Gatcombe Lodge

Tumuli and Buried Treasure. - On the opposite side of the road to the Longstone, in what was also once part of the Common field, is Gatcombe Tump, a long barrow, of which the following story is told. I got it from a middle-aged woman who keeps a small shop; her mother, from whom she heard it, knew the heroine of the story.

"There was an old woman in Minchinhampton who used to charm ailments; she was called Molly Dreamer, because her dreams came true. She dreamed she would find a pot of gold in Gatcombe Tump and she and her husband dug there many times. Once she actually had her hand on the pot, and was saying,- "Come up! Labour in vain!" when a spirit rose up and frightened her. At another time a spirit appeared to her husband there, and asked him to name five parish churches, [apparently as a condition of getting the gold], but he could remember only four."

One old inhabitant, who lived as a child at a farm quite near, lays the scene of Molly's search at the Longstone itself, and adds that, just as she was lifting a stone that hid the treasure, there came a flash of lightning on to it, and Molly was never the same again. Some say, however, that she did find the gold..