17/07/2026
Coming to stay with us?
One of Our local recommendations is Luds Church.
Lud's Church is a strange chasm lying at one end of the Staffordshire Roaches. This natural grotto was formed after a landslip at some point just after the last glacier passed this way and has been left to nature ever since.
The fissure is walled in by high cliffs covered in lush green moss, ferns and hanging grasses, giving it a tropical appearance, and wherever you look there seems to be a face peering at you from the rock – pareidoliacs will have a field day here! Lud's Church actually has it's own microclimate caused by it's depth and the moisture there, and there is mention from the 1600s of snowdrifts laying in a dark corner of the chasm in July – a local man filled sacks of it and sold it as a novelty at the market.
The name is thought to come from its use as a secret place of worship by the Lollards, a movement of reformist Christians during the 1400s. The Lollards were considered heretics and shut down wherever rumour grew of their presence. The congregation that met secretly at Lud's Church was reputedly led by a priest named Walter de Lud-Auk so his name seems to have stuck.
According to a romantic poem from 1683 their green chapel was guarded by the chief forester of the area who was sympathetic to the Lollard cause. Soldiers of Henry V raided Lud's Church one day but while the giant forester grappled with them Walter's niece Alice sang a hymn verse solo in an attempt to bring calm, but a stray crossbow bolt hit her square on.
Her scream and fall stopped everyone in their tracks. The soldiers allowed the Lollards to carry poor Alice out of the grotto and bury her under an oak tree nearby, before they arrested them all.
Alice was said to haunt Lud's Church, clad in white and singing in her “unearthly voice”. This ghost story was so loved by Lord Brocklehurst, the most well known owner of the land Lud's Church lay in, that he had a white painted wooden statue of "The Lady of Lud" placed high up in an alcove and had one of his men spend each weekend down in the chasm regaling visitors with her tragic tale. A couple of old photographs do show the white lady up there, but after time the effigy fell and was seen at one point rotting in the mud of the gully floor.
Brocklehurst had some strange ideas about Lud's Church, wanting to turn it into a kind of Victorian theme park for the gentlefolk that he allowed to walk around the Roaches, ending up actually attempting to destroy the entrance at one end with dynamite! The rockfall may have blocked it for a while but today it's probably the most used way in. Another reason he may have demolished this part of Lud's Church was because a cave of some sort was there, some say once lived in by old Walter de Lud-Auk, while others claim something a little more mysterious.
According to "Legends of the Moorlands and Forest of Staffordshire", "until a few years ago, the subterranean cavern which issues from Lud's Church, was inhabited by a strange and distinct race of beings”. Was Brocklehurst trying to destroy them and their home, like something out of an HP Lovecraft story? Three men did try to explore the narrow tunnel before its engineered collapse, saying that it opened out into a cavern with definite man made steps down to it. They left a newspaper and some coins before crawling back out and as far as anybody can tell – the items are still down there.
Lud's Church is also noted for a link to Arthurian myth. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an epic romance written around 1380 which tells how a mysterious "Green Knight" rode into King Arthur's court where he challenged anybody to chop his head off - provided they would "accept his blow" one year later. It seemed a no-brainer to young Sir Gawain and so he decapitated the beastly visitor with gusto. To his horror the manbeast simply stood up, gathered up his severed head, and told Gawain to report to his "Green Chapel" where he could keep his side of the bargain.
After various adventures and almost ritualistic mind games with his hosts at a nearby castle, Gawain heads to the Green Chapel. In Tolkien's translation it is entered through a portal in an ancient burial chamber, making Lud's Church seem even more magical. I won't spoil the rest but I will say the film of the poem does stray somewhat from the original narrative. It is thought that a monk at the now vanished Dieulacres Abbey nearby wrote this epic and used the features on his doorstep to locate the action.
I last visited on a late summer day after heavy rainfall, and the lush greenery and heavy dripping gave the chasm the atmosphere of an Amazonian ruined temple, mouldering moss covered blocks amid towering cliffs. It is like clambering down the steps into another world. I would advise arriving early though as Luds Church can get rather crowded, especially at weekends.
