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The Ghostly Lord Hop & Horestone Grange
The Ghost at the
Crown Hotel
The Printing Works
The Bull's Head
The Albion Building There is something fascinating about ghosts and the spirit world. After all one day that is the world we will occupy ourselves. It is tempting to speculate what it is like. I am a great believer in the paranormal, having had experiences of it myself and taken a great deal of interest in the scientific possibilities. Needless to say I have made note of local tales of haunting and ghostly events and carried out some research into them. Nuneaton and district is not short of such sightings. Whilst we know that ghosts can be found in old towns like Warwick, Stratford Upon Avon or Market Bosworth we do not expect it in Nuneaton, but they are there all the same. I happen to believe quite simply that when you die your mind lives on and occupies a different but parallel state of existence. The science of the physical world has not been able to explain how this can be possible, yet scientists at the leading edge of quantum physics and parapsychology are pointing the way towards an overwhelmingly powerful intelligent universe where the human spirit for relatively short periods is connected to the human body during its physical lifetime by a frail umbilical cord, but most of its time inhabits a far less fragile invisible ether, where time and material reality are no longer the norm. There is a subtle difference between a ghost and a spirit. A ghost is the earthly manifestation of a spirit which returns to places it knew or to which it was deeply attached by some awful or traumatic event at the time of its passing. Sometimes ghosts return to places they lived in and go through the routines of life that they had in their earthly existence. They are so much part of that place that they are imprinted on it. This is the same as we, ourselves, in our earthly lives going through the same old routine day in day out. Going to work, coming home, eating dinner, having a cup of tea, fish on Fridays, that sort of thing. Instead it travels the immediate area and environment it once knew and will not always move on to the higher spiritual levels where most of our ancestors go after they are dead. Even so spirits who have moved on return from time to time and make their presence felt. Particularly where a close relative or friend needs their help. It is not an exact science being a ghost! This story deals with a few hauntings in Nuneaton that have been recorded over the years, which are worthy of mention. The catalogue continues to grow and I hope that this will trigger some ghostly sightings, which I do not know about. If so I will be delighted to hear from you.
Peter Lee, PO Box 2282,
Nuneaton, CV11 6ZT
The Ghostly Lord Hop and Horestone Grange In the 19th century there stood across the fields from Nuneaton town a jumble of grey stones, tumbled down walls and derelict cowsheds. This was the remains of the old Manor House of Nuneaton – Horestone Grange. When the Nuneaton to Hinckley railway line was built and opened in 1862 it cut straight through the remains of the grange and the rubble was ploughed into the earthworks of the railway. Its three moats were partially filled in. In later years the outer moats too became filled up, in one case with wagon loads of the remains of old railway company emblazoned china thrown out when grouping of the railways took place in 1923. Before this the remains of the Grange, which had fallen into greater dereliction year by year, stood grey and forbidding in an area remote from the town. It was considered a place not visit in those far off days by our superstitious ancestors. Its reputation was so terrifying that few would venture near it. Its ghostly story manifested itself onto the area of town nearest to it so that what we know today as Wheat Street, Oaston Road (formerly Odd-a-Ways Lane, or Horestone Lane), Regent Street and Bond End were blighted with some kind of ghostly presence. Children were scared to linger in these roadways especially at the dead of night. Our story starts back in the 17th century when the Stratford family acquired part of the manor of Nuneaton. One of England’s largest landowners and richest families. John Stratford bought Horestone Grange in 1648. It became his principal seat, but it was not long before he cast his net wider for more real estate to buy. He purchased the Brett’s Hall and Ansley Hall estates which he merged into one, and then