Media circus around Nicola Bulley case moves on but pain remains in local church

For 23 days, the quiet Lancashire village of St Michael’s on Wyre was at the centre of a search for missing woman Nicola Bulley and the gaudy caravan of media frenzy trailing along behind it. But for almost 1,400 years, the historic local church has been at the centre of St Michael’s on Wyre.

As in Ireland, churches in rural England remain the fulcrum of many local villages. For many, the presence of a church is precisely what makes them a village: some settlements, such as St Michael’s, are so small that it is tempting to call them hamlets, but a hamlet by definition in England does not have a church.

The now Anglican church at St Michael’s on Wyre, the backdrop for so many fevered news reports recently, predates the foundation of the Church of England by 900 years. Local tradition says the Archbishop of York built a church on this site around the year 640 beside a safe crossing point of the river Wyre. It is the same spot where Nicola Bulley turned right to walk the riverbank at 8.40am on Friday, January 27th, the morning she disappeared into the Wyre’s dark waters.

[ Body found in Lancashire river is missing woman Nicola Bulley, UK police confirm ]

Locals in the village proudly assert that their church is even referenced in William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book of 1086, the medieval survey of England and Wales ordered by the king to update the list of taxpayers. The earliest structures on the site have long since crumbled away, but parts of the existing building are said to date back to the 13th and 14th centuries. On one wall, near its pretty tower, a small section that was once an arched lancet window is filled in. It was a leper window: people ravaged by disease would go to it to receive communion and observe the religious services within.

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Today, St Michael’s has the look of a village where not much ever happens, but tragically for locals that isn’t really true. Thirty-nine years before the tragedy of Nicola Bulley’s disappearance consumed the village and an entire nation, a group of more than 40 locals were invited one evening by the regional water authority to view a new pumping station. It was part of works constructed to stop flooding on the Wyre.

Unknown to those present, many had been invited to their deaths. Methane gas from coal deposits underground had seeped into one of the pipes. When the water valve was switched on for the demonstration to villagers, the pressure also forced the gas through and the whole structure exploded. The Abbeystead disaster killed 16 people.

The church, of course, is where St Michael’s on Wyre commemorates the dead. A permanent memorial marking the Abbeystead incident is tucked away in one corner of the building, listing the names of all who died on that summer evening, May 23rd, 1984. A local man brought me into the church to see the victims’ plaque during my recent visit, when the search for Nicola Bulley was at its height. He pointed to two names. “A mother and son,” he whispered. Pauline Eckersley and 11-year-old Mark.

[ Why are armchair detectives and TikTok sleuths obsessed with the case of Nicola Bulley? ]

Now, St Michael’s must deal with a new tragedy of national interest. Near the memorial plaque when I visited, a church candle flickered light onto a photograph of the beautiful face of the then-missing Nicola Bulley. Her body was found on Sunday after more than three weeks of agony for her partner, Paul Ansell, and their two young daughters. They are of similar ages to my own two girls. The missing woman was the same age as my wife, who also vaguely physically resembles her. Many people will have their own personal reasons for why the case of this one woman resonated so much.

Why are armchair detectives and TikTok sleuths obsessed with the case of Nicola Bulley?

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The intensity of fascination with the case for Britain’s remorseless mainstream media is not hard to discern. Each year about 170,000 people go missing in the UK, yet most do not receive anything approaching the same attention. But she was photogenic, middle class and, for a while, there was a vague suspicion that foul play might have been a factor. Class shouldn’t matter, but invariably in media coverage in Britain and elsewhere, it does in practice. There were also little details to which ordinary people could relate, such as the fact she was on a Teams call when she went missing.

Her family and friends also ran a savvy communications campaign to keep the public interested in finding her. All these factors, combined with overwhelming social media hype, made it an attractive story for national media. With cases such as this there is a doom loop between new and old media, an endlessly spooling appetite to engage with a genuine mystery.

[ Nicola Bulley search: Real detectives vie with amateur sleuths in Lancashire village ]

The vacuum of knowledge during the search was filled with speculation from investigative experts who cast doubt in the national media on the police theory that she was in the river. It turns out most of the experts, including those who “guaranteed” Nicola Bulley wasn’t in the water, were completely wrong and confused the public. That fact is being conveniently brushed over this week in much of the coverage of the discovery of her body, a mile downstream. Maybe there is embarrassment in the national media that aired the incorrect theories, while lambasting online amateur sleuths.

And so the media caravan that swamped the village will soon move on, leaving St Michael’s on Wyre and her grieving family to pick up the pieces. Most other people will soon forget the case. The enduring constant of the village – its centuries-old little church where Nicola Bulley celebrated Christmas – is where locals will remember her this weekend.