ON September 19, 1936, COUNTRY LIFE photographers on assignment at Raynham Hall in Norfolk took what is probably history’s most famous example of ‘spirit photography’. The ethereal, veiled form they captured gliding down the hall’s main staircase is widely believed to be the fabled ‘Brown Lady’ of Raynham—the ghost of Lady Dorothy Walpole, an 18th-century mistress of the manor.
Readers may be familiar with this image, but most will not know that, less than a year before it was taken, the incumbent lady of the house, Gwladys, Dowager Marchioness Townshend published a book of ‘true’ ghost stories. She wrote: ‘I must confess I believe in ghosts and I have for many years lived in a definitely haunted house.’ She was neither the first aristocratic homeowner to hold such beliefs, nor the first to write about them.
Two hundred miles north of Raynham is Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, the former home of American-born Countess Leonora Tankerville. Lady Leonora began documenting spectral sightings at her 13thcentury home as early as 1895. In fact, her first supernatural experience of the aptly named Chillingham came in a dream, months before she took up residence. In the dream, Lady Leonora’s deceased brother-in-law (whom she had never met, but recognised from photographs) greeted her at the gates of her soon-to-be home. When she finally visited the place in the flesh, she mused: ‘This is the second time I find myself approaching the gates of Chillingham Castle but strangely, it’s the first time I have actually been here.’ By 1925, she had amassed enough material to fill an entire guidebook.
Denne historien er fra October 27, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra October 27, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
