Everyone knows the nursery rhyme. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.

But in the Somerset village of Kilmersdon, an old local legend gives those familiar words a much darker meaning.

Here, Jack and Jill are remembered not as children, but as young lovers. The story tells of a secret pregnancy, a fatal falling stone, a child left behind and a local surname supposedly born from the tragedy.

And Kilmersdon has something else.

A real Jack and Jill Hill — and at the top of it, a genuine medieval well.

So could one of Britain's best-known nursery rhymes preserve the memory of a real Somerset tragedy?

In this episode of Ghost Tales by the Fireside: Dark Folklore, we follow the old path through Kilmersdon and discover where history ends and one of Somerset's strangest legends begins.

Website: www.ghosttales.co.uk

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