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Haworth Hall

The mid-1960's saw the demolition of a beautiful historic house which had for 340 years stood in the Canklow Meadows area of Rotherham. Haworth Hall, seat of the Haworth family for several generations, had a haunted reputation which lives on to this day in the memories of all those who knew it.

In Elizabethan times, daughter of the house Elaine Haworth was brutally murdered by her jealous suitor Sir Herbert Vayne, who was then tried and sent to his death at York City gallows for the crime. After her death, residents of the Hall spanning several generations told of heavy footsteps and the rustle of long gowns echoing from many of the old, dark rooms which existed on the second floor of the building.

At the beginning of the 18th century, one of the house's occupants discovered a secret room behind one of the large fireplaces in the dining room. It was fully furnished, including a large bed on which the curious investigator was horrified to find a skeleton... believed to be that of William Haworth, the brother of murdered Elaine. The story of his death remains a mystery; the location of the secret room must only have been known to a select few at the time of his disappearance - until his body was stumbled across by accident, many years later.

There is a strange echo here of the much better-known story of Minster Lovell Hall, in Oxfordshire, where Francis Lovell is reputed to have fled for safety after the battle of Stoke, secreting himself in a hidden room whose whereabouts was known only to an aged and trusty servant. The retainer unfortunately died that very night, leaving Lovell to perish of starvation, only being rediscovered in 1708 when workmen making alterations broke unexpectedly into the room, seeing a skeleton in rags, seated at a table over an open book, all of which, rags, books, skeleton, and table, faded to dust with the inrush of air, before their very eyes. The two stories are so similar, perhaps they are both versions of an earlier, now lost, occurrence? A drowning at Downe Court | Beavor | Bexley | Bradford | Downe Court | England | England | England | Hall place | Hardwick Hall | Ireland | Lancashire | Norfolk | Penistone | Pontefract Town Hall | Rotherham | Rotherham | Salford | Scotland | Sheffield | West End | White Lady |