Bleeding Heart Yard: The Devil's Dance Floor

Bleeding Heart Yard is a historic cobbled courtyard in Holborn, London, famous for a gruesome devil legend that Charles Dickens later featured in his 1857 novel Little Dorrit. Popular folklore claims Lady Elizabeth Hatton was murdered in the courtyard by the Devil in 1626, but carpenter Abraham Arlidge actually built the yard in the 1680s on a former dung heap.

London Β· from the walk β€œLondon Through the Eyes of a Black Cab Driver” Β· audio ~4 min Β· Generated

Bleeding Heart Yard, London EC1N 8SJ

Where does the name of Bleeding Heart Yard in London come from?

Right. Now, if you're driving a cab through Holborn late at night... and a fare asks you to drop them at Bleeding Heart Yard... you'd be forgiven for checking the mirror twice.......... This little cobbled courtyard, tucked just off Greville Street behind Hatton Garden, is one of London's most quietly sinister addresses. It's a historic cobbled courtyard off Greville Street in the Hatton Garden area of Holborn. Looks innocent enough in the daytime β€” old warehouse walls, a French bistro, a few office workers having lunch. But the name? That's where it gets dark.......... Now, every cabbie worth his licence knows the legend. The scene is a grand ball at Hatton House, January the twenty-sixth, sixteen twenty-six. Lady Hatton β€” young, beautiful, very wealthy β€” is the star of the evening. Partway through the festivities, the ballroom doors swing open, and in walks a finely dressed man... slightly hunched of shoulder, with a clawed right hand. Some say it was the Spanish Ambassador. Others say it was someone far worse.......... He took Lady Hatton by the hand, danced her once around the room, and the pair waltzed straight out through the doors into the garden. The guests gossiped all night, waiting for the couple to return... but they never did.......... The next morning... her body was found in the cobblestone courtyard, torn limb from limb, with her heart still pumping blood onto the cobblestones.......... Now here's the thing most people Don'T know. Historical evidence thoroughly debunks the legend. The real Lady Elizabeth Hatton died of natural causes on the third of January, sixteen forty-six, at the age of about sixty-eight, at her estate in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. Not exactly ripped apart by the Devil, was she? And here's the really awkward bit β€” the yard itself didn't even Exist when the murder was supposed to have taken place. A carpenter named Abraham Arlidge built the yard in the early sixteen eighties β€” on what had been the Bishop of Ely's Dung Heap. That's right. The Devil's dance floor... was a pile of pig muck.......... So where does the name actually come from? Most scholars believe it was an old inn sign showing the heart of the Virgin Mary pierced by five swords β€” a common Catholic image before the Reformation. Not nearly as exciting, is it?......... But the legend stuck. The tale gained a wide audience when it appeared in eighteen thirty-seven as one of The Ingoldsby Legends, ghost stories written by Richard Harris Barham. And then Charles Dickens sealed the deal. Bleeding Heart Yard features in his eighteen fifty-seven novel Little Dorrit as the home of the Plornish family. Dickens even played both sides β€” he wrote that the more practical inmates of the yard believed in the tradition of a murder, while the gentler inhabitants preferred the legend of a young lady imprisoned by a cruel father, who could be heard murmuring "Bleeding Heart, Bleeding Heart, bleeding away" until she died.......... And just around the corner from here, down Greville Street? That links Bleeding Heart Yard to Saffron Hill β€” which Dickens used as the home of Fagin in Oliver Twist. Two of London's darkest fictional addresses, practically neighbours.......... So next time you're here after dark... listen carefully. You might just hear the cobblestones... beating.

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