Merevale where his descendents through a female marriage remain today – the Dugdale family. Another property held by the Stratfords was a remnant of the old Abbey in Nuneaton whose lands at that time extended down to the Market Place in Nuneaton. A few yards to the north of the Market Place was another substantial mansion. John Stratford’s mother (Abigail Stratford nee Pargiter)occupied this. It was a dower house for the family. We do not know just when it fell out of use and became unoccupied but by 1800 was itself derelict and demolished around that year. (Stratford Street was built about 1850 on a piece of ground called – Hall Gardens –, which was part of the extensive grounds of the old mansion. I speculate that this might have been the old Habbitt or Abbot’s house of the Abbey itself.) After John Stratford moved out of Horestone Grange probably sometime in the 1670’s he let it to Charles Beale ( -1699) who used it as a woollen cloth factory. I believe that this deal was part of the commercial empire of John Stratford’s family who were wool-merchants and dealers in woollen cloth on the London market. Charles Beale was in occupation until his death in 1699 and members of his family today believe that his son also named Charles carried on the business during the early years of the 18th century. After this we lose track of Horestone Grange in the written records but it is clear that it was complete and extant until the 1740’s. No occupants are known but the Stratfords still owned the property, and probably their descendents did as late as the 1970’s. Around about the year 1740 a traumatic event happened which for over one hundred years afterwards was remembered by Nuneaton people. Horestone Grange burnt down in a fearful conflagration and one of these Stratford’s, thought to be Edward Stratford ( -1740), according to local folk-lore fell from his horse as he rushed back to the Grange from his usual seat in the bar of the Bull Inn (now the George Eliot Hotel). That is the legend. In fact Edward Stratford was a very rich landowner with 26,000 acres of land in Ireland and 8,000 in England believed mostly to be in Warwickshire. His family also owned Stratford House, just off Oxford Street in London. They had business interests in Hamburg, Germany. In fact the Stratfords were said in the 17th century to be the second richest family in England with property and assets even then worth over £1 million pounds which was a staggering amount of money in the 17th century and their earnings from the production of tobacco alone, on their Cotswold estates, was worth £20,000 per annum. By the 18th century their fortunes had waned a bit. Members of the family found themselves on the wrong side of Cromwell after the Civil War and had property confiscated, but somehow the Warwickshire Stratfords managed to stay on the right side. Edward was by all accounts an odd character as his descendent, Gerald Stratford, said his disposition could be assessed by the way he treated his two sons. The oldest was disowned for marrying a Catholic and the second disowned after a fight between him and his father outside of a church. Records in Dublin refer to him as a Colonel in the Militia but had refused a peerage offered him by King William. He had also fought at the Battle of the Boyne. In Nuneaton I think this is the Stratford, Edward Stratford, who had garnered rather a dismal reputation in the eyes of local people. Up until that time the residents of Nuneaton town had right of common on Horestone fields. In other words they could graze their animals there in accordance with some old statute. In 1735 Edward Stratford succeeded in enclosing Horestone fields and gave as compensation a parsimonious bit of ground between Weddington Lane and Higham Lane. Later known as Cottager’s Piece. This is why there is a pub in that area today – The Graziers Arms – named after the graziers who could graze their animals on Cottager’s Piece. There was another pub there as well known as the “Gardeners Arms” which took its name from those old Nuneatonians who gardened on this common land allotment style. They took their liquid refreshment before staggering home with their sacks of potatoes and cabbages to their court tenenement cottages in Nuneaton town. The locals took rather a dislike to the squire of Horestone Grange for his act of enclosure, and taking account of his penchant for drinking too liberally for his own good in the inns and taverns when in residence in Nuneaton town, nicknamed him “Lord Hop”.
