Two Black Dogs on the Fen: the Littleport Black Dog Legends

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 25, 2026 · How we verify

Most places in the East of England make do with one phantom hound. Littleport, in Cambridgeshire, has two, and the Littleport black dog stories are different enough from each other that folklorists have recorded them separately. One belongs to the years before the English Reformation and involves a friar, a girl gathering mint and a fight that killed them both. The other belongs to the nineteenth century and haunts a stretch of road that people still drive every day.

Littleport is a town in East Cambridgeshire, in the Isle of Ely, lying about 6 miles north-east of Ely on the Bedford Level South section of the River Great Ouse, close to Burnt Fen and Mare Fen. It has its own railway station, and at 28.46 square miles it is the largest village in East Cambridgeshire by area. There is no ticketed attraction here, no visitor centre and nothing roped off. The legends attach themselves to open fen, a hamlet and a main road.

Barrett’s Tale of the Friar and the Mint Gatherer

The local folklorist W. H. Barrett set his version before the English Reformation. A local girl was gathering wild mint from a nearby mere when a lustful friar set upon her. She was rescued by a huge black dog, and in the struggle both the friar and the dog were killed. According to the story, the local men threw the friar’s body into the mere but buried the dog with honour, and it is the dog that is said to haunt the area afterwards.

This is folklore rather than record. There is no coroner’s report, no name, no date. What is worth noting is the moral shape of it: the animal is the protector, and the haunting is treated as a reward rather than a punishment. That inverts a good deal of the wider Black Shuck tradition of the East of England, to which both Littleport dogs have been linked while differing from it in significant aspects.

Trotting Feet on the A10 to Brandon Creek

The second legend is the one people still repeat. The Cambridgeshire folklorist Enid Porter recorded nineteenth century accounts of a black dog haunting the A10 road between Littleport and the neighbouring hamlet of Brandon Creek. Residents said they were kept awake on dark nights by the sound of howling. Travellers on that stretch reported hearing trotting feet behind them and feeling hot breath on the backs of their legs, with nothing there when they turned.

The explanation offered locally was grief rather than malice. The dog was said to be waiting for the return of its owner, who drowned in the nearby River Great Ouse in the early 1800s.

The 1906 Collision That Is Said to Have Ended It

The Brandon Creek haunting has an ending, which is unusual. Local tradition holds that it stopped in 1906, when a resident drove his car into something solid next to the spot where the dog’s owner supposedly drowned. Whatever he hit was never found. Reports of the dog are said to have ceased from that point.

Treat this as the closing chapter of a story rather than a documented event. There is no inquest or investigation behind it. What survives is the account itself, collected as folklore, and the fact that the road runs exactly where it always did.

Eels, the 1816 Riots and a Harley-Davidson Statue

The recorded history of the place is grimmer and better evidenced than the ghost stories. Under the Old English name Litelport, the village was worth 17,000 eels a year to the Abbots of Ely in 1086. Its legendary founder was King Canute, who is said to have been given shelter by a fisherman after drunken monks refused him hospitality, punished the monks, and made his host mayor of a newly founded village.

The Littleport Riots of 1816 are the town’s defining event. They broke out after war veterans from the Battle of Waterloo returned home to find no work and risen grain prices. Shops and buildings were smashed until troops were brought in. St George’s church registers were destroyed in the riots, which is why the surviving registers begin only in 1754 for marriages, 1756 for burials and 1783 for baptisms. Some original documents relating to the riots are held in Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies at the County Record Office in Cambridge. The riots influenced the passage of the Vagrancy Act 1824.

Littleport has odder claims too. The Boat Race was held on the River Great Ouse between Littleport and Queen Adelaide in 1944, and again here in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and safety issues with Hammersmith Bridge on the Thames. In 2003 a Harley-Davidson statue was unveiled in the town: William Harley, father of the company’s co-founder William Sylvester Harley, was born in Victoria Street in 1835 and emigrated to the United States in 1859.

Walking and Driving the Legend Today

There is no site to tour. The Brandon Creek stretch of the A10 is a working road and not a place to loiter on foot after dark, whatever you hope to hear behind you. Littleport itself is reachable by train and sits on the Great Ouse, and the hamlet of Little Ouse within the parish is now wholly residential: both the Waterman’s Arms and the Church of St John the Evangelist have become private dwellings, so there is nothing to look round there either.

One genuine curiosity is nearby: the lowest trig point in Britain sits near Little Ouse, 0.91 m below sea level. It is a fitting landmark for a parish whose ghost story is a sound rather than a sight.

Never trespass on property that is not yours or without permission. Ghost hunting can be dangerous, so always use caution and respect people’s homes and privacy.

Address: Littleport, East Cambridgeshire, Cambridgeshire

See Littleport for Yourself

Sources

• Key Figures for 2011 Census: Key Statistics. Area: Littleport (Parish)
• Cambridgeshire, Littleport
• The Littleport Riots
• The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Cambridge and the isle of Ely
• County Records Office, Cambridge
• Wikipedia: Littleport

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