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The recently proposed by-pass for Studley is going to have a
deleterious effect on the residences at the top of King’s Coughton Lane, especially
on the house, originally two cottages, standing to the north of the lane
This place briefly entered the news in 1945, when Mary Jane Brown appeared in court. it was ordinary case: Mary Jane was 65 and she had buried her father, Thomas William Brown, aged 93, in the Front garden. She had tended her father for a very long time and apparently thought that it was about time that the old man passed on to his rest. From the newspapers of the time Many Jane said 'I knocked him off the couch while he was alive and I said 'There you’d better get off; you’ll be handy to drag out”. He groaned and said "How are you going to do it?” and I said “I’ll put you put dad”. I didn’t start to pull him out before he died’.
Mary Jane dragged her dad to the garden, where she had lit a bonfire; she put him on and then pulled him to a hole, thus carrying out the old man’s wishes to be cremated with no expense. The head, legs and arms of the body were not found but Many Jane admitted using a saw and coal hammer. Perhaps the local well came in useful.
The lady was originally charged with preventing the Coroner from holding an inquest but was eventually committed to the Assizes at Warwick on the change of failing to give her father christian burial.
The newspaper accounts described Mary Jane as ‘eccentric’ perhaps a slight understatement. When the road builders put through their new bypass and find a skull and several bones, will they know what they are?
© Alcester & District Local History Society 1986