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WHO SAYS WE HADN'T A GHOST?
By
Mrs Bee Wickens (nee Beasley), Senior Historical
Advisor, Friends of Elvaston
Roy Christian, writing in a Derbyshire
magazine some years ago called Elvaston "the
strangest castle of all Derbyshire stately homes"!
He continues, "Everything about it is unexpected,
almost weird, so the absence of a ghost is in itself
surprising." Well, firstly I'd take issue with the
label 'strange'. I've heard many say that when you've
seen one stately home, you've seen them all and I can
agree to a point that there is a certain sameness about
many, but that remark of Christian's re the 'unexpected'
is what makes Elvaston not Weird but Unique. AND WHO
SAY'S THERE'S NO GHOST?
Apparently no substantiated written record
has been found, I understand, but I believe that is
because cynical purists won't listen to local's
gossip/rumour. As late as my year of 1948/9 there were
rumblings and I can confirm that, more than once to my
knowledge girls have refused to sleep more than one night
in the LINEN ROOM on the top floor, yet we all came as
strangers to the house and mainly to each other! At a
reunion, one past student pooh-poohed this saying that
she'd got up in the night and moved things around, which
is why next day, two of her room-mates refused to stay
another night, but she wasn't my year, so that wasn't the
case with our two students! Well, young Phyllis was moved
next to my governess' room into the nursery and we had no
more histrionics from her, so was she psychic or had a
vivid highly suggestive imagination?
I only know that another member of that
nursery bedroom told me, quite matter-of-factly that
she'd heard the galloping horseman in the middle of the
night, clattering over the cobbles. Well, I keep an open
mind over such things, and I never heard him, though my
bedroom had two windows looking out on to the courtyard
straight opposite the archway. The route he was supposed
to take. Mind, the nursery bedroom did have a big window
on to the south front and another smaller one next to
mine, overlooking the courtyard, so I suppose had double
opportunity, especially as he was said to stop outside
the Gothic Hall!
Added to this tale, is the fact that he
wasn't supposed to be a Headless Huntsman so maybe this
came about as an amalgam of the 10th Earl who did break
his neck in a hunting accident. Because of this, the
present 11th Earl of Harrington, who will be 84 years old
next August 24th, succeeded his father at the age of 7
years, because the 10th earl (Chas. Joseph Leics) had
reigned but I year, coming into his inheritance at 42
years old and was, like his father, an accomplished
horseman fond of the hunt but met his death, being thrown
at a barrier head first and dying shortly afterwards,
thus one can assume he broke his neck.
Horses and hounds always played a big part in
the life of the Stanhopes' and employees on the estate,
and one gets a strong feeling that there were many
superstitions regarding any deaths concerned. A curious
incident occurred following the 8th Earl's request that
the hunt take place as soon after his death as possible
and it was noted and spoken of, one imagines, with bated
breath, that the hounds, careering full tilt, made over
towards the churchyard where they almost halted "to
a dog" at the Earl's burial place! Well, it does
verge on the uncanny, doesn't it? and the stuff that
ghost stories are made of. I think Mr Stuart Madeley
could enlighten us somewhat, as his father was a pall
bearer for the 10th Earl and must have heard many
interesting conversations on this and many other
subjects.
As you can gather, I take great exception to
Roy Christian's attitude towards Elvaston commenting, on
seeing it for the first time, wondering why it was built,
"for not particularly attractive", then
conjecturing that that is maybe why the Earl chose to
leave and live in Ireland! I believe this to be far from
the truth. The trust in charge of the family's welfare,
the widowed countess and her seventeen-year-old son, and
their valueable string of race horses, decided on their
evacuation to Limerick in Ireland at the beginning of the
2nd World War in 1934 taking with them some of their
loyal staff and families. Also, possibly high taxation
had something to do with the decision. We know of many
similar cases where beautiful homes were lost through
crippling death duties (Chatsworth almost becoming such a
victim).
However one has only to read past cuttings to
learn that the family stayed a while in Thulston village
and constantly returned for family celebrations and the
young earl particularly checked the house was being kept
in good order and rulings were being adhered to! As late
as 1947, after the war, when the majority of students had
returned to their main college in Uttoxeter New Road
leaving a nucleus of 2nd year students to oversee the 1st
year's, a friend of mine arrived back with her room
mates, from lectures in Derby to their "Gilt and
Leather" bedroom, to find a handsome young man
there, yes, the 24-year-old earl on leave from the Army,
checking the wall paper was not being scuffed or damaged
in any way. "You look after this, it was most
expensive!" he told them. Situated at the end of the
corridor on the 1st, floor over the Butler's Pantry, he
said it had been for special guests and the Queen Mother
and Princess Margaret had stayed there, though there are
no records to substantiate this. Maybe, it was to make
sure they took extra care?
