Hereford has a darker side to its history, filled with strange – and sometimes unlikely – true tales. Was King Arthur a Hereford man? Why was its patron saint murdered by his would-be father-in-law? Why did another of its saints become the only saint to die excommunicated? Was a Bishop of Hereford involved in the murder of a king by the most frightful method imaginable? Did bones from the Cathedral graveyard really cure every disease known to man? Was a ghost really responsible for the destruction of the cathedral’s west front? Was the Hay Poisoner really guilty? Was a Hereford clerk the rightful King of England? These, and many other strange stories, will be revealed in this book...

Herefordshire Murders brings together twenty-eight murderous tales, some which were little known outside the county and others which made national headlines. Herefordshire was home to one of Britain's most infamous murderers, Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong, who, in 1921, poisoned his wife and attempted to poison a fellow solicitor in Hay-on-Wye. However, the county has also experienced many lesser known murders. They include the case of two-year-old Walter Frederick Steers, brutally killed in Little Hereford in 1891; eighty-seven-year-old Phillip Ballard, who died at the hands of two would-be burglars in Tupsley in 1887; Jane Haywood, murdered by her husband near Leominster in 1903; and the shooting of two sisters at Burghill Court, near Hereford, by their butler in 1926. Nicola Sly's carefully researched and enthralling text will appeal to everyone interested in the shady side of Herefordshire's history.