Few people are mythologised in their own lifetime, but Doug Moller, the self-styled King and Lord of the Roaches, who has died aged 89, became so among the townsfolk of Leek and the neighbouring districts.
Beneath a wooded ridge of millstone grit called the Roaches in the Staffordshire moorlands is a tiny and primitive castellated dwelling, Rock Hall, built in 1862 as the gamekeeper’s cottage on Swythamley estate. Doug lived there with his wife, Anne, in frugal simplicity for more than a decade.
