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locals, was regularly away from the village pursuing further affairs in Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich and sometimes as far as London. Ultimately she was to find another eligible and willing suitor – her last – much closer to home.
    There were no witnesses to the first meeting between Maria Marten and William Corder early in 1826 but by the summer of the same year the two clearly were lovers. Much of their early affair was carried out in secret as for their clandestine meetings they chose the one place in the whole of Polstead that villagers were unlikely to visit, or if they did happen to pass by, were certain not to linger near for long. The Red Barn was an old agricultural building with a sinister and possibly haunted reputation located on the Corder estate around half a mile south-east of the village centre and within easy reach of both Street Farm and Maria Marten’s cottage. An old Suffolk superstition well known in the area at the time told of the uncanny ability of the evening sunlight to act as a warning against evil by picking out buildings, woods and similar places that held bad luck in a characteristic red glow. One such site noted by the village locals to be afflicted by this particular portent was the Corder barn and as such it was normally given a wide berth by travellers passing along the road between Polstead and Withermarsh Green, where it could be seen silhouetted and eerily illuminated on the hillside. It would seem that the building’s ominous title derives mainly from this association, although the roof, despite being mainly of thatch, was also partly covered with red clay tiles.
    As their relationship continued, the couple became bolder and less inhibited about being seen together in public, with the result that Corder became a regular visitor to the Marten cottage. With his position in the family business much improved due to the demise of his father, William was in Maria’s eyes an eligible catch, not quite as high on the social scale as some of her previous conquests, but worth pursuing due to the future certainty of an inheritance from the Corder farm. For William, the young village girl, despite her penchant for promiscuity, was a far cry from the scheming and tempestuous Hannah Fandango, with the result that for much of their early time together there was genuine affection between the couple. This, however, was to change as fate soon began dealing both Maria and William heavy and ultimately deadly blows.
    The first of these was in the late autumn of 1826 when, with alarming predictability, Maria announced to her lover that she was carrying his child. Corder’s initial reaction was to conceal the pregnancy from both his own family and Maria’s, but as the weeks passed this proved impossible and he was forced to confess to Thomas and Ann Marten that he was the father of Maria’s unborn child. In an attempt to mitigate matters, William insisted he would marry Maria at the most opportune moment, more specifically when his financial situation improved, and made the suggestion, to which all agreed, that to hide the birth from the rest of the Corder family and the village as a whole it would be prudent for Maria to go into lodgings until after the baby was born. However, as Corder was making arrangements for this to take place he suffered a personal tragedy. On the morning of 23 February 1827, his younger brother Thomas was killed within sight of Street Farm when hurrying to catch up with a friend, he had attempted to take a shortcut across a frozen pond and died after falling through the ice. His death quickly left William struggling to run the family business almost single-handed.
    On 19 March, Maria left for the market town of Sudbury twelve miles away and it was there, in a small house in Plough Lane, that she gave birth to a baby boy in the second week of April; later the same month she and her son returned to Polstead where, both in poor health, they were looked after discretely by Ann Marten.