Woodchester Mansion

Illustration by Jules

If you can only imagine that romantic Gothic horror film you see on the big screen or TV, where folks stumble upon a haunted house in the forest with bats flying around with a full moon. Well this is the place!!

Photo by Jules

Name: The mansion
Locality: Woodchester, Gloucestershire GL10 3TS
Built: 1854
Owner: Conservation charities, Patron: HRH The Prince of Wales.
Grade I

The Mansions website : here

History: The mansion was built in the French Gothic revival style. It was designed by the famous architect Benjamin Bucknall, for William Leigh, using local Cotswold limestone. The work on the house took many years and in 1870, after 16 years work, the workers downed tools many of the 79 rooms unfinished.

Photo - Paranormal Places UK

The mansion then fell into a state of disrepair and dereliction, with Victorian tools scattered across the site. Visitors can still see the Victorian tools in addition to half-carved gargoyles, doors leading nowhere and abruptly ending corridors.

Photo and illustration by Jules - Paranormal Places UK

Ghostly manifestations: Headless horse, floating coffin, hooded figure, spirit of a french man, tall man has been seen outside, invisible children have been heard playing.

Ghostly anomalies: Strange banging, voices, poltergeist activity, visitors have been prodded and pushed, blue lights, someone crying.

Photo - Paranormal Places UK

After a long day searching for allegedly haunted places in the area, we came across a sign for Woodchester. I persuaded my better half to drive down the muck drive to the house. It was a long walk down and it was very hot. We spent about 20 minutes walking and ended up in some woodland, I thought to myself, the mansion must be around here somewhere, we had taken a wrong turning and got slightly lost. Then I noticed this Cotswold stone looming through the thick bushes, we had found Woodchester Mansion.  We walked back on ourselves, it was worth the walk, the mansion is your typical haunted house straight out of a Gothic horror novel.

Featured on TV Programmes

Most Haunted Live

Ghost Hunters International

The Scariest Places On Earth

Great British Ghosts

Bats in the belfry

 Greater Horseshoe bats and lesser horseshoes.

Video cover of TV series Great British Ghosts

featuring Woodchester Mansion 

Illustrations by Jules

BLAME THE BODY SNATCHERS!

No Job Too Small. No Body Too Big. No Questions Asked.

Were the Resurrectionists (body-snatchers)  a cause or influence for today's obsession with ghosts?

Back in the 1830's (late Georgian period) body-snatching was all the rage in England. Dispensing a freshly dug up cadaver to the local doc could earn a bloke 'a few bob'. Corpses of executed criminals were hard to come by, maybe only one or two were distributed for medical work per year and the Resurrectionists would get out their shovels and get to work and when the dead ran out they would murder the living.

One grieving mother of a dearly departed, sat in vigil at the graveside, guarding the site because she had heard that the Resurrection men were in the village. One night a local lad saw a shadowy figure prowling around the graves and announced that  "a ghost is haunting the cemetery!" large crowds then gathered around to find the ghost but all they found was a poor Irish woman called Anne McCarthy. Around this era, rumours of ghosts spread, railings were erected to keep out both body-snatchers and ghost hunters alike. Two young men did manage to infiltrate a cemetery and were subsequently arrested and tried for being in the churchyard 'for an unlawful purpose', they claimed that they were only looking for 'the ghost' and were discharged.

'Sack em up men'

What do you think?

If you found yourself living rough in the sleazy part of Edinburgh in the 1700's then it wasn't a pleasant time for you, you didn't lay down to sleep without keeping one eye open because a body snatcher might be lurking round the next corner. Body snatching was rife in the area and you could have been their next victim! Body snatching and grave robbing was so bad graveyards had large walls and railings built around them, doctors would pay good money for a good supply of cadavers, they also used executed criminals for anatomical experimentation. But criminals found their own sinister methods of profiteering the business by supplying medical students with fresh bodies, so fresh in-fact they were just barely alive! Burke and Hare were notorious body snatchers of the era, they had their own form of strangulation by restricting their victims breathing by covering the nose and mouth so as not to damage the body, the method was known as 'Burking'. Dr Knox paid up to seven pounds seven shillings for the bodies so he could carry out his 'no questions asked' work, easy money for the pair. When they did the grave robbing they would remove the body and replace it with tanning bark. After many years the pair were found out through rumour and Burke was sentence to hang. On January 28th 1829 Burke was hanged, over 25,000 people attended the execution, the crowded cheered 'Burke him, Burke him!!" Ironically HIS body also ended up being dissected by medical students who removed sections of his skin and bound a book with it, it is stamped on the front in gold lettering 'Burke's Skin 1829' but before dissection, Burke's corpse was put on a slab in town, a public exhibition for thousands to see and walk past at a rate of sixty people a minute. His skeleton can still be seen at Surgeon's Hall in Edinburgh along with his death mask and the life mask of is cohort Hare, but did you know, Hare got off Scot free!!

Researched and written by Jules

New movie 'Burke and Hare' (2010) directed by Jon Landis (Michael Jackson's Thriller) starring Christopher Lee and Tim Curry

What is a ghost??