©Clive Barnes Jan 2026
The story
You might know this story. Five-year-old John, the precious heir to the Tregonwell family, Lords of the Manor of Milton Abbas, is taken by his nurse to the narrow walkway around the tower of the Abbey Church. Left to himself, he leans over to reach for a rose growing from the wall beneath him and, horror of horrors, tumbles more than 20 metres to the ground below. “Oh no,” screams the neglectful nurse, seeing her charge disappearing headfirst over the parapet. She rushes down, expecting to find young John broken below. Yet here he is, sitting on the grass smiling up at her, picking daisies, completely unharmed. How can he possibly have survived? Perhaps the angels bore the little innocent up? Or, perhaps, he floated gently down to earth, on the breeze beneath his voluminous skirts?
What evidence?
Is this history or just a compelling tale? Let’s first look at the evidence. And there is some, but not a great deal. Just enough to see what might have set the tale off. When John Tregonwell wrote his will in 1678, he gave thanks to God for what he called his miraculous preservation when he fell in the Abbey church. So grateful was he that he gave a collection of books of the Holy Fathers to be kept thereafter in the church vestry. The books are long gone, but to accompany them, John’s widow Jane erected a plaque, which is still there for all to read in the vestry: “as a thankfull acknowledgement of God’s wonderfull mercy in his [John’s] preservation when he fell from the top of this church.” So, there is some evidence for the seriousness of John’s fall and for his unexpected survival. However, that is all. And John clearly says he fell in the church, not outside; and he and Jane make no mention of him being a child.
Otherwise, there are no contemporary accounts of the fall. So where has all the detail come from, the five-year-old child, the criminally negligent nurse, the rose, the billowing skirts? It all appears much later, two hundred years later. It first comes together in 1881 in the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History Society, as part of a history of the Abbey Church, written by Rev. Richard Robinson, the then vicar of Milton Abbas, who ascribed it to village tradition. He may also have mentioned it to the editors of the 3rd edition of Hutchins History of Dorset, where it had been footnoted briefly ten years earlier in 1870. John Hutchins himself, who had been curate in Milton Abbas just fifty years after Tregonwell’s death, says nothing in his original history about any fall, miraculous or otherwise, although he gives a full description of Jane’s memorial tablet.
You can understand that Rev. Robinson, and any other villager or visitor to the church, would be puzzled by the tablet and might speculate about the actual circumstances of the fall. But how convincing is the scene he gives us? There are questions we might ask him. Why did the nurse take a small child into such a dangerous situation and then not supervise him? Who witnessed the event and why was it not recorded at the time? But these, and other questions, if they are pertinent to a more convincing account, do not address the main problem. According to the laws of physics and the principles of parachute construction, no child would survive such a fall. Clothing, even multiple petticoats, does not act like a parachute. It is neither light enough, nor airtight, nor of sufficient surface area to support even a small child. And the lowest height at which anyone has attempted a jump using an actual parachute, is 26 metres. Below that and you won’t escape uninjured.
John Tregonwell’s portrait
False, as it surely is, the story was quickly taken up. Mate and Riddle’s Bournemouth 1810-1910, published in 1910, which includes a history of the Tregonwell family, repeats Robinson word for word. And this “remarkable story” has been repeated without contradiction many times since. A black and white reproduction of a portrait in Edmondsham House in Dorset, said to be of the young John Tregonwell, now hangs in the Abbey vestry. The original is claimed to have been painted to mark Tregonwell’s survival, again with little evidence. True, the child’s right-hand rests on what might be a rose stem, but there is no sign of the daisies that are to have preoccupied him after the fall, or of the church itself. And, in his left hand, and tied securely to his waist, is a toddler’s toy which served as both a rattle and a teether for seventeenth century children, and which suggests the child in the portrait is probably younger than five. Above all, if the portrait had been painted in celebration of a miraculous survival, you might expect to see that written prominently on the painting. And it is not.
The making of the legend
Today, the story is told briefly in several places as if it were true: the Milton Abbas village guide, the illustrated guide to Milton Abbey church, in the Abbey church itself and in Edmondsham House. It is interesting to consider why it still has fascination for people. First, perhaps, paradoxically, because of its very unlikelihood. It still contains elements of the miraculous. It is what we would like to believe, though we would not be tempted to put it to the test. Secondly, the story has been repeated so often, without contradiction or questioning, that it must be true. We are not inclined to doubt the written word. And the third reason is that the story has become part of the identity of Milton Abbas and the Tregonwell family. It has become part of what makes the family, the village and the church distinctive. We are used, perhaps, to thinking of a legend in terms of the distant past: the Greeks or King Arthur, maybe. But a legend is just: “a story from the past that is believed by many people but cannot be proved to be true.” That surely fits the flying Tregonwell, even though his legend is barely two hundred years old, or perhaps somewhat older, if we believe Rev Robinson when he says he is merely reporting a village tradition.
Milton Abbas Local History Group, Dorset, UK 