WARRINGTON author Jackson Beck has just released his second book “Cabin in the Clouds” – a modern-day murder novel based in New Zealand.
He was inspired by St Oswald’s Church at Winwick and by a 19th-century scandal.
In the Legh chapel within the church, is an impressive alabaster memorial sculpture to Ellen Legh who died giving birth to her second child in 1831 when she was not yet 20 years old.
In 1826 at the age of 15, Ellen from Pott Shrigley was said to be the richest heiress in Cheshire. She was kidnapped from her boarding school in Liverpool by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his brother William, taken to Gretna Green and forcibly married to Edward. Eventually, justice caught up with the brothers and they were each sentenced to three years in prison.
Jackson researched the Wakefield brothers. Edward went on to be the mastermind behind the setting up of the New Zealand company and the organised settlement of New Zealand. He progressed to be a very prominent politician and member of parliament.
His younger brother William, now a colonel, had served as a soldier of fortune before joining the New Zealand company and becoming one of the earliest European settlers in Wellington.
On one of his searches for land his barque (The Tory) got into trouble and was holed in Kaipara harbour on the north-west coast of New Zealand. They had to jettison a substantial amount of their heavy valuables and cargo to stay afloat. It was these jettisoned items that became the core of the story of “Cabin in the Clouds – and that’s where the fiction begins.
The story grows into a modern-day case of multiple murders and a search for treasures. Cabin in the Clouds is available on Amazon as a paperback or in Kindle format.
