Haunted Bourne

The existence of ghosts has been the subject of debate for centuries and one that has occupied man's thoughts since he first trod on this earth. Today, in these more enlightened and even sceptical times, tales of spectral occurrences are treated with great caution although there are many who still believe implicitly in the supernatural while organisations and study groups devoted to the subject abound.

Few places in England are without a legend or two of a ghost, witch, poltergeist or other mysterious being, and they occur frequently in country areas such as Lincolnshire. Most of the more spectacular of the recorded sightings are confined to the north of the county but there are sufficient hereabouts to satisfy the curious.

The tradition of the ghostly happening has been less apparent in recent years because of a fashionable scepticism towards the subject and so many will not admit their beliefs to strangers while others are ashamed of being thought superstitious. We all enjoy a good ghost story but there are few of us who would be willing to spend the night in an allegedly haunted house alone or to walk through a forest reputedly inhabited by demons without the occasional glance over our shoulders. Perhaps we fear, or are wary of, the supernatural because it is an unknown quantity, something we have not experienced, and no matter how much we doubt the existence of spirits and spooks, the best approach is to keep an open mind.

The most famous ghost in Britain appears to be the white or the grey lady who inhabits so many old mansions and Bourne has its very own at the Red Hall. In this case, it is a grey lady that flits through the rooms of this 17th century house. The existence of such a ghost has undoubtedly grown up because of the combination of light and shade that we get on moonlit nights in lonely places and those who tell them over the years invariably elaborate. The late Mr Christopher Reeve, who lived in a house close to the hall, once confided in one of the staff that he had experienced "a distinct presence" when on the premises while Mrs Janet Burton, who worked there for 18 years, said that although there had been the occasional unexplained noise, she had never seen a sign of the grey lady.

If there is an apparition walking the corridors of the Red Hall, then it must be one of the two ladies associated with it. The first is Catherine Fisher, wife of Gilbert Fisher, the London grocer who built the Red Hall in 1605. They had a son, also named Gilbert, born in December 1610, but he died the following year. Mrs Fisher never recovered from the tragedy of losing her baby and died soon afterwards, being buried in August 1612. She might well be the grey lady of the Red Hall, appearing night after night and mourning the loss of her young son.

The second possibility is another Catherine, Mrs Catherine Digby, daughter of a former Vicar of Bourne, the Rev Humphrey Hyde, who in 1796, married Mr James Digby who owned the Red Hall and inherited the property when he died in 1811. Mrs Digby spent the rest of her life there, playing a major part in the life of the town while insisting on being known as Lady Catherine, having gathered around her the title and prestige of Lady of the Manor. She died childless in 1836 and was the last private resident to own and live in the Red Hall which she left to a nephew. Lady Catherine was buried in the chancel of the Abbey Church and left £100 in her will to pay for a marble monument that is still on display. Her pretensions to grandeur and the fact that she may have died dissatisfied with her lot, make her an excellent candidate as the supposed grey lady of the Red Hall. You may take your pick.

Other famous ghosts reputed to be seen in Bourne are the marching monks of Church Walk. This is the narrow alleyway between Abbey Road and the Abbey Church, once the main highway between London and Lincoln until the road was diverted to avoid damaging the stonework of the church. In recent times, a patrolling policeman claims to have seen three monks striding down the pathway and although such a presence might have been familiar during the 12th century when there was an Augustinian monastery in the vicinity, it did appear rather strange to him which is why he reported the incident to his superiors. Local historian Don Fisher, who recorded this sighting in October 1992, added: "The policeman, now deceased, was badly shaken by the experience and retired shortly afterwards."

Another haunting has been reported from Bourne Eau House, next to the Abbey Church in South Street, one of the oldest properties in Bourne dating back to the early 17th century and reputedly built on the site of a hospice used by the Augustinian monks who lived and worked at Bourne Abbey a thousand years ago. The sighting, however, has not been in the house itself but the ghost of a woman has been seen walking from the nearby churchyard across Church Walk and into the garden.

There is also evidence of a haunting at the former Bourne Institute in West Street, now the Pyramid Club. The building dates back to the 18th century when it was used as a maltings, becoming the Bourne Institute in 1896. The first caretaker was Joseph Pool, appointed in 1888 and who lived on the premises with his family. His two sons, John and Joe, used to sleep in what was called the long room and one night they thought they heard a ghost. They were woken by the sound of footsteps and they followed them out of the long room, into the snooker room and down the servants' back stairs to the cellar, but at that point they decided to go back to bed and never did get an explanation. However, when I visited the building in December 2004, I met the treasurer Mrs Jan Bowers, a member of the Pyramid Club who had lived in the flat below for the past ten years and she related a similar story of footsteps down the corridor on the first floor during the night and then continuing through the wall at the end. These were two independent accounts and there is no way that Mrs Bowers could have known of the experience of John Pool which had been related to me by his son Trevor Pool, of Halifax, West Yorkshire, in July 2003.

