HICKATHRIFT PRESS

How a Norfolk Superhero became the Inspiration for the Hickathrift Press

By David Phillips

Thomas Hickathrift – known to his friends as Tom – was West Norfolk’s very own superhero

Thomas Hickathrift was a legendary giant who roamed the wild, undrained marshland of West Norfolk, south of The Wash, nearly a thousand years ago. At the centre of his stomping ground was Marshland Smeeth – a great watery wilderness that flooded in winter but, in summer, offered superlative grazing for the villages that surrounded it. But it was also the refuge of some desperate outlaws and evildoers that caused fear among the villagers of West Walton, Walpole St Peter, Walpole St Andrew, Terrington St John, Tilney St Lawrence, Tilney All Saints, Islington, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Emneth and Walsoken. Luckily for them, Tom Hickathrift was a good-natured giant, always eager to right wrongs in those lawless times.

Marshland Smeeth was long drained by the time I was born, in Tilney St Lawrence, in the second half of the 20th century, but as youngsters, we knew about our local superhero. After all, he’d slayed a cruel ogre and was reputedly buried in Tilney All Saints churchyard, under a huge stone slab. In the 1970s and ’80s, as I fished for big pike in the remote fen drains out in the middle of the Smeeth, my imagination often wandered back a few centuries. Had Tom Hickathrift himself once fished in the great meres and pools that once dotted this desolate landscape? I’ll never know, but what I can say for sure is that he was the inspiration for this collection of books, which is why I borrowed his name for the Hickathrift Press. I hope you enjoy this website and, in the meantime, here’s the story of Thomas Hickathrift …

 

The Legendary Tale of Thomas Hickathrift: Norfolk’s Giant Hero

 

If you wander the windswept fen-edge of West Norfolk, where reedbeds whisper and wide skies lean over the Marshland Smeeth, you’ll still hear the name Thomas Hickathrift. He’s the giant and champion of local legend — part protector, part prankster, and, to many, a very real figure whose grave you can visit today. Hickathrift’s story — shaped in chapbooks, parish lore and centuries of retelling — blends monster-fighting exploits with place-based traditions that anchor him firmly to Tilney, Terrington, Wisbech and the surrounding Marshland south of The Wash.

In the oldest printed versions, Hickathrift grows up in the marsh country and soon proves as strong as twenty men. He’s sometimes depicted as lazy at first, until trouble stirs him to action. Joseph Jacobs’s 1890s retelling in More English Fairy Tales presents Tom as prodigiously tall, gluttonous, and unstoppable once roused, summarising feats such as carrying a tree “as if it weighed nothing” and kicking a football out of sight.

Chapbooks — the cheap, popular pamphlets that spread folktales — made Hickathrift a household name by the 17th century. The Villon Society’s 1885 edition, The History of Thomas Hickathrift, reprints the earliest surviving texts and an introduction by folklorist G. L. Gomme, who links parts of the story to local memorials in Tilney and to a medieval figure named Hickifric/Hickifrick remembered for resisting a tyrannical lord.

 

From Labourer to Local Champion

 

Hickathrift’s signature exploit is his showdown with a giant (or ogre) who blocks the road across the Smeeth and terrorises travellers. Lacking armour, Tom arms himself with a cart axle as a club and a cartwheel as a shield — farmyard kit reborn as hero’s gear. He meets the ogre head-on and wins, clearing the way for trade and travel, and earning the devotion of his neighbours. That cartwheel-and-axle image isn’t just literary: Gomme notes antiquarian claims that a stone tomb in Tilney once displayed an axle-tree and wheel motif, tying the printed tale back to a real graveyard symbol.

After the ogre falls, Tom keeps busy — thumping robbers, wrestling beasts and righting rural wrongs. In some versions, his makeshift weapon snaps mid-fight and he grabs a “lusty, raw-boned miller” to use as an improvised cudgel. Other variants promote him from common labourer to knight or even governor — proof of how freely popular tradition embroidered his life. What’s consistent is his good-natured strength: he’s the sort of hero who can hoist church bells, carry beer barrels two at a time, and laugh while he does it. That cheerful tone made him the people’s champion as much as their protector.

