Bolsover is one of the most widely reported haunted sites in the care of English Heritage. Members of staff and visitors often report being pushed, having doors slammed on them and finding objects inexplicably moved. Night security guards have been alarmed by unexplained lights and movement in the empty property, and two workmen were terrified when they saw a woman disappear through a wall. A little boy has been seen holding the hands of women or children as they walk about the site, his living companions unaware that he is at their side.
Hardwick Old Hall, Derbyshire
Hardwick Old Hall was built between 1587 and 1596 by Bess of Hardwick, who was among the richest and best-connected women of the Elizabethan age. The design was for the time radically modern, drawing on the latest Italian domestic innovations. Although now only a romantic shell, it suggests the magnificence of Bess’s status and aspirations. When her fourth and final marriage, to George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, broke down acrimoniously, Bess retreated to Hardwick, where she enlarged and remodelled the medieval manor into the house now known as Hardwick Old Hall. When her husband died, leaving Bess staggeringly rich, she began work on a new hall immediately beside the old: the two intended to function like two wings of one building. Bess’s descendants came to prefer Chatsworth to Hardwick, however, and in the eighteenth century the old hall was dismantled.
Staff and visitors alike have heard voices and nonexistent doors opening and closing. It is said that the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who enjoyed the patronage of the Cavendish family and died at Hardwick Hall in 1679, haunts the grounds. Here he is joined by Bess, who people claim still glides through her once magnificent creation.
Peveril Castle, Derbyshire
The ‘Castle of the Peak’, as Peveril was known in the Middle Ages, was founded soon after the Norman Conquest by the same powerful knight, William Peveril, who built Bolsover Castle. Its dramatic hilltop location high above what is now the Derbyshire town of Castleton was a clear position of dominance over the surrounding lands and it played an important role in guarding the Peak Forest lead-mining area. In 1155 it was taken into possession of the Crown, its defences strengthened and the keep built. The only real action that the castle saw occurred in 1216, at the end of the reign of King John. Despite the sealing of Magna Carter the year before, many of John’s most powerful barons were still in rebellion, and Peveril was held for them by the constable of the Peak, Brian de Lisle. He was repeatedly ordered by the king to hand it over, refused, and was eventually ousted by force. How many of his or the king’s men were killed at the time, if any, is not known, but reportedly a knight in a white surcoat has been seen standing beside the keep and on the ramparts, and a riderless horse and a black dog in the castle grounds – perhaps his? Visitors report banging and clanking, suggesting the iron-clad limbs of this same lonely knight still patrolling the castle walls.
After the death of John of Gaunt, who held the castle at the end of the fourteenth century, the castle fell into a decline from which it never recovered. Today it is one of the most romantic sites in this spectacular stretch of England.
Goodrich Castle, Herefordshire
Magnificent Goodrich stands in woodland on a rocky crag, commanding the valley of the River Wye. Goodrich led a largely peaceful existence until 1646, when Parliamentary forces under their commander Colonel John Birch bombarded and brought down the north-west tower before storming the castle and its Royalist garrison.
The keep was built in about 1150, probably by Richard ‘Strongbow’ de Clare and Goodrich subsequently passed to one of the greatest soldiers of that era, William Marshall, ‘the best knight in all the world’ according even to an enemy. But it was probably under William’s granddaughter and her husband that the splendid castle whose remains dominate the site today was built. After its partial destruction in the Civil War the castle fell into ruin, a magnet for visitors in search of the Romantic and the Picturesque.
During the violent siege of Goodrich, so the story goes, Colonel Birch’s niece, Alice, took refuge in the castle with her Royalist lover, Charles Clifford. As the battering of the castle by her uncle’s men grew in violence, the lovers took fright and ran, trying to escape across the River Wye under cover of darkness. But the waters were high and they were swept away by the currents and drowned. They are said to be seen standing on the ramparts looking out across the valley.
The North West
Carlisle Castle, Cumbria
Carlisle Castle was built in 1092 by William II, in his efforts to secure the border between Scotland and England. His brother, Henry I, set about fortifying the castle in stone, but during the national crisis over the succession, David, king of the Scots, seized Carlisle, and shifted the Scottish border south again. He probably completed the works begun by Henry I at the castle and died there in 1135. But David’s successor was no match for the next English king, Henry II, who regained and strengthened the castle, which was as well – twice the Scots attacked with large forces, and twice Carlisle withstood the sieges.
Under King John, Carlisle was again besieged by the Scots, who ‘cracked from top to bottom’ the walls of the outer gatehouse, and then surged inside and similarly bombarded the inner gatehouse. To the north of this inner gatehouse was the ‘palace’ – royal apartments where a bath was later installed for Edward I’s queen, Margaret, who stayed at the castle while her husband was attempting to conquer Scotland.