There have also been reports of a headless horseman seen riding through the grounds of the 17th century Buckminster House at Billingborough. This apparition was first described by Washington Irving in his short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), subsequently becoming a favourite haunting in country areas, and a maid working at the house in 1905 when it was the country home of the de Burton family insists that she saw it one evening, relating the experience for many years afterwards. The house was subsequently converted for use as a Lincolnshire County Council children's home in 1913 but tales of the apparition persisted well into the late 20th century and were told to Councillor Don Fisher during a visit as a member of council's social services committee as late as 1985.

As with the grey ladies, there are also many black dogs supposed to haunt lonely spots throughout England and legend has it that Stowe is such a place. This is little more than a few houses and an isolated signpost on King Street, the old Roman way, where it crosses the country road between Langtoft on the A15 and Greatford four miles south of Bourne. But it does have one notable building, an attractive mediaeval stone manor house, beautifully kept, and still in use as Stowe Farm.

The story is that this place is haunted by the black dog of Stowe. The animal is supposed to have been seen by travellers passing by on the main road to Greatford and many have claimed that a huge black dog has suddenly appeared beside them and then the next minute it was gone although recent sightings have been few.

Another ghost on the A15 is that of a stagecoach that once used this road on the run between London and the north. The Lincoln Flyer, which operated from 1786-1871, passed through Market Deeping, Baston and Bourne, a familiar sight with its dark blue painted bodywork and canary yellow top section, the drivers wearing long yellow waistcoats to distinguish them from other coachmen. It is reputed that one day the coach crashed at Dolby's Pond, a deep stretch of water near the old sharp corner on the present A15 near Baston and there were several dead and injured who were taken to Vine Farm nearby. Since then, the ghost of the coach is said to run the road each time before an accident occurs.

The most recent haunting in Bourne is alleged to appear in the courtyard behind the Angel Hotel and is related by Dennis Staff who was evacuated to Bourne during the Second World War of 1939-45. He now lives in Ottawa, Canada, but sent this reminiscence of those early days when he was a ten-year-old boy sent here to escape the bombing in Hull and living with a local family:

The Airborne Regiment was billeted at the hotel at that time and in the converted stables behind and we kids would often arrive at the same time that the Commanding Officer was addressing his troops and the Sergeant Major would scowl at us as we scurried past. On dark nights, we were always challenged by the sentries: "Halt! Who goes there, friend or foe?" and when we replied "Friend" they would say "Advance friend and be recognized" at which time our identity cards were produced and inspected. I often wondered what would have happened if we had ever dared reply "Foe" but no one ever did. It was said at that time that the stables were haunted because a young soldier hung himself after hearing of the tragic death of his parents in the blitz back home, in a town or city unknown. I have often wondered if there have been any sightings of his ghost since those days."

The ghost of Thurlby vicarage

A ghost was also reputed to haunt the vicarage at Thurlby, near Bourne, now demolished, but later evidence revealed that this had been the invention of an enterprising journalist in 1944. That summer, Matthew Coady, a reporter with the Stamford Mercury, had tea with the vicar, the Rev William Glenny Summers, to discuss the future of the building and the vicar confessed that he would be prepared to sell it for £10 rather than go to the expense of having it pulled down.

"With the ghost?" asked Mr Coady jokingly and, entering into the spirit of the conversation, the vicar replied: "Yes, of course, that goes without saying." A report on the proposed sale of the vicarage subsequently appeared in the newspaper and Mr Coady made his account more interesting by saying that it was going on the market complete with its own ghost. The building was eventually demolished circa 1955 and has been replaced by a modern building.

Twenty-five years later, Mr Summers, who had retired as vicar in 1965, confessed that the story had been invented. In an interview with the newspaper on Friday 25th April 1969, he said: "At that time. I was being plagued by parishioners calling most evenings with non-existent problems and I saw the ghost story as the ideal way of ridding myself of them. I spread tales of foul deeds and ghostly occurrences at the vicarage around the village and, not surprisingly, my troublesome visitors avoided my home during the hours of darkness."

But there was a sequel. Three years after the ghost story had been invented, the vicar was sitting at home one evening when he heard a loud knocking at the front door but when he went to answer, there was no one there and it would have been impossible for a practical joker to escape from sight in that time. "I thought it strange at the time but never connected it with anything supernatural", he said.

At that time, Mr Summers was unaware that a previous vicar, the Rev Gerald Marchant Davis (1925-31) had undergone an identical experience twenty years before. Tradition has it that unaccountable knockings are widely believed by the superstitious to herald a death in the family although those at Thurlby vicarage were never investigated by experts such as the Royal Society for Psychical Research.

The Rev Frederick George Craigan Long, who was vicar in 1969 when the revelations about the fictitious ghost were made public, told the Stamford Mercury that he had heard nothing of any unusual happenings at the vicarage which by then had been pulled down. The ghost of Thurlby vicarage, therefore, was most probably nothing more than the invention of an enterprising journalist on the lookout for a good story. Matthew Coady certainly had the imagination. He later joined the Daily Mirror and became a political writer and a colleague because I worked for the newspaper at the same time in the early 1960s. He died on 27th January 1997, aged 73.

REVISED JULY 2016

See also

The legend of Nanny Rutt

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