Alfred
Scrivener (1845-1886) editor of the Nuneaton Observer in 1878 takes up the
tale: (The Dun Cow pub was not a figment of Alfred Scrivener’s imagination. It clearly appears in documentary evidence in Nuneaton’s historic records. It is shown on the 1841 census for example, and appears in documentation related to the construction of the London & North Western Railway’s new line through Nuneaton in the 1840’s. The location today can be found as you leave Nuneaton railway station and a few yards on the left is Regent Street. You have the Dunelm store to your right of the road. On the left you are looking at the rear of Blockbusters Video Store etc. Slap bang in the middle of the entrance to Regent Street was where the Dun Cow pub stood. It was pulled down when they altered the roadway to build the railway. Regent Street did not exist before 1840. The road we now know as Regent Street is roughly where it was prior to 1840 until it gets to where the entrance to the car park is next to Dunelms store. Then the roadway did a dog leg and instead of going straight on to Bond Street, went across to where Weddington Terrace is by cutting diagonally through the site of the railway line. The engineers who built the railway decided that to get their alignment they needed to alter the road and bring it alongside the railway on the town side and let all traffic from Bond Street into Old Hinckley Road cross the railway by a level crossing. This resulted in several buildings including the Dun Cow and another odd-ball property known as “Sparrow Hall” being demolished. I have heard tell that Sparrow Hall was not a “Hall” in the mansion house sense but a “nick-name” for a diminutive old fashioned cottage of what was possibly great age and antiquity. (maybe 12th or 13th century?). Probably wattle daub, thatchand low ceilings. This too appears in old papers related to Nuneaton and there are descendents of its former inhabitants – the Wagstaff family – still alive today, but as you would expect, scattered all over the country. Regent Street as we know it now was formerly called Derby Lane from the section where Leicester Road bridge cuts across it to where Weddington Terrace is. The reason it was called Derby Lane was because if you headed in that direction after leaving town and walked for forty miles or so you ended up in Derby. The bit of Regent Street between the Leicester Road bridge and Wheat Street was known as Brick Kiln Lane principally because there was a brick yard there which stretched back roughly where Atacks billiard hall is and across the bed of the railway. This belonged to a family called Hincks who also owned the town flour mill in Mill Walk) For many years after this the ghost of Lord Hop was seen to manifest himself on anyone daft enough to wander abroad in the unlit winter nights around Horestone Grange. Residents were scared stiff by these hauntings. The Vicar of Nuneaton was called in and asked to put this spirit to rest in an act of exorcism. The tale has it that the ghastly apport was exorcised into a bottle. The cork pushed in and the bottle was flung into a deep abandoned waterlogged clay pit, which then occupied the corner of Wheat Street and Regent Street (opposite North Warwickshire House). This area at the time was hardly built on. It was much altered when the railway was cut through. In those days there were a number of clay pits and brick kilns along the track of the railway but the earthworks were used to fill them in and the old brick kilns and cottages pulled down. A remnant of one of these old clay pits, a scattered remnant of Hincks brickyard, can be found in the cemetery in Oaston Road where wreaths are laid in a sunken area. In the 1841 census Oaston Road is known as Odd’a’Ways Lane. Who Odd’a’way was I am not sure although it is more than likely a reference to someone who occupied Horestone Grange in the 18th century. Possibly Lord Hop himself or one of his more colourful artisan tenants.
Early in the 1800’s one
very hot summer, the contents of Lord Hop’s pit almost completely dried out.
Someone peering over the edge spotted a mud-covered bottle and extracted it
from the pit. Curious to see what it once held and not being familiar with
the tale of the exorcism, innocently pulled out the cork. There was a
terrifying whooshing sound and once again the apport of Lord Hop was at
large in the lanes of the area. It made itself a particular nuisance to the
regulars the very old inn, “The Dun Cow”. From that time forward little has
been heard of Lord Hop although there is no reason to think he does not
appear from time to time on a quiet pitch black night in the fringes of
countryside between the Eastern Relief Road and the top of Wheat Street. The Ghost at the Crown HotelBond EndPub ghosts are a relatively common phenomena. There are several reputedly haunted pubs in Nuneaton. I suppose it is logical to assume that pubs had in life and death a powerful magnetism for their regular customers and staff. Perhaps old licensees and customers felt the need to re-visit the place they found so much pleasure in.
There is not a great deal to tell about the ghost at the Crown (now Lloyds)
other than various bar staff have been aware of a ghostly presence here, and
I have had reports of it. The pub there now (Lloyds) replaced an earlier
Georgian building, which went by the name of the Crown for over one hundred
years. There used to a yard at the back full of old cottages known as
“Crown Yard”. We do not know whether the ghost is male or female so we wait
to hear more of it in due course. The ghost has been seen in recent years in
the new pub. It may have manifested itself on this collection of buildings
previously but records are entirely silent on the subject. We only have eye
witness accounts of former bar staff. What was once the printing works of the Observer Press in Bond Gate was originally the Zion Chapel. The chapel built in 1818/1819 by a local landowner and ribbon manufacturer George Stowe Several chapels for non-conformist denominations were built in the town in the 19th century. The chapel-goers here joined up with those who attended the Congregational church about 1900 when a new church was erected on the corner of Chapel Street and Coton Road. The replacement still stands.
