“It preyed on my mind,” he says.
Injured man blames a ghost.
Evening News reporter.
“I’ve got a fractured skull because of a ghost,” says 42-year-old George Hesketh, of Hassop-street, Beswick, Manchester. George fell down some stairs and is seriously ill. “The ghost was preying on my mind, you see.” In fact, he thinks it may have been the ghost’s work entirely, because he is always very careful going downstairs and did not slip at all.
While George was working with his 20-year-old son Roy and Mr F. Wilshaw, of Lucas-street, Stockport, on a new school at Pembroke Dock, South Wales, they slept in a mansion reputed to be haunted. But when they SAW a ghost and heard strange noises, they thought better of it and slept in the school. Three nights later George fell.
To-day he told of three eerie nights in the Bush House, former home of the late Sir Thomas Meyrick. “At about midnight the first night I looked out of the window and saw a woman in crinoline strolling in the grounds. I couldn’t believe my eyes so I called my son and Mr Wilshaw over. They saw her too. For more than two hours we watched her walking in the grounds and occasionally kneeling down. When we tried to sleep, strange noises disturbed us.
“There were tappings on the windows, footsteps echoing through the building, and the sound of running water. Then would come icy-cold winds and our stormlamp would flicker and fade. Four times we adjusted it – but the flame still went low.”
Said son Roy: “Even in the school I had a strange feeling I was being tipped out of bed. It seemed as though the ghost had followed us.”
Manchester Evening News, 3rd September 1955.
“Ghost caused broken skull.”
Lying in bed at his Manchester home last night with a fractured skull and only slowly recovering his speech, 42-year-old George Hesketh is trying to banish the memory of a Welsh ghost. For it was the ghost of a young woman in a white crinoline, George believes, who was the cause of his accident.
With his 20-year-old son, Roy, and Mr F Wilshaw, of Lucas Street, Stockport, Mr Hesketh went from Manchester to Pembroke Dock to lay rubber flooring in a new secondary modern school. They could not get accommodation, so the first night they slept in the partly completed school. Then that was banned, and they were told to sleep in a nearby empty mansion, Bush House, former home of Sir Thomas Meyrick, which is locally reputed to be haunted. The house was being converted as part of the school scheme.
And these are the incidents which, Mr Hesketh told “The Sunday Sun” hesitantly in his Hassop Street Beswick home, disturbed their slumbers. “Soon after midnight we were awakened by tappings on walls, footsteps and scratchings on the window. I looked out of the window, and in the garden I saw a young woman, hatless, dressed in a white crinoline, walking along a narrow avenue in the grounds towards a bricked-up doorway. She kept stopping to kneel down. Backwards and forwards she walked for nearly two hours. And the tappings and footsteps in the house went on all night.”
The second night the tappings started again. “We had already seen finger marks on the window from the previous night’s tappings. Then there was the sound of running water, and, although it was warm weather, chill breezes kept sweeping through the room.”
The third night Mr Wilshaw barricaded the bedroom door. “But there were the same noises, and by 2.30 a.m., after two sleepless nights, we walked out with our lamp and left the haunted house. We spent the remainder of the night on the floor of the school.”
One night later came the accident. Mr Hesketh was walking down a flight of stone steps near the school… and the next he remembers he was in hospital. “I don’t know how I fell, but I am certain the ghost had something to do with it,” said Mr Hesketh last night.
Sunday Sun (Newcastle), 4th September 1955.
Ghost story for judge.
Western Mail Reporter.
Two men told a judge yesterday that they had seen the “lady in crinoline” who is said to haunt an empty Pembroke mansion. Mr George Hesketh, 45-year-old tiler, and his son, Roy, aged 23, went from Manchester to Pembroke to work on a new school. They said at Glamorgan Assizes in Cardiff that the first two nights they slept at ancient Bush House. The third night they fled.
“On the first night my son and I saw a vision of a woman in the grounds of the mansion,” said Mr Hesketh, “and we heard queer noises. Tapping noises.” On the second night a paraffin lamp was turned down four times and their mackintoshes were pulled off their shoulders. On the third night the knocking noises and tapping at the windows kept them awake. “We decided we had had enough so we went back to sleep at the school,” said Mr Hesketh.
For many years Bush House was the home of the Meyrick family, well-known Pembrokeshire landowners. A legend still exists that one of the family, the local squire, was returning from hunting when his wife, dressed in a crinoline, ran out to greet him. She fell beneath the horse’s hoofs, was trampled upon and died.
