A ghost returns to his old haunt.
Western Daily Press Reporter.
Things have been going bump in the night down Warminster way lately – and it now seems that a ghost is working overtime on “shift” duty. Two gravestones which used to form part of a kitchen floor in a house reputed to be haunted in nearby Kingston Deverill, have mysteriously moved to the courtyard outside. A bewildered farmer and some baffled villagers yesterday started their own investigation.
Mrs D Hicks, of Prince-croft, Warminster, lived in the quaint old house – then known as the Cottage in the Garden – more than 50 years ago. As a child of eight she remembers having to wipe dry tombstones near the kitchen sink. Her mother, a farm worker’s wife, often talked about eerie night noises, funny tappings on the walls and whispering voices in the dark.
Today, the cottage is known as Humphrey’s Orchard. It has been occupied for nine yeasr by Mr C.A. Walker, a retired engineer. He suddenly noticed the memorial slabs among paving outside his front door. He does not know how they got there. Mr Richard Stratton, of Manor Farm, inspected the stones last night. His family owned the cottage until just before the last war. He said: “It seems that either the kitchen must have vanished overnight or the stones were removed and relaid. This strikes me as most peculiar. I live virtually next door, just over the garden wall, but I’ve never seen any alterations being carried out.”
From a faced inscription on one stone, it appears that a member of the Hurle family was buried beneath. The death date is January 1686. It was nearly 300 years ago when Eleanor Hurle set up a charity to benefit old people in the village. Her will decreed that the revenue from two fields she owned in Burton, near Mere, shoudl be devoted each year for “the succour of the old people in Kingston Deverill.” The trust has been used for that purpose ever since. Over the past 40 years, it has provided extra Christmas coal for many old folk in the parish.
Western Daily Press, 1st June 1965.