Ghost Story.
An old house at Knaresborough.
A puzzle of the so-called “ghostly” order awaits solution at Knaresborough. There (writes a correspondent), on the banks of the Nidd, is a charming old dwelling, parts of which are said to date back to the early part of the thirteenth century. At that time Archbishop Walter de Gray was prebend of the manor of Bitchell. This old house, known to tourists as the Old Manor House, was the prebendary manor, and its retains at the present time the magnificent oak panelling of nearly all the rooms.
During the residence of the present occupier, Mr A.W. Howes, the interior of the building has been restored. In the course of the alterations the skeleton of a woman was found buried at the foot of the staircase. As the old church of the manor is only a few yards away, it is suggested that there were reasons why her sudden death or otherwise should have been concealed.
Mr Howes disclaims all belief in ghosts, but he says that there is something about the building that cannot be explained away. Formerly he and his wife occupied the blue bedroom, where stands an old oak bedstead on which Oliver Cromwell once rested. This room is magnificently panelled, and has a cupboard which was formerly a priest-hole, concealed by a spring door. During the night sounds of footsteps are heard on the landing, and, Mr Howes says, it is impossible to keep the door of this room closed.
“We have locked it and put a chair against it,” he says, “and in the morning we have found it open. There are no draughts to account for it, and since we have moved out of this room the footsteps have still been heard. On one occasion they were accompanied by a bump against the door of our present room.”
Mr Howes is very jocular on the subject of his ghost, and says that neither he nor his family are alarmed, or, indeed, believe in the supernatural, but after an experience of fifteen years of the house they are still at a loss to account for the sounds. “We used to say it was Oliver’s ghost,” he remarks, “but now we say it is the woman whose skull we keep on the staircase.”
Chaucer is supposed to have visited the house and to have learned there some of the Yorkshire dialect which appears in “The Reeve’s Tale.” It is believed to be the only house in England in which stands an original roof-tree. In this case an old oak of the forest, with its roots still intact – rises through the kitchen to a bedroom, where it is cut short – being no longer necessary for the support of the roof – and used as a small table for the occupant’s candlestick.
Weekly Journal (Hartlepool), 17th November 1905.