Brinklow is dominated, quite literally, by one of the largest surviving motte-and-bailey castle mounds anywhere in the country, a genuine Norman stronghold whose earthworks still tower over the village today, centuries after the wooden fortifications that would once have crowned it have entirely disappeared. It was near this mound, on Brinklow Hill, that a witness in 2019 reported an unusually active and specific sighting: a man in old-fashioned dress, practising archery, drawing and loosing what appeared to be an unseen bow in a manner the witness described as consistent with genuine historical technique.
What makes this sighting stand out from many of the more passive, simply-glimpsed figures recorded elsewhere in this collection is its ending. The archer did not simply fade from view or vanish without reaction; according to the account, he appeared to notice the observer watching him, and it was only at that moment of apparent mutual awareness that he vanished, as though caught in the act of being seen rather than performing for an audience he expected.
The genuinely medieval military history of the site, a real Norman stronghold straddling the Warwickshire-Leicestershire border, gives this comparatively recent sighting more obvious historical context than most of the county's roadside apparitions manage, even though it remains, honestly, a single account from a single witness in a single year, with no earlier or later sightings recorded to corroborate it.
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