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by Hugh Pihlens

You are in [Places] [Combe Gibbet]

Judith Meynell Reports (Newbury Weekly News, 12th April 1979):

Residents of Inkpen and Combe will no longer look up to a naked skyline, for on Tuesday afternoon their historic gibbet was re-erected on Inkpen Beacon.

After an absence of more than a year, fears had recently begun to mount amongst villagers that this famous landmark might never be seen again. It had blown down in gales last winter when the stump of the 25 foot high gibbet had rotted.

Said one resident: "Inkpen without its gibbet is like Stonehenge without its stones. It has been here 300 years and the people of Inkpen see no reason why it should not still be there."

Arrangements for the re-erection had been made by Mr. Kenneth Bastable, agent to Mr. John Astor, the landowner on whose property the monument stands.

An oak tree had needed to be felled, then sawn up by a firm in Hermitage and finally some carpentry work had been done to join the new wood to the original base. This had been carried out free of charge by the late Mr. Percy Carter, whose father worked at Edwards Sawmills and had made the gibbet in 1950, and his nephew Mr. John Green, in their Inkpen builders yard.

Mr. Green was present on Tuesday to supervise the erection of the gibbet, which has been reinforced with steel plates at the base. The top section is still in the old 1950 wood.

It was a bleak occasion that only a handful of stalwart onlookers witnessed. The mist and rain swirled round the hilltop as the gibbet was hauled into place. The operation was made more tricky by the fierce wind which blew the suspended gibbet off course several times before it finally settled into its place beside the remaining stump of the old 1950 gibbet. A seven-foot hole had been dug out of the thick chalk hill by Combe man, Mr. Derek Hutchings. Equipment for the operation had been lent by Norman Painting, Inkpen's garage owner, whose two sons Dennis and Chris Painting helped guide the gibbet into place, aided by Mr. Reginald Racey of Combe and Mr. William Carter of Inkpen.

Among those present to witness the event was Mr. R. A. Bulpit of Burghclere, whose ancestors have lived at Combe since before the original gibbet was erected in the 17th century.

This is the fourth gibbet to stand on the spot overlooking Inkpen. The original one was erected in 1676 to hang two local people, George Broomham of Inkpen and Dorothy Newman of Combe,

The second gibbet was put up in about 1850 to replace the rotted original. This was later struck by lightning and the third one erected in 1949. That one only lasted a year before it was blown down in a storm and the present one replaced it in 1950.

Since then the gibbet has been sawn down by vandals on two occasions, in 1965 and 1969, both events believed to have been in protest against hanging. Mr. Astor paid for all the preparations for Tuesday's event.

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