Lush's Bush stood in a small triangle of scrub and thorns where a lane from Starston joins the main road between Redenhall and Harleston. The road forks as it meets it and both branches dip into the valley of a small stream. The willow was cut down at the end of the 19th century, but the Redenhall churchwarden's accounts for 1668 already record seven shillings and sixpence spent on planks and work about Lush's bush and cutting it.
The local story said the tree had grown from the wooden stake driven through the heart of Lush, a murderer and suicide who haunted the place. Suicides were not allowed churchyard burial for centuries, and crossroads burials with a stake were the older custom. More than one suicide was buried here, and the last was recorded in the Norfolk Chronicle of 17 April 1813.
The antiquary Charles Candler, writing in 1896, reported an old man who had watched that burial as a boy. He said the parish constable set the stake in place in the gloom of evening while another man drove it home with a heavy beetle, and Mr Oldershaw sat his horse nearby in silent charge. The woman was Mary Turrell, who had poisoned herself after being accused of killing her newborn daughter, whose body was found in a pond at Harleston. The inquest returned a verdict of felo de se, and she was buried that evening on the high road in front of a large crowd.
The haunting by Lush is traditional and thinly described, but the tree, the 1668 entry and the 1813 burial are documented. This is a story where the real event is grimmer than the ghost, and it is told here with that in mind.
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