The Eclipse Inn, Winchester
The Eclipse Inn dates from 1540 and over the past centuries the building has had many uses including a rectory, private residence, ale house (around 1750) and from the nineteenth century an Inn. A Grey Lady has reputedly been seen several times in one of the corridors upstairs and this apparition is said to be Dame Alice Lisle of Moyles Court.
Lady Lisle was executed on 2nd September 1685 in Winchester Market Place for harbouring traitors following the failed Monmouth Rebellion. Originally sentenced to being burnt at the stake by the Hanging Judge George Jeffreys in one of the first cases brought to trail in the Bloody Assizes, King James II commuted the sentence to beheading after she made a personal appeal to him. Alice spent her last night in an upper story room of the building which is now The Eclipse Inn and stepped through a window of the building onto a specially made scaffold.
The Grey Lady reputedly walks along the corridor on which the room Alice spent her last night can be found. Lady Lisle does not apparently restrict her haunting activites to The Eclipse Inn and according to ‘Haunted England: A Survey of English Ghost Lore’ (1941) by Christina Hole, ‘Tradition says the sound of her silk dress and tapping of her heels were long afterwards heard in the corridors of Moyles Court, and that sometimes she was seen passing down Ellingham Lane a driverless coach drawn by headless horses.’
Re: The Eclipse Inn, Winchester
According to The Haunted Pub Guide by Guy Lyon Playfair (1985), the ghost is described as a tall woman in a grey dress and several members of staff had reported seeing the apparition to investigators looking into the case, Jack Hallam, Alexander and Peter Underwood.
He goes on to mention that the ghost is responsible for phantom nudging and according to Peter Underwood sounds associated with the hurried construction of something wooden have been heard. Possibly the scaffold don which she was executed.