit to the earth. Clad in flowing canonicals, a silver cross gleaming at his breast, he appears under moonlit oaks or in dawn’s pale mist, his rosary clicking softly, a spectral sentinel of a lost age whose sorrowful gaze warns the living to tread lightly on ground where faith and betrayal still whisper in the wind.