After the merger the chapel building together with the Manse at the front
was put to other uses. By the 1920’s it had become a printing works. The
first, I believe, used by the Observer and later the Newidigate Press. The
late Phillip Vernon often phoned me to tell me tales of old Nuneaton and one
of these was that he helped his dad in the printing works his family part
owned here in the Zion Chapel. Printing presses were set up in the main body
of the church. Sometimes if the company had a rush job on or an extra large
print run they returned after tea to work into the late evening. It was on
these occasions that a loud footfall could be heard on the wooden steps,
which led up to the church hall from the entrance. Anyone who went out to
investigate whether there was someone there commented on the deathly chill
they encountered on the stairs. There was no one there of course. The ghost
was never seen, just heard.
A former landlord told me that on one occasion when locking up at night an
old lady was seen in the bar. Dressed in the style of grandmothers during
the reign of Queen Victoria. She looked solid but after a few seconds walked
out through the wall. The Bulls Head is one of the traditional old pubs of
Abbey Street. There used to be a narrow alleyway along side it known as the
Bull’s Head Passage. This was surrounded by a tall brown brick wall with
blue brick copings on top and provided a short cut from Abbey Street through
to Queens Road. A few yards beyond was a “legendary” establishment “Pickens
Batch Bar” which we piled into after Saturday Matinee at the Ritz Cinema
opposite, at lunch time on Saturday where we could buy a pork and stuffing
batch dipped in gravy. I can taste them now!
The
Albion Buildings
The Albion Buildings date back to the last gasp of the silk trade. About
1840. They were a row of silk weavers cottages three storeys high with a
tall row of windows in the upper story known as a “Top Shop” where ribbon
weavers looms were hooked up to a long iron shaft with belts. The machinery
was driven by a steam engine at one end. It is said that a ghostly old lady
has been seen here on and off over the years but no one knows who it is.
Chances are it is one of the old silk weavers who used to live here. A lady
told me recently that the old lady was a kindly spirit but rather
mischievous for turning lights on and off, as well as fiddling with the
office equipment in the offices which make up the old Albion buildings
today. The largest manufacturer in America today, of silk clothing labels,
Warners of New Jersey stems from the Albion Buildings where Joseph Warner of
Attleborough was the foreman for Leakes who were silk manufacturers there in
the 19th century. Teddy Kem, the Attleborough Recluse “Teddy Kem” was a legendary figure in Attleborough. Research has shown that he might be the original of George Eliot’s “Silas Marner”. There is no question that Teddy Kem was a real person who did live on Kem’s Farm at Attleborough. A farm better known as “Teddy Kem’s Heaven” was located near to Sterling Metal’s factory on open fields. An old stonecutters shed near the Dumble Holes quarry was the original farmhouse. The Kem family involvement here dated back to the 1770’s when Joseph Kem lived on the farm. He died in 1779 and Edward Kem (1720’s?-1800), Another Kem probably his son, appears to have taken over. In addition to keeping a few animals on his farm he was also a skilled linen weaver with weaving equipment in his farmhouse. His strange appearance and dishevelled clothing tied together with hay-bands meant that his occasional and un-expected visits to Attleborough village and Nuneaton market frightened our impressionable ancestors. Gossip about him, including his miserly ways, hoarding gold coins in various places about his farm, were rife in the beer houses on Attleborough Green and Nuneaton town. He had a winter cottage in what is now “Kem Street” which he used when he corralled his animals in the pinfold on Attleborough Green during the winter.
Legend has it that his ghost manifests itself about midnight on New Years
Eve and I have heard its appearance spoken about by one old Attleborough
resident who has seen it. No mention of Teddy Kem would be complete without
mentioning the extraordinary amount of research carried out by Nuneaton
Society member, Alan Cook on the Kem family.