Another version is that the squire returned from shooting and that his gun went off, killing his beautiful wife.
—
Man who slept in a ‘haunted’ mansion claims damages.
Western Mail Reporter.
Footsteps, tapping on the wall and a “ghost in a crinoline” forced a father and son to flee from a reputedly haunted old Pembroke mansion. After an unseen hand had plucked a raincoat from the father’s shoulders as he was sleeping on the floor they could “stand it no more”. Both men went back to the partly-built Pembroke school at which they were working as floorlayers. Three nights later the father fell down unlit concrete steps at the school and fractured his skull. That was the story told to Mr Justice Salmon at Glamorgan Assizes in Cardiff yesterday. Mr George Hesketh, aged 43, of Hassop Street, Beswick, Manchester, claimed damages for personal injuries from his employers, Terradora Flooring Company, Ltd., and Pembrokeshire County Council.
Mr Elwyn Jones, Q.C., M.P. for Mr Hesketh, said that both fathe rand son were quite certain that they had seen a ghost in the mansion, Bush House, which had a reputation locally as a haunted house. “They say that on each of three nights in this old mansion a ghost appeared. A ghost in a crinoline — but a ghost she was, nevertheless,” said Mr Elwyn Jones.
Later when Mr Hesketh senior told the clerk of works what he had seen at the mansion the man said he would not sleep there for a gold clock. Mr Hesketh and his son travelled from Manchester to Pembroke to lay floors at a new Pembroke technical school. They had expected accommodation but finally had to sleep in the school itself on a promise that another place would be found for them.
The steps down which Mr Hesketh fell at the school were unlit, unguarded, with no handrail, and no warning, said Mr Elwyn Jones. Mr Hesketh, who was helped into the witness box by his wife, said he and his son had been sleeping on tiles at the school, and had gone to stay at the old mansion at the suggestion of the clerk of works. Then on the first night: they heard “queer noises” and he saw a vision of a woman in the grounds. Second night: the hurricane lamp went out, and their raincoats were taken from their shoulders. Third night: the lamp was turned down four times, and there was tapping on the windows. “We were sleeping on the third floor because of rats, but we could get no sleep,” he said . “On the third night we decided we had had enough, so we went back to sleep at the school.”
Roy Hesketh, Mr Hesketh’s 23-year-old son, said: “I saw a vision of a lady in a crinoline through the window. I was watching it for an hour-and-a-half on the first night we were there…” At this point the Judge interrupted to say: “I don’t think those details are necessary, fascinating though they are.”
Mr Harold Evans, the clerk of works, admitted that he had arranged for Mr Hesketh to sleep at the mansion, but said he had not given authority for him to sleep at the school. “Mr Hesketh complained to me about ghosts and queer noises at Bush House,” he said. “I told him this was unusual because the county medical officer of health had stayed there with his two children.”
Mr Elwyn Jones asked for “very substantial damages in view of the grave injury sustained by Mr Hesketh.” But he said, in vie wof the evidence, he would drop the case against Terradora Flooring Co.
Mr Justice Salmon will give judgement today.
Two men who say they saw a ghost in a Welsh mansion – Roy Hesketh, aged 23, and George Hesketh, aged 45.
The ghost, say Mr Hesketh and his son, walked along this path. They saw it, they claim, from the window through this picture was taken.
Western Mail, 28th March 1958.
The ghost is a joke no more.
Western Mail Reporter.
Two burly six-footers last night stood on the steps of the Law Courts in Cardiff and cursed the day the Ghost of Bush House came gliding into their lives. For if the eerie lady in crinoline had stayed in other haunts George Hesketh and his 23-year-old son Roy would have been far happier men. Yesterday George (and the ghost?) heard the Judge at Glamorgan Assizes dismiss his claim for damages against his employers – Terradura Flooring Co. Ltd., and Pembrokeshire County Council. George, a 45-year-old Mancunian, told the Judge that he fractured his skull when he fell down unlit steps at a partly-built school in Pembroke.
He said he and his son were sleeping at the school after fleeing nearby Bush House, the derelict mansion that housed them for three nights until they could stand the ghost no more. “A ghostly and ghastly experience,” said Mr Justice Salmon.
