Fictional Scrooge and his real churchyard grave

Tim PageBBC News, West Midlands

St Chad's Church in Shrewsbury is in its own right a fixture on the town's tourist trail.

But film buffs and literature fans have another reason to stop there: the grave of Ebenezer Scrooge. He may be fictional, his redemptive adventure may be fictional, but his resting place is quite real. Well, sort of.

Scrooge was not dead to begin with. Only for 40 years has the grave been delighting unsuspecting visitors who stumble across it.

That's because the engraved name did not appear until a 1984 movie adaption of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, starring George C Scott. As for the gravestone itself, that had been in the churchyard for hundreds of years, according to locals.

Shrewsbury's town crier, Martin Wood, was one of the many residents who had a role in the film. He said the stone was actually from an existing grave at St. Chad's, the writing on which had been obliterated by centuries of weathering.

"They had to go to the Home Office to get permission and the rest of it, but nobody knew [whose grave] it was," Mr Wood explained.

"If you look at the bottom of the grave nearest to the path, you can just make out a little bit of writing.

"It was [in] an ideal spot for what they wanted."

'Screamed the place down'

The grave from the past was the future once. It is seen in the film when Scrooge is confronted by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and wipes away snow to reveal his own name.

At 7ft 2in (2.2m), Mr Wood acted as a body double for that hooded spectre and also The Ghost of Christmas Present, who were played respectively by Michael Carter and Edward Woodward.

He said St Chad's seemed to have embraced its role, with the then Bishop of Shrewsbury and his wife dropping in on filming in the early hours of the morning.

"They were standing on the pathway, and of course I had all of the black stuff on, I was all dressed up," he said

"Both turned round to see who it was and they just saw this huge black thing standing there. She screamed the place down."

Churchwarden Sue Kelly said the site remained popular. "We get many visitors to our beautiful sacred church, which is wonderful, and are often asked for directions to the grave," she explained.

"I have on a number of occasions been asked if this is the real place where Scrooge’s bones lie. My response is usually ‘I’m not too sure’."

Nowadays, town crier Mr Wood leads tours of Shrewsbury, including the film's locations.

He explained how on one such tour, time was running short for a trip to the churchyard and Scrooge's grave, so he took the party of wide-eyed American visitors to a telecoms site marker - and persuaded them, he said, that it was Tiny Tim's resting place.

"I told them the stone was too small for the full inscription 'God Protect Others', so they'd had to shorten it to GPO," he said.

In reality GPO stands for General Post Office which laid the telecoms cables beneath. But saying so would not perhaps have been in the right... spirit.

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