Story Search Results

Things That Go Bump In The Night! #3

...ng in the attics? One night my mum was woken up by the sight of a little girl ‘floating’ over the bed.  By the time she’d woken my dad up the child had disappeared.  She said the girl was wearing a long nightdress and mop cap and seemed to be stretching her arms out to my mum as if she was asking for help.  Then on another occasion she appeared outside our lounge door when my mum opened it.  She thought we’d dressed our little brother Piers in a gown and mop cap and told him to get back to bed!  The apparition floated away and she ran down the corridor to check our rooms – we were all fast asleep!  The child appeared at the top of the stairs on...

Ghostbusters #8

...oured the attics with them and they took a few more pictures, then down to the basement which always looked so gloomy and dark being mainly underground.  It usually got us a few extra visitors on a Sunday afternoon, keen to see where it all happened! Amazingly I was mad keen on horror stories and would often read them before going to sleep – no wonder I was so scared to move around the house once it was dark.  My room was next to my brothers’ room and we had an adjoining door because their room was a bedroom and my smaller room would have been the dressing room in the Victorian days so there was always a connecting door between rooms.  I was often glad o...

The War years and beyond

...ce.  The attics, which were once full of servant girls, were now empty and by 1950 the number of servants had fallen to just three or four with a few men working in the gardens.  Over the next twenty years the beautiful gardens gradually fell into a state of decay, which is how we found them when we moved there in 1970. By now much of the Meynell estate lands had been disposed of.  Local properties were sold to tenants and others.  The Hoar Cross estate, once the pivot of the local community and a source of employment, was being considerably reduced.  Colonel Meynell, who had been seriously wounded in the Second World War, was suffering from his disability...

Things that go bump in the night! #3

...ng in the attics? One night my mum was woken up by the sight of a little girl ‘floating’ over the bed.    She said the girl was wearing a long nightdress and mop cap and seemed to be stretching her arms out to my mum as if she was asking for help.  She floated all around the bed scaring my mum half to death.  Frantically she tried to wake my dad while the ghoulish girl reached out to her -  by the time she’d woken my dad up the child was fading away and he missed it all! On another occasion the ghost appeared outside our lounge door when my mum opened it.  She thought we’d dressed our little brother Piers in a gown and mop cap and told him to ge...

Hoar Cross Hall - Life below stairs #20

...from the attics at the top of the house to the basement at the bottom so that they could also access their bedrooms once all the work was done.  Pity the poor housemaid who had to climb up three flights of stairs to go to bed after a long day’s work!   Layout of the basement floor where the servants lived and worked    By the 1920s the indoor staff had dwindled to about fourteen.  Lady Dorothy and her husband didn’t really live a full social life as previous Meynell families had and there were few balls and dances and hardly any hunting and shooting.  I think the First World War had a lot to do with staff cutbacks as society was changing b...

The War Years and Beyond #38

...ce.  The attics, which were once full of servant girls, were now empty and by 1950 the number of servants had fallen to just three or four with a few men working in the gardens.  Over the next twenty years the beautiful gardens gradually fell into a state of decay, which is how we found them when we moved there in 1970. By now much of the Meynell estate lands had been disposed of.  Local properties were sold to tenants and others.  The Hoar Cross estate, once the pivot of the local community and a source of employment, was being considerably reduced.  Colonel Meynell, who had been seriously wounded in the Second World War, was suffering from his disability...