Devil's voice ordered servant boy to butcher three children

"Go back, thou hateful wretch, resume thy cursed knife,

I long to view more blood, spare not the young one's life."

AND so Andrew Mills turned. He'd already killed twice. Now, at the entreaty of the "hideous creature" that he met in the dark passage, he made his way back to the bedroom and killed, horrifically, for a third time.

If you venture forth in Ferryhill this New Year, it is said that you will hear the wild cries of this crazed axeman blowing on the wind.

If you approach the old windmill on the western edge of the town, you will see three children happily playing around it as they did in the hours before they were brutally slain.

And if you dare, on New Year's Day, run 13 times anti-clockwise round the tower of the windmill, the spectre of Andrew Mills himself will appear, and he will chase you with his blood-stained axe.

Or so it is said...

Because this was "the most horrid and barbarous murder that ever was heard in the North or elsewhere". It took place on January 25, 1683, at Brass Farm, which is now called High Hill House Farm as it stands on a windy ridge with thrilling views between Ferryhill and Kirk Merrington.

John and Margaret Brass were out on the night in question at a late Christmas party in Ferryhill (today, Christmas starts an eternity before December 25; in those days, it dragged on until Candlemas on February 2). They had some good news to celebrate: their eldest daughter Jane, 20, was about to get married.

She was, by all accounts, quite a catch. She had jet black hair and ruby lips, and was "made temptingly beautiful by an archness of manners which tantalised the young farmers who spent evenings at Hill House".

It was she who Andrew Mills killed first.

Mills was the servant boy, aged about 19. Perhaps he was besotted with her; perhaps he was, as most accounts say, mentally insane. When roused, "a dangerous light flashed from his usual dull eyes".

On that fatal Thursday night, he was "feeding the oxen" when he heard two voices in his head commanding him: "Kill all! Kill all!"

Some versions of the story say that the three Brass children, of which Jane was the eldest, were out playing near the windmill and that Mills, wielding an axe, chased them through the fields to the farmhouse. Other versions say that they were already tucked up in bed on that cold January night.

EITHER way, the terror took place in the farmhouse. Jane and her brother John - 17 and described as "cheeky and somewhat idle" - barricaded themselves in the bedroom of Elizabeth, the youngest, aged only ten.

But the wooden bedroom door proved no match for Mills' axe. It shook on its iron hinges and then splintered. Jane bravely locked her arm against the doorframe to prevent Mills from entering, but another crashing blow from the axe broke her bones and sent her spinning to the floor.

Mills burst in, and killed her.

Then he turned on John. They struggled until Mills "knock't ym in ye head" with the axe. John stumbled to the ground, his skull fractured. Mills cut his throat with a knife to finish him off.

Poor Elizabeth was sobbing under the bedclothes. She had - until now - had a close relationship with Mill. They "would often be seen playing with her dolls and toys or chasing ducks around the yard" - an indication that he was a little simple.

In her desperation, the ten-year-old had the presence of mind to plead with her would-be murderer. She offered him "bread, butter, and sugar, and some toys". Mills relented, spared her life, and left the room.

But in the passage outside he encountered "a hideous creature like a fierce wolf with red fiery eyes, its two legs were like those of a stag, its body resembled an eagle, and was supplied with two enormous wings".

It was this dreadful apparition - the Devil incarnate - which "with a most unChristian croak" uttered the rhyming couplet that sent Mills back into the bedroom to complete his terrible spree.

Then he fled, covered in blood.

Owls hooted and dogs yowled. Horses reared in horror.

Troopers passing from Darlington to Durham found Mills and dragged him to the house where Mr and Mrs Brass were celebrating the wedding that would never happen. He blurted out that two men had broken into the farmhouse and slaughtered the children. He heard them chanting: "Kill all! Kill all!"

But Margaret Brass, taking one look at his wild eyes and stained clothing, knew otherwise. "Villain," she said, "none but thou hast murther'd my children."

The troopers seized him and searched him, finding a bloody knife in his pocket. At the farmhouse, two bloody axes were discovered. Plus the three victims - "their throats being cut, their bodies greatly mangled, especially their heads and necks", as the London Pamphlet indelicately reported.

