Probing the secrets of Old Nailcote House.
Where queer things happen
There was once a murder here!
Is this Elizabethan house haunted?
Standing alone, ivy-clad and mysterious, behind a barrier of trees which almost obscure it from the road, a quaint, half-timbered old house, 330 or more years old, just on the outskirts of our teeming industrial City of Coventry. What stories it might tell if the pages of history could be turned back – stories of human drama – battle, murder, and sudden death, as well as of romance and adventure. But it is steeped in impenetrable mystery, and few there are who can pull aside the veil of the past. Nailcote House, the dower house to Nailcote Hall, is not five minutes’ walk from the Corporation ‘bus terminus at Tile Hill, but how many people know that it has secret passages, rooms which are declared to be haunted, and that a century-old murder was committed within a few yards of its doorstep.
Queer stories have been told of ‘ghostly manifestations,’ and rumour has it that this beautiful old Elizabethan house has been haunted for the best part of a century by the victim of the murder. So persistent were these rumours that until three or four years ago the present occupants, Mr and Mrs R. MacFarlane, took possession, for a period of eight years the house stood empty. It was put up for sale time and time again, but Dame Rumour wagged such a scurrilous tongue that prospective purchasers were soon convinced it would be folly to invest their life savings in a house with such an unenviable reputation. As time went on the property became so neglected that it presented the complete picture of a haunted house!
What had once been carefully laid-out gardens became a maze of overgrown shrubbery. Ivy, which previously had added to the attractiveness of the house frontage, shot forth its tendons in untidy abandon, stretching itself over the narrow Elizabethan windows to present a picture so unpleasant that the house agent must have despaired of ever disposing of it.
Added to all this, stories continued to be told of queer happenings which some of the villagers alleged they had seen. Yet, in spite of all this, and in spite, too, of the local assertion that no family could live for more than three years in the house, Mr and Mrs R MacFarlane went into residence there some six years ago. To them, however, it was so much talk and local hearsay, and it failed to make any very deep impression on their phlegmatic Scottish character. They had heard ghost stories before, and doubtless would hear many more before they ever so much as set eyes on any ghostly apparition. But that was six years ago…
Today Mr and Mrs MacFarlane, together with other members of their family and people who have lived in Nailcote House, will tell you there is undoubtedly something queer and uncanny about it. “I did not believe any of the stories that were told when we took the house,” Mrs MacFarlane told a “Coventry Herald” representative this week. “But that there is something strange and uncanny about it I am now convinced,” she added.
The house itself is an excellent example of Elizabethan structure and was built in 1600. One of the most remarkable features of its construction is a secret passage leading from the dining-room to a secret room on the top floor. Although there is no definite history of the house, it has been suggested that this passageway may have been constructed by “Little John”, who, during the latter part of the 16th century, spent nearly all his time planning secret hiding places or “Priests Holes” in many of the larger houses in the Midlands, where, at a moment’s notice, Roman Catholic adherents could seek refuge from the “Protestant blood-hounds.”
A movable oak panel in the ingle-nook fireplace in the dining-room is the only known means of access to the secret room. The passage runs behind the dining-room chimney and the lounge chimney, and on upstairs to the top floor, where the secret room is cleverly concealed between the walls of two of the bedrooms. It was from this secret room that weird noises were heard to emanate the first night Mr and Mrs MacFarlane spent in the house. So weird were the noises, in fact, that, once awakened, the family were unable to sleep again. Investigation on the following morning, however, discovered that the unearthly noises which had disturbed their slumbers were caused by a couple of owls which had apparently gained access through the rafters.
Shortly after this unpleasant experience Mr and Mrs MacFarlane had further reason for believing the house was really haunted. “We were seated in the dining room one evening when suddenly I heard the front door open and then close again. My husband immediately got up and went to see who was there, but could not see anyone. The remarkable thing about it was that the door had only a few minutes previously been locked and barred. We were talking about this a few minutes later and trying to find some explanation for it when we both distinctly heard the door open and close again. As the door closed, we heard the glass in one of the panels rattle, as it always does. My husband rushed out of the dining-room immediately and I heard him unlock the door and go out. Outside the dog was barking in a most unusual way. He continued to bark for some time, during which my husband searched all round the garden, without discovering anything.”
On the left of this cosy fireplace is a small panelled door giving access to a secret passage.
Above this quaint old-world portch is the hidden room to which the secret passage gave access.
Coventry Herald, 5th February 1938.