The Curious Case of Cold Tom

In the later part of the 14th century, in about 1360 or so, there lived a landowner called Waywick, in England in the area currently known as Cheddar who came into possession a singular sort of servant.

Of course, servants of this time were of a different sort of importance than servants as we know them today, but this servant was especially peculiar, mainly for the reason that Waywick did not have any servants aside for the one that mysteriously appeared in his workshop one afternoon, long after tea.

Waywick’s eldest daughter was the first to notice the presence of the new man, and first having thought him a customer (though, in all honesty, a queer sort of customer he would make, and an even queerer servant as she would soon discover), and informed him that Waywick had departed ahead of his family for Mass.

Cold Tom, as he would ask to be called, looked up from where he was sitting at Waywick’s workbench and told the girl that he was Waywick’s servant, and would be living with them for whatever period as Waywick say fit.

And thus Cold Tom came to live with the Waywicks. Cold Tom ended up being a curious breed of servant, something of a combination of butler, footman, coachman, and general man-of-business. Mr. Waywick consulted Tom for a great many things, much more, his family thought, than he should have ought to. But then, Tom always had a curious sort of pull around him, not least of because of his rather strange appearance. Tom was rather tall, and excessively thin, and his too-large head was swamped with a great mass of downy blond hair. His face was half over with a strawberry mark he claimed he’d had since birth, and contrasted wildly with his eyes, which twinkled a blue-green, and stood out in the night, like pinpricks of St. Elmo’s fire.

An Impasse at Waywickshire

In the area of Waywickshire, in the late 1780s, a hotel was built near the village of Wight. Wight, having never been particularly large or prosperous, being situated out in the very middle of the moors, and only seemed to be designed for farmers and workmen to live in, welcomed this new source of revenue.

The hotel, at first, was only host to the tired few rich enough passing through to afford the Wight Inn's bed and board, and was known generally only in this exclusive group. However, with the advent of the railways extending throughout the depth and breadth of England in the 1820s, the Wight Inn became the Wight Station Inn, and significantly better staffed thereafter; people from all over Britain, unknowing of the small area Wight had to offer, was obliged to take refuge in the Wight Station Inn.