MY TALK for Dunwich Museum on The Woodwoses and Wildmen of Suffolk is now online, here. Many thanks to Dunwich Museum managers - Jane Hamilton and Sarah Peel for making this talk possible and especially to Sarah for editing it.
The talk was a fundraiser for Dunwich Museum. If you enjoy the talk, please consider donating to Dunwich Museum. A donation of around £6 per visitor is enough to keep the Museum going. All heritage tourist attractions seem to have seen visitor numbers fall and not recover since Covid, so we as a sector are increasingly dependant on donations.
At the request of some attendees I have included some notes to the talk with links, adding also some additional research since the talk happened on 8 October 2025.
Slide 2 The talk is an update from Chapter 1 of the book Mystery Animals of Suffolk, (Matt Salusbury, Leiston Press 2023), available via bigcatsofsuffolk.com (it has a list of Suffolk bookshops where you can buy it) or via its distributor Bittern Books of Norwich.
There are updates on Mystery Animals of Suffolk and on Suffolk big cat sighings on used-to-be-Twitter at @MysteryAnimals and on BlueSky at https://bsky.social/mysteryanimals.
The mailing list for Mystery Animals of Suffolk is via mysteryanimalsofsuffolk@gn.apc.org The mailing list for Dunwich Museum is chronicles@dunwichmuseum.org.uk
Slide 5 King Charles VI of France and others were burnt while cavorting in wildman costumes at a ball in 1392. I erroneously said King Charles VI burnt to death at the ball - he survived, but the trauma of the fire greatly exacerbated his existing mental illness. His brother Louis, Duke of Orleans, was killed, along with a friend of Louis.
Slide 8 Saint Onuphirus, wildman saint.
Slide 9 The Four Sons of Aymon and the Horse Beyard features the four sons killing wildmen on an island. The Ros Beyard parade held every 10 years in Dendermonde, Belgium, is based on The Four Sons of Aymon. Five years before the parade, the bearers of the Pijnders' Guild - strong men who carry the float of the horse Beyard - are selected in the "Wildemanloop", the Wildman Run, in which they strip to their underpants and glue feathers to themselves (to look like wildmen?) and compete in feats of strength.
Slide 10 The Romance of Alexander
Slide 11 - the Wildman of Orford, in Ralph of Coggeshall's of the English
Slide 13 - See Simon Knott’s excellent Suffolk Churches website.
Slide 56 - Many of the Suffolk wildmen are in my Fortean Times article The Woodwoses of Suffolk. and also in Chapter 1 of Mystery Animals of Suffolk.
Slide 58 - Michael Angelo Rooker, View of the Interior of All Saints, Dunwich, Suffolk, V and A Museum; Sketch of the interior of All Saints, Dunwich, photo from Dowcra Collection, Dunwich Museum, see e-hive.
Slide 62 - "wildeman" pubs in Belgium and the Netherlands: In De Wildeman beer tasting pub, Amsterdam
Restaurant De Wildeman, Tielt, Belgium
Hotel Wildeman, Lemmer, Netherlands (closed)
De Wildeman Community Centre and Cafe, Herent, Belgium
Café Brasserie De Wildeman, Saantpoort Noord, Netherlands
Café Restaurant De Wildeman, Vierlingsbeek, Netherlands
Café De Wildeman, Oirschot, Netherlands
Grand Café De Wildeman, Eindhoven, Netherlands
De Wildeman, Ziekerzee, Netherlands (closed)
Café Brasserie De Wildeman, Ijmuiden, Netherlands
Restaurant De Geiser Wildman, Noordeloos, Netherlands
A new De Wildeman pub recently opened in Dendermonde, Belgium
See below for subsequent research uncovering a Wildman pub in Norwich.
Slide 66 - The Fight between Carnvial and Lent, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1559.
Slide 70 - sighting of a "pale ape" in Elveden, #Suffolk, reported to The Paranormal Database.
Slide 71 Donate to Dunwich Museum
See also @DiscoverDunwich on used-to-be-Twitter, @DiscoverDunwich.bsky.social and Dunwich Museum on Facebook and Insta.
Mailing list for Dunwich Museum news and events chronicles@dunwichmuseum.org.uk
Maaike who joined the talk from the Netherlands contacted me soon afterwards to tell me about Pulsatila vulgaris, the herbaceous perennial flower known in England by many names, including April fool, badger, blue money, cat's eyes, Coventry bells, Dane's blood and many others. In Dutch it's known as wildemanskruid, wild man's herb, possibly because it has "hairy" flowers.
Dunwich Museum trustee Sue Hardy at the talk recalled that her grandmother - who was a child who grew up not far from Windsor Castle in Buckinghamshire around 1890 - used to play a game called "Green Man Arise." Whenever the found a big pile of freshly mown grass, possibly to be made into hay, one of the children would climb into it. The other children would shout "Green Man, Green Man, Arise!" and then the child would burst out of the pile of grass and chase the others.
Sue also brought up another wildman in the Bible (besides Nebacubnezzer and John the Baptist, who I mentioned), Samson. I noted that in Tombland, an ancient street in Norwich, there are two wooden giants outside a building that look a lot like some of the little Suffolk woodwoses in the churches. They are known as Samson and Hercules.
They are faithful reproductions of the 1657 originals that are now in the Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell. (It's five-minute walk from their replicas in Tombland.) By the 1990s they were much decayed, Sampson's feet were gone. The fibreglass reproductions were repainted many times, when I saw them they were painted bright red as the property they stand outside was recently a lobster restaurant. They wear lion skins and carry clubs. Their names are Samson and Hercules. (I photographed them back in 2017, I've forgotten which is Samson and which is Hercules.) Here's a photo of them:
Samson and Hercules in Tombland, Norwich
Still on the subject of Norwich, thanks to Ian Simmons. Fortean Times news editor, for bringing to my attention another East Anglian Wildman pub. It's in Norwich's Bedford Street, on the corner of Bridewell Alley. (Yes, a minute's walk away from the Museum of Norwich.) This Wildman pub, though, is thought to be of much later vintage than the woodwoses in East Anglian churches, though. Its name is believed to commemorate Peter the Wild Boy, found in 1725 living wild in the forest and walking on all fours in a forest near Hamelin, now in Germany, by a hunting expedition that included King George I of England, then on a visit to his native Hanover.
Peter was brought to London, when interest in him subsided he was put in their care of one of the royal household servants and their family in Northchurch, Hertfordshire. Peter went missing in the summer of 1751.
He turned up in October of the year - among the inmates of Norwich City Gaol, then in the city centre opposite the Guildhall, near where the Wildman pub stands today. The prison's inmates had to be evacuated as a fire swept through the neighbourhood and Peter was identified. He was returned to Northchurch, in later life he eventually learnt to say a few words and to understand what was being said to him. He died in 1785, his grave still stands in Northchurch.
Update (07 02 2026): Here's a report of another East Anglian "British Bigfoot" sighting at Holkham Beach, Norfolk, from the Daily Star, 28 August 2022.
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