On Loca­tion: The church ruins from The Blood on Satan’s Claw

“Speak now, come now, rise now from the for­est, from the fur­rows, from the fields and live!” So goes the mantra of the cult in Piers Haggard’s 1971 hor­ror, The Blood on Satan’s Claw. It’s an essen­tial under­pin­ning for the whole film’s aes­thet­ic as its rur­al set­ting is piv­otal to its nar­ra­tive; both in terms of its iso­la­tion and its sense of evil unearthed from the sick­ly soil. Whether through beau­ti­ful forests in spring or mud­dy fields in win­ter, Haggard’s film is deeply ground­ed in the British land­scape, tap­ping into the his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al trau­mas interred within.

The Blood on Satan’s Claw fol­lows the unfold­ing chaos after a seg­ment of the Dev­il is unearthed in a field by plough­man Ralph Gow­er (Bar­ry Andrews). The small coun­try com­mu­ni­ty become afflict­ed with occult mad­ness as The Dev­il slow­ly begins to grow parts of his skin on the youth of the vil­lage. Led by Angel Blake (Lin­da Hay­den), a small cult of young fol­low­ers form, becom­ing vio­lent and pos­sessed. The fate of the vil­lage lies in the hands of The Judge (Patrick Wymark) who must decide what ter­ri­ble actions are required to stop the upris­ing. But how far will he go in destroy­ing the evil that has been allowed to fester?

At the heart of the film’s var­i­ous loca­tions is the ruin of a church, an appro­pri­ate image for a film about the rein­car­na­tion of the Dev­il. Though the fiendish crea­ture is ini­tial­ly dug up from the ground, it is this ruin which is real­ly at the heart of the film’s hor­ror and cer­tain­ly where some of its most dis­turb­ing scenes take place. The Dev­il lurks in the ruins of fail­ing faith and his young fol­low­ers equal­ly reside there, remind­ing in the most unusu­al way of the sim­i­lar tac­tics of real life cults from the film’s era, espe­cial­ly of Charles Manson’s ​“Fam­i­ly” and their iso­lat­ed Bark­er Ranch. Hag­gard makes this seem­ing­ly pic­turesque locale and the sur­round­ing forests feel malev­o­lent, even when the film’s weath­er warms up and the buds begin to flower.

Per­haps most star­tling is the ruin’s role in the film’s cen­tral, dis­turb­ing scene. Cathy (Wendy Pad­bury) – a young ser­vant girl from the vil­lage – is tak­en to the ruin in a bizarre and cru­el rit­u­al in order to have her por­tion of Devil’s skin cut off. The scene begins with being dragged through the for­est by rope, the group trick­ing her into play­ing a ter­ri­ble game.

She is led to the ruin where the Devil’s fol­low­ers begin the rit­u­al, involv­ing the cer­e­mo­ni­al bran­dish­ing of flow­ers before Cathy is vio­lent­ly raped and even­tu­al­ly killed. Her screams echo through the hills where Ralph is try­ing des­per­ate­ly to find her. The ruin is marked by such vio­lence and it is telling­ly the final meet­ing place of the cult and the fire-bran­dish­ing vil­lagers led by the sword wield­ing judge lat­er in the film.

The ruin used is the St. James’ Old Church in Bix Bot­tom, a small smat­ter­ing of hous­es and farms hud­dled in the steep hills of the Chilterns between Oxford and Read­ing. The Nor­man church was left to decay in the mid 1800s after a new parish was con­struct­ed much clos­er to the main bulk of the area’s hous­es, leav­ing an atmos­pher­ic and incred­i­bly old church to slow­ly return to the ground. The walls fell into severe dis­re­pair and the build­ing has not long had an array of scaf­fold­ing removed for work to save the out­er archi­tec­ture from total col­lapse. Thanks to this work though, we still have the ruin though vis­it­ing it showed much to have changed since Haggard’s film.

Find­ing Bix Bot­tom required a long and tir­ing jour­ney. Catch­ing a train out of Lon­don to Hen­ley-On-Thames, I walked the four or so miles from the town through to the coun­try­side in search of the loca­tion. Soon the roads emp­tied, walls became thick for­est and the land became steep hill­sides farmed just as in the film. Even­tu­al­ly the ruin of St James’ Old Church came into view, tucked into a small clump of trees at the side of a coun­try road.

Unlike when seen in Haggard’s film, the whole site is tidy. The for­est at the back has gone, as has the wealth of under­growth which pro­vid­ed much of the location’s flavour. Yet the place is still unde­ni­ably eerie. Even with the sun bright and the breeze warm, there was a sense of tres­pass and the con­stant feel­ing of being watched. The only com­pa­ny on the day were the crows and the red kites bick­er­ing in the air.

Wait­ing for the pho­tographs to devel­op, I wan­dered fur­ther along the lane to Pages Farm where the main house and sev­er­al of the fields from the film are shot too. An angry dog greet­ed me as a cou­ple sat loud­ly in the gar­den dis­cussing mort­gages. Soon, I wan­dered back to the ruin for a final taste of its strange atmos­phere. The Polaroids had caught its unusu­al archi­tec­ture and its per­ma­nent views of branch and field. But, in spite of its pic­turesque qual­i­ties, I could not help but won­der what for­got­ten hor­rors had lurked around these parts in years gone by, wait­ing to be unearthed once more.

With thanks to Polaroid Orig­i­nals.