 

You Can Visit his Grave

 

Unlike many folk heroes, Hickathrift’s reputed grave is marked for visitors. In the churchyard at Tilney All Saints, there lies a long, narrow stone slab, weathered and low to the ground near the east end of the church. Local guides and antiquarian accounts have associated this slab with Tom since at least the 17th century, and modern writers still note it as “Tom Hickathrift’s grave.” 

One striking detail of the tradition says Hickathrift himself chose the spot: he hurled a stone the size of a football from about half a mile away to mark where he wished to be buried. Folklorists also point out that crosses or cross-inscribed slabs once lay in the yard and that one Tilney stone showed a circle-and-cross design — perhaps the remnant of a medieval grave cover that legend later claimed for Hickathrift. The persistently local nature of these claims, tied to specific stones in a specific churchyard, helps explain why Tom’s name never quite fades.

A short way west at Terrington St John, you’ll find another thread of the legend: stone pillars in the churchyard traditionally called “Hickathrift’s candlesticks.” Antiquarian notes and local historians describe a cross-shaft or pillar by the north door that picked up the name, and in older accounts, there may have been more than one such “candlestick.” The nickname almost certainly grew from the look of a truncated cross-shaft, but the association with Tom is old and persistent in local legend.

 

More Hickathrift Haunts

 

Hickathrift’s name and story still ripple outward through the Marshland:

 

• • Walpole St Peter: a depression in the churchyard ground is said to be where a cannonball landed after Tom threw it to frighten off the devil—one of several legends that recast him as a true giant. There is also a stone figure carved in the wall of the church that is supposed to be Hickathrift. 

• • Place-names such as Hickathrift Farm, Hickathrift House and Hickathrift Corner dot the map, while local memory kept the warning, “Old Tom Hickathrift’ll get you,” to hush naughty children — a hallmark of a folk hero woven into everyday life. 

• • At West Walton, the church tower is separate from the rest of the building – a state of affairs attributed to a strongman prank by the young Tom Hickathrift.

• • Evidence of the Hickathrift legend’s cultural spread beyond the fens themselves comes in Essex. Saffron Walden’s Old Sun Inn’s historic pargeting (ornamental plasterwork) famously depicts Tom’s battle with the Wisbech giant. 

 

Why the Hickathrift Legend Endures

 

Part of the appeal is simple: it’s fun to picture a cheerful colossus striding the marshes with a cartwheel for a shield. But Hickathrift’s staying power is also about place. His markers are things you can still point to: the stone slab at Tilney All Saints; the “candlesticks” at Terrington St John; a patch of ground at Walpole; the place names. When a story fuses with geography — when a tale tells you where to stand, and what to touch — it tends to last.

There’s also the tone. Hickathrift is never just the iron-jawed warrior; he’s also the good-humoured neighbour, wielding strength for ordinary folk and occasionally for a practical joke. That balance of bigness and warmth makes him feel local, even familiar.

The Smeeth is quieter now, but Tom’s shadow still strides across it.

 

Make a Pilgrimage Trail

 

Fancy making your own Hickathrift pilgrimage trail? Here are three stops where you can connect with our hero:

1. Tilney All Saints Churchyard – Seek the long stone slab associated with Tom’s grave near the east end of the church. (Be mindful of graves and church guidelines.)
2. Terrington St John Churchyard – Look for the pillar/cross-shaft by the north door that locals have nicknamed “Hickathrift’s candlestick.”
3. Walpole St Peter – Ask locally about the ground depression linked to Tom’s “cannonball” throw. 
   
   

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Some Sources & Further Reading

 

• • Earliest chapbooks & introduction: The History of Thomas Hickathrift (Villon Society, 1885), ed. G. L. Gomme; Project Gutenberg edition. Project Gutenberg
    
    

• • Standard summary and place-links: “Tom Hickathrift” (encyclopedic overview with references and local traditions). Wikipedia
    
    

• • Thrown-stone burial tradition: E. M. Porter, “Folk Life and Traditions of the Fens” (notes the motif of Tom hurling a stone to mark his grave at Tilney). JSTOR
    
    

• • Tilney All Saints grave slab (images & notes): field photography and local write-ups.
    
    

• • “Hickathrift’s candlesticks,” Terrington St John: Hidden East Anglia survey of crosses/pillars and local naming traditions.