Curses & marvels · London

The Field of the Forty Footsteps

Bloomsbury, in the old fields north of the British Museum

Spooky: for older readers

Long ago, there were fields behind Montague House, where the British Museum stands now. And in one of those fields, people said, two brothers fought each other to the death.

Nobody quite agreed why. Some said they were on opposite sides in the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion. Others said they quarrelled over a worthless woman, who sat on a bank to watch them fight. But they agreed on the end of it. The brothers fought until each had wounded the other to death, and they both died there in the field.

And where their feet had trampled the grass as they fought, the grass never grew again. For many years afterwards, people could go and see the bare footprints, each the size of a large man's foot and about three inches deep. There was a bare patch on the bank too, where the first brother fell. Grass grew thickly all around, but not in the steps.

People tried to get rid of them. One woman remembered the field being ploughed up and sown with corn to hide them. It was no use. After a while the prints came back, just as they had been.

In 1781 the editor of the <i>Arminian Magazine</i> heard about the footsteps from a reader he trusted, and didn't know what to make of it. So he went to look for himself. He and two friends hunted for half an hour without finding anything, until a man at work in the fields pointed them to the next field, beside a pond. And there they were. The editor counted seventy-six of them, though he admitted he hadn't counted carefully. The place where the brothers were said to have fallen was still bare.

No plate yet. We are still looking for an old picture of this place.

What people said

Eighty-three steps, not forty. The magazine's informant counted eighty-three footprints, and thought there had once been more in the middle, where the brothers had wounded each other. Ingram guessed that “forty” was used because it sounded well.
A hundred years old. The informant was first shown the steps by George Hall, librarian of Lincoln's Inn, who had known them for thirty years, and Hall had been shown them by a man who knew them thirty years before that, which takes the story back to about 1692.
Seen and counted. At Mr Cary's house in Copthall Buildings, the editor asked if anyone had heard of the footsteps. “Sir,” said Mr Cary, “sixteen years ago I saw and counted them myself.” Another guest had seen them four years before.

Other tellings

In the version most often told, and in a novel by the sisters Jane and Anna Maria Porter (Ingram's text prints “Potter”), the brothers took opposite sides in Monmouth's rebellion of 1685. The Arminian Magazine version, the earliest we have found, says they quarrelled over a woman. [TODO: check the Porters' novel and its date]
Ingram places the field at the far north-east end of what was then Upper Montague Street. The magazine's editor found it about three-quarters of a mile north of Montague House, and about five hundred yards east of Tottenham Court Road.

What the history says

Montague House was replaced by the British Museum, and the fields behind it have long since been built over. [TODO: where the field most likely was, from a reliable history of Bloomsbury]

Go and See

Where: Bloomsbury, central London, north of the British Museum. The pin marks Montague Place, behind the Museum. The field itself lies somewhere under the streets to the north.
Access: Public streets.
Allow: A few minutes, or longer with a visit to the British Museum.
Families: A spooky story about a fatal fight, though there's nothing grim to see. Fine for older children.

Visiting details checked 25 October 2026 with OpenStreetMap. Always check before you travel.

51.5209° N, 0.1270° W · Open in OpenStreetMap

Make a day of it

From our sister sites

Haunted Hotels UKLondon ghost bus tourFor grown-ups: a ghostly tour of London's haunted streets.Acorn & InkWrite your own legendStory planners to print. What mark would your story leave on the land?

Sources

The Arminian Magazine (1781), as quoted by Ingram. The earliest telling we have found. [TODO: a free copy of the 1781 Arminian Magazine]
John H. Ingram, The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain (1884; illustrated edition 1897), “London: Southampton Fields”. Internet Archive.

This is a legend, told as people told it. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.