Mackenzie's Tomb - Rodney Street

[ghughesarch]

I'm wondering if this is our old friend 'urban legend', having been inspired by the following:

'Well, Mr Garrett,' said Mrs Simpson, who had not yet resumed her work, and was looking at the fire thoughtfully, 'I shall tell you the story. You will please keep it to yourself, if you don't mind? Thank you. Now it is just this. I had an old uncle, a Dr Rant. Perhaps you may have heard of him. Not that he was a distinguished man, but from the odd way he chose to be buried.'



'I rather think I have seen the name in some guidebook.'

'That would be it,' said Miss Simpson. 'He left directions--horrid old man!--that he was to be put, sitting at a table in his ordinary clothes, in a brick room that he'd had made underground in a field near his house. Of course the country people say he's been seen about there in his old black cloak.'

M. R. James : 'The Tractate Middoth' 1911

Case closed?

I'm pretty sure that both Mad Jack Fuller (referred to upthread) and James Tillie:

http://www.follytowers.com/pentillie.html

had entered local legend in Sussex and Cornwall respectively, and been published by the late nineteenth century, before M R James' story was written. Fuller, incidentally, was actually buried in the usual way under the floor of his pyramid.