Aston Hall - Birmingham

Helena · Aston Hall - Birmingham

The many ghosts of Aston Hall - Birmingham
Constructed in 1618 for Sir Thomas Holte. Holte was a Royalist, who supported the king against the roundheads during the Civil War. Sir Holte had a fearsome reputation and locked his daughter in the Tower Room (after she attempted to elope), he kept her in the room for 16 years and the poor girl eventually became insane and died. Her white, but solid ghost has been seen by three visitors in the last two years.
The Ghost of Mrs Walker who was in life a housekeeper at Aston in 1645, has also been see by staff. Her apparition wears a green dress with a lace collar.
Another of Aston halls spirits is that of Dick the Houseboy. In his lifetime he was accused of theft and hung himself in the servants quarters. The room has since become known as Dicks Garret, and a caretaker has witnessed the ghost swinging in the room.

admin sinfulldude · The Ghosts of Aston Hall

(was written and posted by madmart former forum's ADMIN )

Hi Helena,
I worked at Aston Hall Museum Back in 1990 to 1994, here is my experience of one of the ghosts of aston hall, plus the stories of some of the other staff i know who worked there at around the same time has me.

The Ghosts of Aston Hall

Aston Hall is an imposing three storey Jacobean house in mellow red brick, built between 1613 and 1635 by Sir Thomas Holte. Industrial Birmingham has crept around what is now an array of tiled roofs, ranks of chimneys, towers and gable ends in a modest green park pressed between the A38M and Aston Villa Football Ground. The Holte family sold up in 1818 and until 1848 the house was occupied by James Watt Junior.

The Hall was bought by Birmingham Corporation in 1849, the first great country house taken into public ownership. Opened by Queen Victoria. local people visited in droves and took home stories of portraits with bewitched eyes, which looked at you wherever you stood in a room. Artists, writers, poets, mediums, and psychics have flocked here.

Discounting phenomena seen during this wave of enthusiasm, there are three main ghosts. The first is Dick who is rarely seen nowadays but was well known at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The White Lady and the Green Lady have appeared many times in the past few years.

Dick’s Haunted Garret

In the roof is a long corridor leading to the servant’s rooms and the central tower, where Dick’s ghost terrified the staff. In 1854 Alfred Davidson wrote a history of the Holte family, in which he said:
This gloomy spot, into which just sufficient light gains admittance to make the darkness mote apparent, is rendered still more dreary by the associations connected with it. It has long been known by the name of Dick’s Garret , being so denominated from a domestic who there hung himself from a low rafter in the roof.”

No one knows when Dick lived and died, but the room was already known as “Dick ‘s room in the inventories of 1771 and 1794. Neither do we know by whom and when was seen, but it must have been before 1820 for by this time the novelist Maria Edgeworth was referring to the corridor as Dick’s Haunted Gallery. Legend has it that the young man lived in the time of James I and committed suicide when a lady repelled his advances.

The White Lady
The staff of Aston Hall say that this is the ghost seen most often, but so far only by members of the public. THe Hall is open from March to November and during this period there are usually at least two sightings. She is described asabout 25 years of age, wears a long white dress and seems very solid. The visitor usually thinks she is a member of staff in costume. She is only seen on the upper floor
The staff believe the ghost to be the daughter (or possibly grand daughter) of Sir Thomas Holte who, when she tried to elope, locked her in an upper room for sixteen years untill she went out of her mind . Her poor demented spirit appears as the ghost of a white lady, documented in the 1893 edition of the Aston Hall Handbook.
The story may not be true, for during the Civil War many ugly rumours were circulated to discredit the opposing side. some historians believe that the young lady could have bet lunatic member of the family kept out of sight. On the hand, Sir Thomas was an unpleasant character. He disinherited his eldest son because he disapproved of the son’s marriage to a Bishop’s daughter, deliberately leaving him in debt. Another story is that he killed his cook with a cleaver when a meal was served late,
although Sir Thomas sued a neighbour for slander over this tale.

