Benjamin Gayer

Benjamin Gayer served as mayor of Okehampton five times during the 17th century and has a memorial in the vestry of All Saints Church, Okehampton - one of the few memorials there to survive a destructive fire in 1842.

Gayer is said to have misappropriated a charitable fund raised to ransom local sailors captured at sea. Over five Victorian print sources between 1884 and 1905, this real scandal grew into a full folk tale known as "Benjie Geare" or "Binjie Geare": convicted of sheep theft, he is sentenced to empty Cranmere Pool with a sieve, cheats the task with a sheepskin lining, floods Okehampton below, and is hanged on Hangingstone Hill - his spirit condemned ever after to twist ropes of sand at the bottom of the pool.

Sources: Wikipedia, Westcountry Folklore, Okehampton Memories.

Photo: Cranmere Pool by Richard Knights, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo: Cranmere Pool by Richard Knights, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.