The Broomsquire: A Dramatisation of Sabine Baring-Gould’s Celebrated Novel

In September 1786, a lone sailor was murdered on Hindhead Common by three men. This much is common knowledge. But was the sailor alone? In his book The Broom-Squire, the Victorian author Sabine Baring-Gould imagines that the sailor was carrying a baby daughter, and that she had survived the ambush. From this point, he develops a story of the orphan girl found in the Devil’s Punch Bowl by one of the broomsquires who lived there at the time. Eighteen years later, the finder and the foundling marry. But the circumstances and results of this union lead to a clash of wills - and more.