The following morning, they were buried in Kirk Merrington churchyard, a table tomb (or altar tomb), which is weathered but still legible, marking the spot.

The tomb was restored by subscription in 1789. It is said that Andrew Mills' father was so incensed by its wording - "who were murdered by Andrew Mills, for which he was executed and hung in chains" - that he chiselled out the word "executed" with his walking stick. But as he would have been at least 122 years old when the tomb was restored, this may not be true.

Mills was convicted of murder at Durham. "The half-witted creature gave no motive for his crimes beyond suggesting he had done all at the suggestion of the Devil," said contemporary reports.

For this diabolical crime, he was sentenced to be hanged alive.

On Wednesday, August 15, 1683, he was returned to Ferryhill. His limbs were bound and he was placed in a metal cage. The cage was then suspended from a wooden gibbet erected beside the Great North Road, about three-quarters of a mile north of Ferryhill - this would place him near the bottom of the bank before the Thinford junction with the scene of his crime on top of the windy ridge clearly visible from where he swung.

It was not a quick death. His howls of agony could be heard for miles around - so terrible were they that "the people of Ferry Hill and the adjacent hamlets actually deserted their dwellings till life had departed from the poor wretch".

To make his suffering even worse, a penny loaf was suspended on an iron pike in front of his face. It was designed to be despairingly out of reach - which made him howl louder - but if, by chance, he did manage to take a bite from it, the iron pike would spear through his mouth - which made him howl louder still.

"A beautiful tale connects his survival with the tenderness of a peasant girl beloved by Mills, who brought him milk every day, and fed him through the iron cage in which his tortured limbs were bound," writes historian William Longstaffe in 1854.

Despite his sweetheart's twice nightly attentions, Mills succumbed to the inevitable after several days of suffering. He "expired with a shriek that was heard from miles around".

His decomposing body probably remained in its chains for weeks, if not months, until it was cut down and burnt.

It was a remarkably painful death. It acted as a salutary warning to any who, tempted by the Devil, might feel inclined to kill, and it fulfilled the words inscribed on the Brass children's table tomb in Kirk Merrington churchyard:

Reader, remember, sleeping

We were slain;

And here we sleep till we must

Rise again.

Who so sheddeth man's blood, by man shall

His blood be shed.

Thou shalt do no murder.

THE gibbet remained for centuries. Charles Waterton (1782-1865), an eccentric explorer who created the world's first nature reserve in the grounds of his stately home near Wakefield, remembered the stob from when he attended a Catholic school at Tudhoe from 1792 to 1796.

He wrote in his memoirs: "Betwixt Tudhoe School and Ferry Hill, there stood an oaken post, very strong, and some nine feet high. This was its appearance in my day, but formerly it must have been much higher. It was known to all the country round by the name of Andrew Mills' Stob.

"We often went to see it, and one afternoon, an old woman came up, took her knife from her pocket, and then pared off a chip, which she carefully folded up in a bit of paper. She said it was good for curing the toothache."

When eventually the stob came down, Longstaffe reports that "it was cut to pieces for charms".

EVEN if you are tempted to rush out this New Year's Day and run 13 times anti-clockwise around the windmill just to see what happens, unfortunately you can't.

After decades of neglect - in the 1950s, it was derelict and haunted by rumours, so local farmers attached a rope to a tractor and tried to pull it down but were stopped by a passing councillor - it has been converted into a characterful home. The large extension, though, must prevent anyone from running round the tower and summoning up the spirit of Andrew Mills.

The Windmill - four bedroomed detached - is currently on the market for £380,000. The estate agent's website (Dowen.co.uk) says that it is "steeped in history dating back centuries".

There is no mention of a brutal murder, which is probably just as well because the windmill wasn't built until the early 1840s - 160 years after the foul deed.

It fell out of use in 1903 when struck by lightning and the story about the ghosts was probably made up to dissuade young children from playing inside the dangerous structure.

Of course, every other word on this page is indisputably true...