Amington Hall for Sale.
The Ghostly Drummer and his warning.
It is announced that the Amington Hall estate, some two miles on the Warwickshire side of Tamworth, is to be sold by auction in lots in the course of November. Amington was for centuries the home of the Repingtons and a Courts, the last representative of which was the late Colonel a Court Repington, whose articles on the military conduct of the war and diaries kept during that great struggle produced so much controversy. The estate is of moderate size as agricultural estates go – it is just over 500 acres – but it possesses many natural attractions and a fair acreage of woods and plantations which have a sporting value.
Colonel Repington let the house to the late Mr Sydney Fisher, who subsequently purchased the estate, which is now being sold by his trustees. Mr Fisher had an odd experience during his residence there.
About the middle of the seventeenth century one of the Repington’s married Catherine Burdett, of Foremark, in Derbyshire, a family which, according to tradition, was notified of the approaching death of one of its members by the tapping of a ghostly drum. The spectral drummer appears to have accompanied the bride to her new home, and thence forward to have performed his weird functions at Amington.
Not many years ago, Colonel Repington tells us, Mr Fisher and a number of cottagers distinctly heard the warning. Until he mentioned it to Colonel Repington what he had heard he knew nothing of the tradition.
According to the laws of “spookery” the departure of the old family may be supposed to have broken the spell.
Nuneaton Chronicle, 4th November 1927.
The Drum of Death.
A curious legend of the Burdett family is revived by the recent sale of Amington Hall, on the borders of Staffordshire and Warwickshire, long the home of the Repingtons and the A’Courts. The story goes that when any of the Burdetts is about to die warning is given by a ghostly drummer beating a ghostly drum.
In the seventeenth century, Catherine Burdett, of Foremark, married Seabright Repington, of Amington Hall. It is said that an unseen retainer of her house followed her into Warwickshire, and that ever since 1662 his drum beats, foreshadowing a Burdett death, have been heard at Amington. Why he should have left Foremark at all is not related.
Shortly before the war the late Colonel Repington was told by the then tenant that he was awakened one night by the beating of a drum. Up to that moment he had never heard of the legend, but that he was not unduly alarmed is proved by the fact that he subsequently purchased the property.
Derby Daily Telegraph, 28th February 1934.