Calverley Old Hall

You may also like...

2 Responses

  1. Ian Topham says:

    Re: Calverley Old Hall
    Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders by William Henderson (1879)

    The village of Calverley, near Bradford, in Yorkshire, has been haunted since the time of Queen Elizabeth by the apparition of Master Walter Calverley, now popularly called Sir Walter. It is averred that this man murdered his wife and children, and, refusing to plead, was subjected to the “peine forte et dure.” In his last agony he is said to have exclaimed, “Them that love Sir Walter, loup on, loup on!” which accordingly became the watch-word of the apparition, which frequented a lane near the village of Calverley. There is no fear, however, of meeting it at present;the ghost has been laid, and cannot reappear as long as green holly grows on the manor. My friend, Mr. Barmby, however, informs me that his grandfather, when a child, and riding behind his father on horseback, saw the apparition, and was terrified by it; while the father, to allay his boy’s fears, said “It’s only Sir Walter.” This Master Walter Calverley is the hero of “The Yorkshire Tragedy,” one of the plays attributed by some to Shakespeare.

  2. Ian Topham says:

    Re: Calverley Old Hall

    THE GHOST WORLD BY T. F. THISELTON DYER 1893

    Another instance is that of Calverley Hall, in the same county. In ‘The Yorkshireman’ for January 5, 1884, the particulars of this strange apparition are given, from which it appears that Walter Calverley, on April 23, 1604, went into a fit of insane frenzy of jealousy, or pretended to do so. Money-lenders were pressing him hard, and he had become desperate. Bushing madly into the house, he plunged a dagger into one and then into another of his children, and then tried to take the life of their mother, a crime for which he was pressed to death at York Castle. But his spirit could not rest, and he was often seen galloping about the district at night on a headless horse, being generally accompanied by a number of followers similarly mounted, who attempted to run down any poor benighted folks whom they chanced to meet. These spectral horsemen nearly always disappeared in a cave in the wood, but this cave has now been quarried away.