And last night George told the harrowing tale of the noisy lady in crinoline. It started when local people told the down-to-earth father and son of the haunted house. Ghosts? It was a scream of a joke for the Heskeths as they moved up to the third floor with workmate Fred Wiltshire. They were dozing off when Roy heard a tapping. “Give over, Dad,” said Roy. But it was not Dad. Then Roy heard the sound of a torrent of water and footsteps helter-skeletering about the 22-room mansion. That was not Dad either. George told me: “These footsteps seem to start slowly as if someone was walking and then get faster and faster as if the person was going as fast as he could. Then we looked out of the window. I thought something was wrong with my eyes. There in the moonlight was a figure of a woman in a crinoline gown. She was wearing an old-fashioned bonnet, and her face was blurred. I could not distinguish any features. She seemed to be gliding to and fro along a path about 20 yards long…”
Roy said: “We watched her for about an hour-and-a-half, and as we were watching all the other noises – the rushing of water, the tapping, and the footsteps – stopped. Everything was deathly quiet.” The three men lay down again. “Although we had the windows shut an icy wind blew across the room, and our coats were pulled off us,” said Roy. They didn’t sleep that night. Next morning the three men found five muddy fingerprints on a window pane – three floors up.
The second night, the three men returned with a pair of binoculars. Again, just before midnight – the footsteps tapping, rushing water and the poltergeist in the crinoline. The third night they returned again with a storm lantern and a handful of 6in. nails. They lit the lamp and Fred Wiltshire sealed the door with the nails. They lay down. The lamp was burning brightly in a corner of the room. Then it went out. “We all jumped and asked each other who had turned it out,” said George. “After a few minutes Fred re-lit, but it went out again.” The time was 1.30 a.m., “and we could stand it no longer.” They fled.
Said George: “I’ve never before had any supernatural experience, and I’ve worked in some creepy places.” Since the night the crinoline lady chased three brave men from Bush House, 27 boys of Pembroke Grammar School’s agricultural section have moved in. “There is nothing spooky about this house,” housemaster Mr R. Hewish told me. All the same… two burly six-footers stood on the steps of the Law Courts in Cardiff last night and almost heard a distant hollow chuckle.
Western Mail, 29th March 1958.
Ghostly and ghastly…
“Ghostly and ghastly.” That was how Mr Justice Salmon, at Glamorgan Assizes, Cardiff, today described the experiences of a Manchester man and his son while sleepin gin an old mansion in Pembroke. He dismissed the claim of the father, Mr George Hesketh, aged 45, of Hassop Street, Beswick, Manchester, for personal injuries against Pembrokeshire County Council. The judge said the men were working on a new school. Lodgings had been promised but not reserved. At first they slept in the school. Then they went to the dilapidated mansion.
“On the first night they had an eerie experience. They heard, or thought they heard, supernatural noises and saw, or thought they saw, a ghost,” said the Judge. “The house was unlit and extremely dirty and infested with rats.” The Judge said that while staying at the school Mr Hesketh was “groping along the walls in darkness” looking for a toilet when he fell down a stair and received severe head injuries. “I can’t believe he had the right to wander over the large building in the course of construction,” he said. The Judge said that if he had found in favour of Mr Hesketh he would have assessed the damages at £7500, but as Mr Hesketh was guilty of contributory negligence he would have reduced it by 50 per cent.
Earlier Mr Hesketh said he had seen a woman’s vision in the mansion grounds. He also heard queer noises – tappin gnoises. His son Roy said: “I saw a vision of a lady in a crinoline through the window for half an hour.”
Manchester Evening News, 28th March 1958.
[…] Giving judgment for the council, which denied negligence and breach of building regulations, the Judge said Mr Hesketh’s accident in the school had occurred when he was groping along walls in the darkness and he paid the price for the risk he took.
Birmingham Daily Post, 29th March 1958.
George won’t forget the crinoline ghost.
George Hesketh said: “I am not superstitious but I will never forget that woman as long as I live. Mr Hesketh, aged 45, of Hassop-street, Beswick, Manchester, who was a tiler, lost his claim for damages against Pembrokeshire County Council at Glamorgan assizes. That woman is the “crinoline lady,” who gave him, his son Roy, and a workmate three nights of terror at ancient Bush House, a derelict Pembroke mansion. “She wore a bonnet and had a big crinoline dress and her face was like the moon. We all three saw her in the grounds.”
Because there was no other accommodation, Mr Hesketh and his mates slept at the mansion while they were working on a school. Later, while sleeping in the school he fell down stairs and received severe head injuries. That was August, 1955. “Then I was getting £20 a week, but I have not earned a cent since. If I had won the judge said he would have awarded me £7500,” said Mr Hesketh. “I feel there is nothing left to live for.” Thirteen months ago he was registered as disabled.
Manchester Evening News, 29th March 1958.