Ghosts of North-West England by Peter Underwood

Author:Peter Underwood [Underwood, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-28T23:00:00+00:00

Kirkham, The Fylde, Lancashire

Five miles north of Kirkham, in the parish of Medlar-with-Wesham, stands Mowbreck Hall, for centuries the home of the Westby family and the scene of a ghastly visitation: a gory head. Many people claim to have seen this singular apparition in the private chapel at Mowbreck, especially about midnight at Hallowe’en, the night that it was first seen.

Vivian Haydock was a Roman Catholic priest who was connected by marriage to the Westbys and in 1583, notwithstanding the law and the new religion of the Queen, he was robed and ready to perform Mass on the Feast of All Hallows when a vision suddenly appeared above the altar. Haydock’s son George, also a priest, was in London but in no immediate danger as far as his father knew; in fact he had been betrayed. As Haydock began to intone the words of the Mass he saw floating before him a horrifying sight: his son’s head, bruised and bleeding. Vivian Haydock collapsed with shock and died soon afterwards. His son George was already confined in the Tower and the following year he was hanged, drawn and quartered. His head was preserved for a time at Cottam Hall, the home of the Haydocks, and was then transferred to Lane End House, Mawdesley, the home of Thomas Finch who had married a Haydock, and there it remains to this day.

There are those who dispute that the head in the glass case is that of George Haydock, some maintaining that it is that of William Haydock, a Cistercian monk hanged in 1537. Be that as it may visitors to Mowbreck over the years have sometimes asserted that they have momentarily glimpsed the form of a bloodstained and dripping priest’s head hovering with gaping mouth above the chapel altar.

In the 1960s Mowbreck Hall became a country club and the proprietors were among those who asserted that they heard weird noises, unexplained footsteps and loud groans that worried them. It was also asserted that articles moved by themselves and not infrequently disappeared completely and then reappeared in a different place. The club and restaurant closed in 1970 and over a period of several years the place was nearly wrecked by vandals.

The Bell and Bottle on the Kirkham bypass has long been reputed to harbour at least two ghosts, possibly the victims of two tragedies that are supposed to have taken place here long, long ago. One ghost walks along the ‘haunted corridor’ but no one knows the circumstances that may have surrounded this death; it may even have taken place at the spot where the apparition is seen or there may once have been a room or a cupboard where now there is a corridor. The other death is said to have been that of a stable boy, accidentally kicked to death by a horse when the present restaurant was a stable, and here a wispy, half-formed figure of a sad-faced boy in old-fashioned clothes has been seen within the last few years. It

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