Ghosts of Ambridge
30 October 2008

At their Halloween's Ghost Walk, Eddie and Joe will be telling the Tale of the Screaming Scull, based on the discovery of the Civil War pikeman in the Aldridge Millennium Wood. It's the latest in a rich thread of Ambridge ghost stories ...


The Bull

There is a room in The Bull which overlooked the car park. As a small child Lucy used to play there but stopped, because she said it was cold. In December 1980, Sid decided to decorate the room and convert it into a new bedroom for Lucy.

When Lucy found out, she told Polly she didn't like the room, because when she played in there she heard funny noises. Sid thought that the noises came from the pigeon loft (at the time Sid kept pigeons). But when the room was finished, Lucy refused to sleep there.

Then Walter told Sid a ghost story about the room. In 1800, a soldier coming home from the war was set on by a gang. He managed to crawl up to the loft above an outbuilding attached to the pub. He only had the strength to tap on the doorway between the loft and the pub. The soldier was found dead the next morning.

No-one was convinced by Walter's story but, early the next morning, Sid was in the room and heard an intermittent rapping... It turned out to be the television aerial tapping against the drainpipe. Sid thought he had solved the mystery, but Lucy would still not use the room, so Sid asked Ted Atkins, the ghost hunter from Waterley Cross, to inspect the room. Ted failed to detect a ghost - in that room...

The Little Drummer Boy

A plaque in the Bull says "In the year of Our Lord 1642, during the time of the Civil War, soldiers fighting for the Earl of Essex did take refreshment in The Bull, after hard fighting at the Battle of Hassett Bridge. On that day the 14th of June they did find a young drummer boy dying of his wounds, his arm having been shot off. It has been said that his ghost do haunt this place still.
On the anniversary of that day, on the 14th of June 1995, a cannonball did hurl itself from a secure position on the window ledge, crashing through the floor. It is believed the cannonball may have been dislodged by the ghostly drummer boy who, to this day, can occasionally be heard tapping on the wall, seeking help. To show that he has not been forgotten, and to mark the opening of the Hassett Room, this plaque was unveiled on Thursday, June 22nd 1995."

Florrie Hoskins

While cleaning out the village pond in June 1990, Lynda stumbled across a human jawbone with a tooth still in it. The police were called. It turned out that the body was that of Florrie Hoskins who (apparently pregnant) disappeared on All Hallows Eve 1905.

Martha asked the vicar to do an exorcism at Bluebell Cottage, as she was convinced that Florrie had returned to haunt her old home.

Martha tossed rose petals into the village pond and said a prayer for Florrie in a bid to calm her spirit.

Peggy and the vicar pressurised Jennifer to ease Martha's worries. Jennifer was forced to tell a white lie and pretended that she had made a mistake in her research. She told Martha that Florrie had lived in another Bluebell Cottage - in Loxley Barrett, not Ambridge.

The Roundhead Soldier

In May 1988, the Snells met Walter and Tom Forrest looking round the Brookfield barn conversions. Tom saw a shadow, which then disappeared. Lynda was convinced that the shadow must have been a roundhead soldier from the Civil War. She decided to go to London and do some research.

On her return, Lynda asked a group of villagers round to Ambridge Hall. She then revealed that there used to be cottages on the site. During the Civil War a wounded roundhead soldier had taken refuge and died. Some time later, strange phenomena were recorded, but nothing was then seen or heard until WWII, when a stray bomb was jettisoned onto the site and the occurrences flared up again.

Lynda concluded that the building work had once again disturbed the site and the haunting had returned.

When lights were seen in the area, the electrician who had been working on the conversion was called in but couldn't find anything wrong. So Shula and Jill went to investigate. Again they found nothing, but later that night George spotted a fire. The whole top floor was ablaze.

A group of onlookers gathered as the firemen tackled the blaze. While Lynda reckoned the ghost must have caused the fire, Tom thought it could have been arson.

The next day Tom poked around in the rubble and found a small coin dating from the Civil War. Although the fire inspector's investigation concluded that the fire was caused by an electrical fault, Lynda was adamant that her Civil War theory was correct.

John Briar and the Squire

For Halloween 2000, Jennifer organised a "Telling Tales" evening at Arkwright Hall. The money raised was used to buy saplings for planting in National Tree Week.

Joe told the tale of John Briar, a travelling tinker, who died as a result of the heartlessness of the local squire. According to Joe, his great-great-great-great aunt was a kitchen maid to Squire Dyke, and John Briar was sweet on her, although he later retracted the family connection.

Later, Jennifer uncovered a scandalous story from the 18th century about one of the Lowson-Hopes and a merchant called John Briand. She was convinced it was the root of Joe's John Briar story.

Black Lawson

John Lawson - "Black Lawson" - appears each year on All Soul's Day or (according to Lynda) Lady Day. He was a black-hearted blackguard who maltreated his wife, whipped his dogs, drank to excess and exploited his poor tenant farmers.

One night, around 1697, he was returning from the hunt when two stray hounds startled his horse. Swearing and cursing, he rode his terrified mount across Heydon Berrow. The horse fell, breaking both its neck and Lawson's.

Sir Andrew Ralfe

In January 1976 Sid and Polly Perks took possession of their 16th century Cotswold stone cottage in Penny Hassett. The building was in need of modernisation, most of which Sid intended to do himself. Sid decided it would be fun to take before and after photos of the cottage. However when Polly collected their first lot of "before" photos she discovered they had photographed the image of a ghost.

That night in The Bull, the photo was passed around the customers. Dan told her that many years before there had been another cottage opposite theirs, with the reputation of having been haunted by the ghost of Sir Andrew Ralfe who was killed in 1644. Investigations proved that the old cottage had been built of Horton Stone, and one wall in Sid and Polly's cottage was also built from Horton Stone.

After much discussion, Percy Jordan said that the "ghost" in the photo was just a puff of smoke. At first Polly wouldn't accept that her Sir Andrew was nothing but smoke. But later she remembered that there had been a bonfire next door when Sid took the photo, so she had to accept that Percy's less interesting theory might be correct.

The Worm of Ambridge

According to Joe, the Worm of Ambridge first appeared during the Civil War when a Roundhead drowned in a well and reappeared as a snake. Bad things happen every time it appears.

The Murdered Shepherd

In 2008, Joe's friend Mildred remembered a story that her father used to tell her when she was small. It was about the ghost of a murdered shepherd, who had been killed by sheep stealers and who haunted the road to Penny Hassett. Joe said his Uncle Enoch had seen him once, when Joe was a lad.

There was a warning - never cross the narrow bridge out of Ambridge or you might see the ghost. And if you did, you were in trouble because that meant danger was coming.

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