There are stories of the ghost of a little girl being seen in the ladies
toilet of the Rose Inn on Coton Road. I cannot tell you more but will tell
you a funny story told to me by my Dad, Walter Lee, (1913-1986) whose local
in the 1930’s was the Rose Inn when he lived in Harold Street. One day the
local “knacker” or horse-slaughterer “Cutter Moreton” rolled up at the Rose
and stopped for a drink. “Cutter” was a well known “rough diamond” character
who did a brisk trade in re-cycling dead horses into “oss” meat and maggots
in a tin shed in Glebe Lane off Hinckley Road. (Where North Warwickshire &
Hinckley College is now situated). I guess he had located his business
premises there so as not to fall foul of the local authorities for giving
off the noxious smell of putrefying flesh within the precincts of the town.
On this occasion “Cutter” had parked a horse and cart with an extremely dead
member of the same species lying stiff, cold and smelly on the back of the
cart. Some wag at the bar chided “Cutter” by saying the horse doing the
pulling was in a worse state than the dead animal on the cart. “Cutter” took
umbrage over this and the unsuspecting wag was bombarded with abuse and
lurid oaths. Obviously “Cutter” felt more about his animals than outward
appearance would suggest.
The Hare & Hounds
The “Hare and Hounds” is a funny pub, set off the main Heath End Road in a
little lane used to be called Bowed Lane , Heath End, Chilvers Coton. There
are reports of ghostly sightings here as well but no specific details to
hand. The Cycling Ghosts of Weddington This story was e.mailed to me by David French who wrote “I was born and raised in Nuneaton and left in 1965 when I was 21. I saw three ghosts, men riding old fashioned bicycles. I was with four of my friends at the time and three also saw them. We were still in high school and about 14 years old. We were passing a churchyard in Weddington on our way from scrumping apples in Caldecote. The ghosts were about 20 feet or more in the air just riding along. Has anyone else had a similar experience in Weddington.”
This is a remarkable sighting never having heard of either cycling ghosts –
particularly ghosts at a great height above ground level. The Wraith of Weddington Grove This story appeared in the Nuneaton Chronicle in 1919 and the editor said a very respectable businessman in Nuneaton, in good faith, gave it to him and it was published without responsibility on the editor’s part. The businessman was a keen fisherman and often went out on lone fishing visits to streams in the area. During a very hot day in August 1919 he walked out through Weddington and Caldecote to the Leicestershire borderlands where he dabbled in his favourite pastime. Needing some refreshment after his hot and tiring labours he took a drink “at an honest Leicestershire Ale House”. (The Red Gate perhaps?) He then started to walk back to Nuneaton through Caldecote, but stopped to rest against a stout oak post whilst sitting on a patch of dry grass to recover from his exertions before the final leg of his journey home. He seemed to doze off but after a little while woke with a jolt to find himself in the presence of what he described as “Two very odd fish”. “One was a bald headed lantern jawed individual, with a close cropped grey beard, wearing a black doublet, knee breaches, and a wide linen ruff about his neck. The other man was standing on the opposite side of the gate, and beyond the fact that he wore a pair of leather breeches and a countenance of abnormal gravity. I was not able to size him up with that particularity which is very properly demanded from those who project themselves into the journalistic limelight.” Recovering his composure somewhat and thinking that he must be in the presence of someone returning from a fancy dress party in town he thought it must be very late and said politely to the character in the ruff:
Our writer looked towards where the other character had been standing but to his shock he had vanished completely. Deciding to pull himself together, and as he was still in the presence of one of the characters he enquired:
George Fox (1624-1690) born of a pious family, was founder of the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers.
Robert Burton of Lindley
(1577-1640) English, Scholar, writer and Anglican Clergyman wrote a famous
book: “The Anatomy of Melancholy”. The Lindley estate once encompassed the
village of Fenny Drayton and the nearby Royal Red Gate Inn. (Why the ROYAL
Red Gate? – because Queen Adelaide is thought to have stopped there as she
travelled from Warwick Castle to Gopsall Hall in Leicestershire in the
1830’s. The purpose of her visits to the Red Gate – to visit the bathroom –
hence the Royal in Royal Red Gate!) Weddington Hall stood in Castle Road, Weddington. It was more often called Weddington Castle but was not a castle at all. It had been castellated in the popular taste of the day by a Georgian architect – Robert Lugar (1773-1855)– for the new owner of the estate in 1807/8 – Lionel Place. ( -1845)The former Elizabethan mansion (whose deeds stretch back to 1591) set in beautiful parkland and gardens covering 350 acres, which dropped down to the River Anker, was encapsulated within an outer casing of sandstone and enlarged. Throughout its life it passed through several family ownerships but by 1916 it had become a hospital for British soldiers sent home from the trenches to be rehabilitated. Neglect and the 1920’s destruction of many of the estates that surrounded the growing towns and villages of England meant that the grounds were ripe for re-development and in 1928 it was unceremoniously pulled down for housing development. There are numerous reports of ghosts seen in the house and grounds but their identities are unknown at present.