In 1315 the Scots again attacked the castle, this time under Robert the Bruce, but the castle was staunchly defended under the command of Andrew Harclay, a then-favoured subject of Edward II. Some years later, however, Harclay attempted to negotiate a Scottish truce without the king’s permission. The unfortunate man was surprised inside the castle, arrested for treason, and hanged, drawn and quartered outside the city walls. One of his quarters was displayed on Carlisle keep, where it remained for five years.
Carlisle was repeatedly strengthened during the rule of the Wardens of the March, the king’s officers in charge of keeping the peace on the borders, but became neglected in the sixteenth century. But when Henry VIII’s split with the Roman Catholic Church led to fears that the Scots, siding with Europe, would invade, Carlisle’s importance was again recognised. Bulwarks were built to the east, the half-moon battery to the west, and the walls and roofs were strengthened to bear heavy guns. Carlisle gained some forty years’ respite following the union of the crowns of England and Scotland in 1603, but when Civil War broke out those Scots who supported Parliament besieged the whole city, aiming to starve Carlisle into submission. Every horse was eaten, then the dogs, and finally the rats – and after nine months a desperate Carlisle surrendered.
During the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745, captured rebels were imprisoned in the city, including the castle. The prisoners taken after the defeat of the ’45 uprising – during which Carlisle was once again besieged, this time by the Duke of Cumberland on his way north to victory at Culloden – did not fare as well as their fellows of ’15. Then, two had escaped from the castle and the rest had been pardoned. But after the ’45, although most were transported, thirty-one were hanged at Carlisle. Andrew Hurley refers to the drawing of lots by the prisoners to choose who would stand trial. This did indeed happen – the prisoners passing round a beaver hat in which were placed nineteen slips of white paper, and one of black. Nine unfortunate prisoners were executed at Carlisle on 18 October 1746. The event drew a large crowd but afterwards, ‘many returned home with full resolution to see no more of the kind, it was so shocking’.
Carlisle remained a military base until 1959, during which time various works were done to extend and update the castle, including extensive new accommodation for troops. It seems to be one of these newer buildings, where the King’s Own Border Regiment Museum is now housed, that has given rise to the most recent reports of oddities by staff, including alarms being set off, footsteps, banging doors and lights that have been turned off at night being on again in the morning.
Birdoswa
ld Roman Fort, Cumbria
Lying within a meander of the River Irthing with a view into the gorge that was once compared to that of Troy, Birdoswald was one of the forts built by the Romans as part of the Hadrian’s Wall frontier system. Its defences are the best preserved of any along the Wall. By the sixteenth century, Birdoswald was a fortified farm subject to raids by reivers from Liddesdale, now in Scotland. Birdoswald was farmed until 1984. Although there are rumours of a grey lady, the farmer’s family who lived here between 1956 and 1984 never saw her – although that didn’t prevent them from teasing the new hired hands, not to mention one or two archaeologists. One man was so scared after a picture fell off the wall one night that he left the next morning. The ghost was evidently more restless in earlier times, for the people who had lived at the farm previously heard chairs falling over in the night. They thought it was something to do with the statue of the goddess Fortuna, from the Roman bathhouse, that was once kept in a passageway. It is now in Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle.
The North East
Housesteads Roman Fort, Northumberland
Housesteads falls roughly midway along Hadrian’s Wall, which was begun in about ad 122 and stretches for seventy-three miles, spanning the narrowest stretch of northern England. Housesteads was garrisoned for most of its active life by the first cohort of Tungrians, a body of about 800 soldiers brought from the part of the Empire that is now eastern Belgium.
After the withdrawal of the Roman Empire from Britain in ad 410, the fort was largely abandoned until the sixteenth century, when a lawless community of thieving ‘moss troopers’ based themselves here, thriving in this dangerous borderland between Scotland and England.
The milecastle referred to in Kate Clanchy’s story is known as milecastle 37. These small gated forts were built, as their name suggests, roughly every Roman mile along the length of the Wall. Between each were two towers, or turrets, from which soldiers patrolling the Wall could look out over the deep ditch north of the Wall and into barbarian territory. The forts were built to a roughly standard design – a large rectangle with rounded corners, the ramparts built of stone or turf, with a gate on each of the four sides and regular towers along the perimeter. At the centre of the fort was the headquarters building, which contained a strongroom, shrine, administrative buildings and assembly hall. Flanking the headquarters were the commanding officer’s quarters and granaries, while the rest of the fort contained the barracks, workshops and storehouses.
At Housesteads, a town grew up outside the fort to the south. Many finds from this part of the site are housed in the museum. This was built in 1936 to the same footprint as one of the Roman town buildings, thought to have been an inn or shop, excavated earlier that decade. But the inn revealed something rather more than dropped dice and coins when excavated. Buried under the clay floor of the back room were two skeletons. One was that of a man, with the tip of a knife still in his ribs. The other, more fragmentary, was probably a woman. As Romans buried their dead outside the town, there is no doubt this was a murder. But it is not the ghosts of this unfortunate couple that have been seen along the Wall. Instead it seems the soldiers chose to return. Sceptics might imagine Roman re-enactors have been mistaken by imaginative visitors, but apparently not. One of the most common sightings is of a soldier in Roman armour at milecastle 42, some five miles west of Housesteads. The man is seen several metres up in the air, at the original level of the Wall.
