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The Most Haunted House In Britain
The Midsummer Ghosts
July 28th represents a sinister anniversary which most of the residents of a small Essex village will ignore. Yet on that day it is possible that dozens of unwelcome visitors will descend upon the village in the hope of spotting its most famous resident.
The village is Borley, its famous resident is the ghost of a nun who is reported to haunt the area, and July 28th is said to be her favourite day for a stroll.
Borley achieved national fame in the 1930s when ghost-hunter Harry Price was called in to investigate an amazing series of hauntings and other psychic disturbances taking place there. His investigations into the incredible happenings in and around the rectory and its grounds were to last another eighteen years during which Price uncovered a history of hauntings which went back one hundred years and which, so some say, continue to the present day.
Seen on a bright summer day Borley, set on a wooded rise above the rolling countryside just inside the Essex border not far from Long Melford in Suffolk, is an unlikely setting for the scene of a haunting. Yet the ghostly nun, a phantom coach with a headless driver, inexplicable lights and footsteps have all been seen and heard close to the site of the old rectory and the 12th century village church opposite in broad daylight and often in summer.
The story commences in 1863 when the Rector of Borley, the Revd. Henry D. E. Bull, had a new rectory built on or near the site of the previous one. The new building, which was later extended to cope with Mr. Bull’s growing family, was dark and rambling and built without any mains services. Even at that time there appears to have been a history of ghostly visitors, for Mr. Bull had a summer house erected in the garden so that he could sit and watch for the shade of the phantom nun as it glided past on a route that became known as the Nun’s Walk.
Henry Bull, who was related to the local landowners, the Waldegraves, died in 1892 and he and his family seem to have taken the various ghostly phenomena in their stride though, early on, he had the dining room window bricked up so as to prevent the nun peering through at them while they were having their meals. With this one exception, the ghosts were not reported as having overly disturbed the Bull’s peace of mind even though their visitations were said to have been frequent and were often experienced by visitors and staff. There were reports of the nun wandering the grounds, the shade of an old man inside the house, the frequent ringing of the old-fashioned service bells together with the sound of footsteps in and outside the house.
Following his father’s death in 1892, ‘Harry’ Foyster Bull took over as Rector. He and his family seem also to have accepted the ghosts as part of the family, even to the point where he would spend hours on some nights sitting in the summer house in the hope of seeing the nun pass by, and the hauntings and other phenomena continued as before. The death of Harry Bull in 1927 ended a family occupancy of the rectory which had started sixty-five-years earlier. During that time, the house had already earned the title of The Most Haunted House In Britain, and the stories which were by then circulating appear to have discouraged many priests from taking up the Borley living.
It may have been that the relationship which developed over the years between the Bulls and the ghosts was one, if not of affection, of mutual toleration. If that was the case, then matters came to a head after the Revd. G. Eric Smith was appointed Rector in the autumn of 1928. So bad was the amount and the nature of psychic activity that he and his family experienced, they were driven out nine months later, though they stayed on in lodgings in Long Melford for a few months after that.
Once again the rectory became empty for a short while until a cousin of the Bulls, the Revd. Lionel A. Foyster, became Rector at the end of 1930. He and his family lasted only fourteen months in the house and were also forced to leave by the volume and ferocity of activity in the rectory.
The Foysters were the last clergy family to live in the rectory, for the church authorities then decided that the place was not fit to be lived in. So when a new Rector, the Revd. A. C. Henning, was appointed in 1930 he took up residence in the nearby parish of Liston which had by then been joined with that of Borley.
However, it was Mr Smith who called the Daily Mirror in June 1929 and appealed for help in dealing with a range of frightening incidents in the rectory which he said included ringing bells, strange lights and sounds and the appearances of the ghostly nun and a phantom coach and pair. The following day, Harry Price and his secretary travelled to Borley.
By 1929 Harry Price had achieved national fame as a debunker of the fraudulent mediums who had proliferated after the First World War. In his younger days, he was interested in stage magic and conjuring (he was a member of the Magic Circle) and this strengthened his interest in psychic matters and gave him a special insight into the activities of fraudulent operators. He investigated a variety of phenomena ranging from ghosts, poltergeists, the Indian rope trick, the Loch Ness Monster, the Cottingley fairies and dowsing.