The Green Lady
Several Aston Hall staff have seen The Green Lady. Late on a September afternoon in 1986 Mr Philip Bettam began his locking up round, starting with the oak doors between the Great Hall and the Saloon. A shell backed chair stands each side of the doors. He had locked them and was walking across the Great Hall when:
I saw this lady in a rather flared green dress with a lace collar sitting in one of the chairs, and when I looked again but she had gone. The receptionist was facing the chair and hadn’t noticed anyone. A few weeks later I met a retired supervisor and I told him. To my surprise he gave a complete description. He had seen her twenty years ago. One night the alarm had sounded so the police called him out. She (the ghost)was walking down the stairs. Another night I had been working late and had locked up when, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a bustle disappear round a door, but I couldn’t swear to that, it was more of an impression.
The next sighting occurred early one afternoon in the summer of 1990, when Roy Evans was on duty in a corridor. The hall opens at 2.00pm, and as it was the early part of the season no visitors had yet reached this floor. Mr Evans continues:
I glanced through a window from where you can look across through another window, and I was surprised to see the head and shoulders of a lady as she walked past. I was sure I was the only person on the floor. I rushed to keep an eye on her, but when I reached the corridor where she had been seen, no one was there. I searched carefully but no one could have left the floor that quickly. I caught only a fleeting glimpse of this woman and I wasn’t really paying attention, but she was definitely wearing a darkish green velvet dress and had fairish hair. Judging by the height of her head as she went past she was not very tall, about five feet two.

In April of the following year, 1991, I, Martin (madmart) was on duty in Dick’s Garret, sitting by the staircase;
“Some visitors came up the secondary oak staircase and went into the nursery, then came out and went down past me. I watched them go in and saw that them come out, so th the room was empty. At 4.3Opm I wasn’t expecting anybody else to come up stairs so i began locking up. Then I had a feeling there was someone the nursery, so I went in to see a middle aged lady with back towards me looking out of the window. I thought she was a visitor who had come up spiral stairs at the back of the house, and I went to tell her that we were due to close. she was small, about five feet tall and plump, I should say twelve or fourteen stone. Her hair was grey and up in a bun. as I moved towards her, I saw that she was wearing an unusual dress in dark bottle green, tight in the body with a lace collar; and sleeves which puffed out at the shoulders and came down to a narrow fitting at the elbows and wrists., her skirt looked as if it should have been a crinoline but the frame was missing, so it just hung down. Then I noticed that I could see furniture and paintings through her body. After about ten or fifteen seconds she faded away.”

Later that same year, Mr Bettam was in the Chinese Room talking to one of the staff. They were facing the window when a lady came up the back stairs and asked, “Could you tell me who that strange looking lady was, who was standing behind you in a green dress when 1 first came up the stairs?
Sightings of The Green Lady are becoming more frequent , two in 1991 and three in 1992. The Hall closes during the winter for refurbishment and one cold morning before the 1992 begone Mr Hipkiss was buffing the oak panelling.-
“As you walk in through the main door there is a desk on right and I was working behind it. Suddenly, I felt I was being watched so I glanced to my right. Standing listening to me humming and looking straight at me, was the Green lady. I only saw her for a second before she disappeared so I can only tell you she was wearing an emerald green dress down to
the floor and billowing out at the bottom. Before this I had been very sceptical about her even after other staff and martin had seen and told me of her. About six months later I was on duty on a landing, when a young lady of 24 or 25 went into the Housekeeper’s Room. She ran out white as a sheet saying, “I just gone into the Housekeeper’s Room and there was a lady sitting in the armchair. I thought she was a guide and I went to her to ask her something and she disappeared. “The sitter was wearing a green dress.
In December 1992, a party of schoolchildren visited the
house. They were in the Great Hall and the teacher had them
in front of her. One of the boys was not paying attention, he kept turning round and looking behind him. She asked him what
was the matter and he said that he had just seen a lady in a green dress sitting in that chair, and pointed to the shell backed chair by the side of the oak door. The teacher had been facing it but had not seen anything.

The staff have looked through old photographs and records in the archives to find the identity of the ghost. The most likely person seems to be Mrs Walker, housekeeper to Sir Thomas Holte in 1645, her ghost seems to always appear when
major cleaning operations or renovations take place.

THIS HALL WOULD BE A GREAT PLACE TO DO A INVESTIGATION, anyone want to join me sometime in seeing we can do one there ?