DEFYING A CURSE

Southland Times, Issue 22051, 26 June 1933, Page 8

DEFYING A CURSE

GHOST OF AN ABBEY. MYSTERIOUS “GREY LADY.” Celebrated for its ghost, Beckington Abbey, near Frome, Somersetshire, is soon to be opened as a roadside restaurant and dance club. Undaunted by the tradition that whoever occupies the building shall be cursed with misfortune, and live under the dreaded spell of the mysterious Grey Lady, Somerset’s most famous spectre, a sydicate of motorists has planned to “rejuvenate” the old site. After standing empty and shut up for many months, the rambling abbey, with its diamond-paned windows, ivyclad walls and crooked chimneys, is to be transformed into a palace of pleasure. Mr Percival Wheeler, of Frome, who conducted the writer through the winding corridors and panelled rooms of the old building, is in charge of the conversion. “There are certainly stories of misfortune following the abbey’s previous occupants, but we are determined not to worry about the curse,” he said. “As a matter of fact, the syndicatee hopes to open up Beckington as a club before Whitesun." A Frome resident related the story of the mysterious abbey. “Our legend says that the family which despoiled the monks on the suppression of religious houses under Henry VIII suffred hundreds of years of misfortune,” she said. “Fifty years ago the final blow fell, when they lost their property through failure of a bank. Since then every occupier has come under the spell of the monks.” One family was cursed with continuous illness. Hume Nesbitt, the author, spent hundreds of pounds on restoration work and then had to give up the abbey because of the bad fortune he had while living in it. “The Grey Lady of Beckington Abbey, the shade of a member of the family which turned out the monks, walks the sombre passages at midnight wringing her hands and sobbing,” said Mr Wheeler. The room of the Grey Lady, who is said to haunt the abbey, is being converted into a very modem drawing room. “Beckington will be known throughout the country as one of Britain’s best road houses.”