Over lunch on that summer day, Price, his secretary and a reporter from the Daily Mirror heard from Mr. Smith the story he had earlier told the newspaper. They also heard whispers, footsteps which followed people around the house, saw shadowy figures, doors which locked and unlocked themselves and keys which shot out of their locks.
After lunch, Price and his secretary toured the house, sealing all the doors and windows. After tea he and the reporter, Mr. Wall, stood by the summer house watching for the nun and although Wall saw a shadow moving along the Nun’s Walk, Price could not be sure of what he had seen. The two men returned to the house when a brick shot through the glass verandah roof showering them with splinters.
Another search was made of the house without result, but on their return to the hall a glass candlestick hurtled down from above and smashed at their feet and later they were pelted with mothballs, pebbles and bits of slate. Several of the old service bells began to ring of their own accord and to their astonishment they could see the pulls moving but not the person or force that was moving them. Then the keys to the library and drawing room fell to the floor.
Later that evening a séance was held in one of the rooms and during this raps were heard coming from the back of a large mirror that stood on a dressing-table. Using a code (three raps for yes, etc.), the group questioned the ‘spirit’ and discovered it to be that of Harry Bull. Finally, a cake of soap jumped out of its dish on a washstand twelve feet away.
Thus ended the first day of Price’s involvement with Borley Rectory, an association that was to continue through to his death in 1948.
Over the ensuing years, including one in which Price himself leased the empty property for research purposes, an extraordinary range of ghostly activities were recorded in and around the rectory. These included an amazing variety of ghosts, poltergeists, smells, rappings and other sounds, spirit writings and the appearance and disappearance of various objects. Very few of these phenomena were witnessed by only one person and many of them were supported by multiple witnesses.
In November 1938, the empty rectory was bought by Captain W. H. E. Gregson but it was destroyed by fire in February of the following year. In 1944 the ruins were completely demolished so that no trace of the old rectory now remains.
The Borley hauntings achieved a fame rarely equalled before or since. This mainly arose from the books and articles written by Price, a renowned self-publicist, which generated much correspondence in which previously unrecorded stories concerning Borley came to light. Price received also many theories about the hauntings, and the chief of these produced a theory about the nun and led to the discovery of what may have been her mortal remains.
In 1941 the Revd. W. J. Phythian-Adams, a Canon of Carlisle, prepared an extensive analysis of the Borley affair based upon Price’s published writings. Many of the messages given to investigators in séances and in spirit writings seemed to suggest that a young nun sought to have her body found and given proper burial.
Canon Phythian-Adams surmised that a young French nun, Marie Lairre, had been brought to Borley, possibly from Le Havre, by one of the Waldegrave family, was subsequently murdered and then buried somewhere about the grounds on which Borley Rectory was built. Having analysed all of the published evidence, he wrote to Price and suggested where he might dig for the nun’s body.
By that time, the rectory had been burned and much of the first floor destroyed, but that did enable excavations to be made in the old cellars of the building. In August 1943, to everyone’s surprise, a couple of religious medallions and parts of a female jawbone and skull were found which were thought might be the nun’s remains. These were interred in nearby Liston churchyard in May 1945.
If the remains found were those of Marie Lairre, the hauntings in the area did not stop though, undoubtedly, the destruction of the rectory removed the main focus of the trouble. Right through to the 1970s the nun was reported as having been seen on a number of occasions and ghostly footsteps heard in and around the church.
As a teenager I visited Borley in the late 50s to do an article on the rectory for my school magazine. I went one freezing cold day in January and discovered that a bungalow was being built on the site of the old rectory for the man who at that time was the church organist. While the house was being built, the couple lived in a caravan on the site. I asked his wife if they had experienced any problems, and she said that with one exception they had not. The exception occurred at midnight on the New Year’s Eve just prior to my visit. At this time, everything on a hinge suddenly opened (cupboard doors, the door to the caravan, etc.) whether they were locked/fastened or not. She said it was a very frightening experience.
Though it is said that the ghosts moved across the road into Borley Church, there have been no reliable reports of hauntings in the last few years and villagers are reluctant to discuss them, preferring that people stay away altogether. As a result, the church is not regularly open for visitors except during services and the small car park is now chained off in an attempt to discourage the vandals which have sadly damaged some of the monuments in the churchyard.
So visit Borley if you wish, but don’t expect the villagers to be pleased by your arrival. Borley’s past is an amazing chapter in the psychic history of England, but it is one that the locals definitely feel should now be closed.