Also the family returned for weddings and
funerals, held in Elvaston Church. As we were a Diocesan
Training College, we had to go to church first thing
every weekday morning and last thing in the evening. One
anecdote related to me by an earlier student, who was the
Elvaston College organist, told of putting away her music
and, being after all the other students, deciding to take
the short cut via Gothic Hall, ran straight into the
family preparing to take the baby viscount for his
christening in 1945! Two years earlier in 1943, his
sister Jane had been baptised there. Their mother, the
Countess of harrington, nee Eileen Grey, was a descendant
of that unfortunate queen, Lady Jane Grey.
The young woman, who almost gatecrashed the
wedding party, (whose name eludes me at present), was
herself of a high class, racing trainer's family, who are
well-known to the Queen, told me of 'morning-after'
sortees onto the roof with sand bags and buckets to check
no incendaries had been dropped during an air raid. A
wooden framework had been made by the college joiner in
the meat and wine cellars, a maze of passages and little
pantries leading from the old kitchen and under the water
tower that was later demolished by the DCC. These formed
bunk beds for the students when the sirens went to warn
of an air raid but, later, when most of the students had
returned to the college building in Uttoxeter Road and
only about fifty of us held court at Elvaston, we were
each allotted one to store our personal PF equipment.
That consisted of items we had to make to take on 'School
Practice', treacle tins bored with 2 holes and strings
threaded through to use as stilts, bean bags we had to
sew ourselves in spare time (ie holiday time at home!)
and any other bright ideas one could come up with.
I liked to go into the old kitchen and chat
with Mr Springthorpe, our caretaker, when he had his tea
break. His tiny home was the strangely-shapedbbuilding
beyond the outer courtyard still called
"Springthorpe's Cottage". I also, regularly
roamed the grounds which very few of the girls did. If it
hadn't been for the tennis courts near the Moorish
Temple, which I have always called "'The
Pagoda", thinking it more Chinese than Moorish, I am
sure that many of them would not have known it was there.
One day, I ventured through the slightly open iron gates
and it seemed that no-one had taken that path for years,
it was so overgrown with brambles, I felt like Prince
Charming searching for Sleeping Beauty and, when I
reached the top of the steps, I saw lovely hybrid Tea
Roses on the border. I broke one of the Earl's rules by
picking one, also our Principal's order never to take any
plants inside! As you will know, the steps at the other
side are wider and more open and, as I went out onto the
wide green avenue, turning towards, the great Californian
Redwood, I saw one of the gardeners and strolled up with
him, concealing the rose behind my back. Not as clever as
I thought, for he said, "That rose was one of the
earl's favourites", but he let me keep it.
Another of the estate workers let me go up
into the clock tower to see how it worked and they told
me how their numbers had been reduced to just four from
eleven, to cope with all the hedge cutting etc. I think
they did very well under the circumstances, the arbours
were kept nicely shaped, though the yews merged together
down the sides of the parallel green avenues to make one
solid hedge. I loved going along there, as it was always
alive with little tomtits twittering as they ate the red
berries.
The maze, a star-shaped yew tunnel, fronting
Gothic Hall was, however, getting worse for wear,
collapsed in a couple of places but still making a super
passageway at Halloween when we did the CONGA all round
the house, through the cellars and out through the coal
hole by the water tower door, round to the maze where our
2nd year (senior students) were cloistered, dressed as
witches with cauldrons and spiders on sticks they shook
at us; imitation cobwebs strung from the roof of the
maze.
Other vivid memories of other activities
bring to mind, particularly, the drama productions
produced evey year. Obviously, usually connected with our
literature syllabuses so mainly Shakespeare and his
"Midsummer Night's Dream", "Much Ado About
Nothing", "Love's Labours Lost" but my
year did Milton's "Comus" when the god,
Bacchus, turns the peasants into animals and Sabrina, the
water goddess, floats in diaphanous robes with her
entourage of Naiads, up from the lake and dispels his
evil and breaks the spell. Imagine what a perfect
backcloth Elvaston made, particularly with ornamental
pool and the lake beyond. Now dried up, water used to be
drawn up into the ornamental pool from next to the boat
house where the water wheel drove it to the storage tank
in the water tower then to a tank on the roof.
My hope is that we can yet again have drama
productions on the terraces and some of the historical
military re-enactments that are frequently held at
Bolsover Castle, and show all the Roy Christian types
that Elvaston is, and always has been, a beautiful and
vibrant place dedicated to Chivalry and Love, maybe not
quite of the 4th Earl's ilk, but both come in many
different forms.
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