Tynemouth Priory and Castle, Tyne and Wear
Commanding a superb defensive position on a headland overlooking the River Tyne, the ruins of Tynemouth Priory and Castle are now surrounded only by gravestones and seagulls. But for most of its 2,000-year history, the headland was inhabited by communities of monks and soldiers. A monastic community was established here in the eighth century but its buildings were destroyed during the Viking invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries. The medieval ruins visible today belong to Tynemouth Priory, founded in the late eleventh century and dedicated to St Oswine (d. 651) whose body was preserved here in a rich shrine. Although the monastery was suppressed in 1539 it seems that one monk never left the place and still wanders through the graveyard.
Because of its strategic value in protecting the mouth of the Tyne, the headland was fortified until the 1950s. It is not within the remains of the medieval gatehouse nor the gun batteries where the latest oddity occurred but in the disused coastal station, not normally open to the public. A theatre company at Tynemouth which put on a show one recent Hallowe’en discovered that a projector, which had been carefully set up and left in a locked room, had been turned on its side.
Prudhoe Castle, Northumberland
Mighty Prudhoe was built in the early twelfth century, on the site of an earlier Norman fortress, to defend a strategic crossing of the River Tyne against Scottish invaders. It was continuously occupied for over nine centuries. Prudhoe was originally the home of the Umfravilles, and withstood two sieges, before passing to the Percy family in 1398. In the early nineteenth century they built a Regency style manor house for their land agent within its walls.
While local legend talks of a grey lady who haunts the former moat and surrounding woods and a white horse that drifts silently round the courtyard, one former resident of Prudhoe, who lived with her mother in the east tower (without electricity or running water) in the 1950s, witnessed other more disturbing phenomena. First, there was the sound of chanting from the chapel and, more unexpectedly, of someone bouncing a ball rhythmically up and down the steps outside. There had been a young boy, they were told, who later became a priest and used to spend hours practising bouncing a ball up and down the steps . . . Another resident and her husband were often awakened by the sound of water being hurled with great force at the door – although there was no trace of it on investigation.
In the hallway was an enormous oak table. One night an incredible noise woke everyone up, as if there had been an explosion. The massive top lid of the table lay on the floor. It could not possibly just have slipped or been pushed – it took three men to put it back in place.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Kate Clanchy was born in Glasgow and is the author of Meeting the English, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and the much acclaimed memoir Antigona and Me. Her poetry has won her a wide audience as well as three Forward Prizes and a Somerset Maugham Award, among others. The title story from The Not-Dead and The Saved won the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award.
Stuart Evers’ first book, Ten Stories About Smoking, won the London Book Award in 2011 and his highly acclaimed novel, If This is Home, followed in 2012. His most recent collection, Your Father Sends His Love, was shortlisted for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. His work has appeared in three editions of the Best British Short Stories as well as Granta, The White Review, Prospect and on BBC Radio 4. Originally from the North West, he lives in London.
Mark Haddon is a writer and artist who has written fifteen books for children and won two BAFTAs. His bestselling novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, was published simultaneously by Jonathan Cape and David Fickling in 2003. It won seventeen literary prizes, including the Whitbread Award. His poetry collection, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, was published by Picador in 2005, his play Polar Bears was performed at the Donmar Warehouse in 2007 and his last novel, The Red House, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2012. His latest full-length book is The Pier Falls, a collection of stories. He lives in Oxford.
Andrew Michael Hurley has lived in Manchester and London, and is now based in Lancashire. His first novel, The Loney, was originally published by Tartarus Press, a tiny independent publisher based in Yorkshire, as a 300-copy limited-edition, before being republished by John Murray and going on to win the Costa Best First Novel Award and Book of the Year at the British Book Industry Awards in 2016. He is currently working on Devil’s Day, to be published by John Murray in 2017.
Andrew Martin is the aut
hor of a dozen novels, including a series of nine thrillers set on the railways of Edwardian Britain, one of which, The Somme Stations, won the Crime Writers’ Association Award for Historical Fiction in 2011. His latest novel, Soot, is set in York in 1799 and concerns the murder of a silhouette painter. He also writes and presents TV documentaries.
Sarah Perry was born in Essex. She has been the writer in residence at Gladstone’s Library and the UNESCO World City of Literature Residence in Prague. Her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize, and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2014. The Essex Serpent was the Waterstones Book of the Year in 2016 and won the British Book Awards Fiction Book of the Year and Overall Book of the Year in 2017. It was also shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and longlisted for the Walter Scott, Baileys and Wellcome Book Prizes. She lives in Norwich.
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