G is for... Green Children of Woolpit

This strange tale takes place sometime between the years 1135 and 1154, in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, UK.

It is said that during one harvest the villagers of Woolpit came across two children who appeared to be lost.
The children had green skin, wore strange clothing and only spoke in an unknown language.

The mystery children were taken back to one of the villagers houses where they refused all food except raw broad beans, which they gobbled down quite happily.

The children stayed in the village where they slowly started to eat a more normal diet and gradually lost their strange, green colour.

Once they had learned to speak English, they explained that they had come from a land where the sun never shone and the light was always like twilight. It is also said that everything was green in their homeland and that they said it was a place called St. Martin's Land.

The children couldn't quite explain their arrival in Woolpit, as they didn't fully understand it themselves. They were apparently herding their father's cows which they followed into a cave, where they became lost. They followed the sound of the cows bells and eventually emerged right where they had been found by the villagers.

The two children were eventually baptised, however, the boy became very sick and died soon after.

The girl went on to be employed for many years as a maid in a local house, but was often described as being '"wanton" and "impudent". 
It is thought that she eventually married a man from Kings Lynn, which was 40 miles away from Woolpit and had taken the name of 'Agnes'.

The village sign for Woolpit,dating from 1977, still stands today and depicts the two green children.