(Amongst
Robert Lugar’s other commissions was Balloch Castle in Scotland (1809);
Cyfartha Castle, near Merthyr Tydfil, (1825); Newlaithes Hall, Horsforth,
Yorkshire, (c.1828); Betteshanger House, Sandwich, Kent (1829)) The Griffin Inn at Griff is a remarkable historic pub. It is a superb relic of the old days of Griff and Chilvers Coton when pubs such as this were the centres of village life. The working man’s parlour. It was given a victualling license in 1654 in order to supply that indispensable provider of healthy nourishment, ale, for the miners in the shallow bell pits and diggings around this ancient mining community. It carried on doing this for the next three hundred years. I can remember it when Harold Day kept it and it featured some odd curiosities. My old friend the late local historian Fred Phillips used to drink in there at one time and a game of dominoes often meant that his valuable pint of beer had to be parked elsewhere as the tables were too small with all that shuffling and assembling of dominoes into players corners to play the game. Beer was parked on the floor, on the bench next to him, or wherever he could put it out of harms way. Fred said words to the effect to Harold. “You could do with a shelf here just next to my arm to park my beer on.” Harold said. “If you want one you can fit it yourself” and Fred did, and that shelf was there for years until it was altered in more recent years. Another amusing story relates to the old bus proprietor Monty Moreton whose motley collection of buses traversed Attleborough, Caldwell, Bramcote and Wolvey, who used to frequent the Griff. Monty complained one day that he could never find anywhere to sit in the bar, so Harold (I assume) said, “Well bring your own seat in” and he did, an old bus seat! And that old seat was in the bar for years. Poor old Harold’s gone now and the Griffin has been altered with a posh bar, and a restaurant, but it still has a lot of old character left. I was not surprised, therefore, when I read a story in a local newspaper in 1995 that a ghost had been seen in the pub. The licensee at the time was wakened from his slumbers by his dog barking furiously. As he aroused himself he saw in the shadows of the room a tall figure of a woman wearing some kind of veil over her face. He found himself immediately awakened by this appararition and stared at it for ten seconds not knowing who or what it was, lunged for the light thinking it was an intruder. As soon as he switched the light on it disappeared. This was the first time the licensee had seen the ghost that has haunted the Griff for years. There had been mysterious bangs and knockings, in the cellar compressed air cylinders and beer taps turned off. A previous landlord and his partner had witnessed an old lady in black sitting on the end of their bed. The installation of a “state of the art” alarm system did not seem to disturb the appararition. There was a collection of old locks on a shelf in the lounge, which he became accustomed to finding scattered over the floor in the morning. On one occasion a one armed bandit that was switched off at the mains spewed out £70 in tokens as the landlady watched. The licensee found the atmosphere so oppressive in the pub lounge at times that he could not stay in there, and he gave up going down into the cellar last thing at night because of fright.
The ghost by general consensus seems to be a lady in Victorian dress but who
she is has never been discovered.
I am grateful to Karl Chadwick of Nuneaton bringing to my attention
information from a site on the internet where ghostly incidents are
reported. The ghost of Lady Jane Grey whose family once owned the 13th
century castle at Astley is well known. Since it was badly damaged by fire
in the 1970’s the ruins of the Castle have stood gaunt and lonely in the
rural hamlet of Astley and I guess the ghost is still abroad cut off and
unseen from mortal’s prying eyes. A jogger who used the phone box at Astley
talks of a ghostly presence in and near the phone box. The box itself filled
with a deathly chill and unseen footsteps of an unseen entity passed the
phone box four times. Needless to say the jogger and his companion legged
it back to Nuneaton as quick as their shaking pins could carry them! |