The ‘Cedar Room’ at Ashley Hall, Cheshire, was said to be tenanted by the figure of a white lady, reminding us of similar so-called apparitions at Skipsea and Blenkinsopp Castles. At Burton Agnes Hall, the family seat of Sir Henry Somerville Boynton, there is a spirit of a lady which haunts the ancient mansion, known in the neighbourhood as ‘Awd Nance.’ The skull of this lady is preserved at the Hall, and so long as it is left quietly in its resting-place all goes well, but should any attempt be made to remove it, all kinds of unearthly noises are raised in the house, and last until it is restored.[272] Denton Hall has for many years past attracted interest from being inhabited by a spirit known by the names of ‘Old Barbery’ and ‘Silky,’ and Waddow Hall, Yorkshire, is haunted by a phantom called ‘Peg O’Nell.’ Bridge End House, Burnley, was said to have its ghost; Crook Hall, near Durham, has its ‘White Ladie;’ South Biddick Hall, its shadowy tenant, ‘Madam Lambton;’ and Netherby Hall, a ‘Rustling Lady’ who walks along a retired passage in that mansion, her dress rustling as she moves along.[273] There was the famous Willington Mill, alluded to in the previous chapter, which some years ago became notorious in the North of England, having been haunted, it is said, by a priest and a grey lady who amused themselves at their victims’ expense by all kinds of strange acts.[274] A correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries’ (4th S. x. 490) referring to the Willington ghost says: ‘The steam flour mill, with the house, was in the occupation then of Messrs. Proctor and Unthank; the house was separated from the mill by a space of a few feet, so that no tricks could be played from the mill. The partners alternately lived in the house. A relation of mine asked one of those gentlemen if there was any truth as to the current rumours. He remarked, “Well, we don’t like to speak of it; my partner certainly cannot live comfortably in the house, from some unexplained cause, but as to myself and family we are never disturbed.”’
Several parsonages have had their ghosts. Southey, in his ‘Life of Wesley,’ speaking of Epworth parsonage, which appears to have been haunted in the most strange manner, and alluding to the mysterious disturbances that happened in it, says: ‘An author who, in this age, relates such a story, and treats it as not utterly incredible and absurd, must expect to be ridiculed, but the testimony upon which it rests is far too strong to be set aside because of the strangeness of the relation.’ In the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ is recorded an account of an apparition that appeared at Souldern Rectory, Oxfordshire, to the Rev. Mr. Shaw, who had always ridiculed the idea of ghosts, announcing to him that his death would be very soon, and very sudden. Suffice it to say that shortly afterwards he was seized with an apoplectic fit while reading the service in church, and died almost immediately. This strange affair is noticed in the register of Brisly Church, Norfolk, under December 12, 1706: ‘I, Robert Withers, M.A., Vicar of Gately, do insert here a story which I had from undoubted hands, for I have all the moral certainty of the truth of it possible.’
The old parsonage at Market, or East, Lavington, near Devizes—now pulled down—was reputed to be haunted by a lady supposed to have been murdered, and, it has been said, a child came also to an untimely end in the house. Previous to 1818, a correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries’ (5 S. i. 273) says: ‘A witness states his father occupied the house, and writes “that in that year on Feast Day, being left alone in the house, I went up to my room. It was the one with marks of blood on the floor. I distinctly saw a white figure glide into the room. It went round by the washstand by the bed, and there disappeared.”’ It may be added that part of the road leading from Market Lavington to Easterton, which skirts the grounds of Fiddington House, used to be looked upon as haunted by a lady, who was known as the ‘Easterton Ghost.’ In 1869, a wall was built round the road-side of the pond; and, close to the spot where the lady was seen, two skeletons were disturbed—one of a woman, the other of a child. The bones were buried in the churchyard, and no ghost, it is said, has been seen since.
Occasionally, churches have been haunted. The famous phantom nun of Holy Trinity Church, Micklegate, York, has excited a good deal of interest—an account of which is given by Mr. Baring-Gould in his ‘Yorkshire Oddities.’ The story goes that during the suppression of religious houses before the Reformation, a party of soldiers came to sack the convent attached to the church. But having forced an entry they were confronted by the abbess, a lady of great courage and devotion, who declared that they should only pass it over her body, and that should they slay her and succeed in their errand of destruction, her spirit would haunt the place until the time came that their sacrilegious work was expiated by the rebuilding of the holy house. Many accounts have been published of this apparition, the following being from the ‘Ripon and Richmond Chronicle’ (May 6, 1876): ‘In the middle of the service,’ writes a correspondent, ‘my eyes, which had hardly once moved from the left or north side of the [east] window, were attracted by a bright light, formed like a female, robed and hooded, passing from north to south with a rapid gliding motion outside the church, apparently at some distance. There are four divisions in the window, all of stained glass, but at the edge of each runs a rim of plain transparent glass, about two inches wide, and adjoining the stone-work. Through this rim especially could be seen what looked like a form transparent, but yet thick (if such a term can be used) with light. The robe was long and trailed. About half an hour later it again passed from north to south, and, having remained about ten seconds only, returned with what I believe to have been the figure of a young child, and stopped at the last pane but one, and then vanished. I did not see the child again, but a few seconds afterwards the woman reappeared, and completed the passage behind the last pane very rapidly.’ It is said to appear very frequently on Trinity Sunday, and to bring two other figures on to the scene, another female, called the nurse, and the child. Likewise, on one of the windows of the Abbey Church, Whitby, was occasionally seen—
The very form of Hilda fair,
Hovering upon the sunny air.
According to a correspondent of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ a ghost appeared for several years, but very seldom, only in the church porch at Kilncote, Leicestershire. Folk-lore tells us that ghosts are occasionally seen in the church porch, and, in years gone, it was customary for young people to sit and watch here on St. Mark’s Eve, from 11 at night till 1 o’clock in the morning. In the third year, for the ceremony had to be gone through three times, it was supposed the ghosts of all those about to die in the course of the ensuing year would pass into the church. It is to this piece of superstition that James Montgomery refers in his ‘Vigil of St. Mark’:
‘’Tis now,’ replied the village belle,
‘St. Mark’s mysterious Eve;
And all that old traditions tell
I tremblingly believe.
‘How, when the midnight signal tolls,
Along the churchyard green
A mournful train of sentenced souls
In winding sheets are seen.
‘The ghosts of all whom death shall doom
Within the coming year,
In pale procession walk the gloom,
Amid the silence drear.’
A strange illustration of this superstition is found among the Hollis manuscripts in the Lansdowne collection. The writer, Gervase Hollis, of Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire, was a colonel in the service of Charles I., and he professes to have received the tale from Mr. Liveman Rampaine, minister of God’s word at Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire, who was household chaplain to Sir Thomas Munson of Burton, in Lincoln, at the time of the incident.[275]