Tom, Dick & Harry Traditional Cache

This cache lies on a public footpath that crosses the land where once the Dunsdon brothers Tom, Dick and Harry, (yes they're supposed to be the original Tom, Dick and Harry) and the lesser known George, rode as highwaymen in the eighteenth century.

The brothers came from a respectable local family but went flamboyantly to the bad. They began their life of crime robbing farmers of their stock and their money as they went to market, and hid the stolen animals in the Wychwood Forest. From there they progressed to highway robbery, robbing the Oxford coach of £500 in one hold up on the turnpike road. They shod their horses backwards in order to confuse anyone who tried to capture them.

Dick was badly injured in an ambush in which one of his own brothers severed his arm to help him escape. He was never heard of again. In 1784, Tom and Harry rode to Capps Lodge Inn for the Whitsuntide Fair. They got into a fight after a night spent gambling and were captured after a gunfight in which the landlord of the inn was only saved because one of the bullets hit a silver penny in his pocket.  Condemned to death at the Gloucester Assizes, Tom and Harry were hanged and their bodies returned to Burford in a cart. They were clapped in irons and hung on the gibbet tree. This oak tree still stands north of Capps Lodge at Fulbrook Gap and it is said that the initials TD and HD can still be seen along with the date of their death.