GHOSTS SOLD WITH HOUSES

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 20 June 1931, Page 16

GHOSTS SOLD WITH HOUSES

p' America a house that gets a reputation for lining haunted is a difficult one to rent or sell. Not so in England! There an authentic ghost seems to add to the value of the property. The newspapers' of England often carry a column headed “Estates and Houses, “ in which are discussed properties that are offered for sale in advertising columns. In one sense this is the well-known practice of giving a “write-up” to the advertiser; but the descriptions are so well done, so fascinating from historical and human points of view, that every one reads them for the sheer interest they hold, says an American paper. A few months ago we read that the beautiful Lakes of Killarncy, famed in song ami story, were for sale. In the same column, immediately beneath the story of the lakes, we are told of the intriguing features' of Clopton House; near ■Stratford-on-Avon. We have a sharp pen-picture of its smiling lawns

Addition to Property Value

and shrubberies, its many hints of cloak-and-sword romance. The.mellow old place has “its tragic well, it’s priest’s chamber, its Gunpowder Plot memories, bloodstained landing. and disinherited heir, to say nothing of the gruesome story of a daughter of the house buried alive.” Although, an early Margaret 'Clopton drowned herself in the “tragic well,” it is not her ghost that walks, but that of Charlotte Clopton. who in the days of Good Queen Bess was buried alive in the family vault in Stratford Church. Her spectre, known as “The Ghost Lady,” was frequently seen —so they say—gliding through the chambers and corridors of her erstwhile home. The there is Hinwick Hall, in Bedfordshire, recently offered for sale. The Livesays acquired this plaeo in IGDO. Their regime ended some fifty years ago “in a brace of mesalliances and a surfeit of ghosts.”