Berkshire

Bisham Abbey was a preceptory of the Knights Templar and became, in essence, the building given to Anne of Cleeves by Henry VIII. Sir Thomas Hoby, at the time the owner of the property was custodian to Princess Elizabeth, before she became Queen Elizabeth I. It is the ghost of his wife, the Lady Elizabeth Hoby, who is alleged to haunt the house.

The haunting of the abbey seems to be very much in line with Lady Hoby’s character. She was a scholar who wrote in both Latin and Greek and composed religious treatises, and who had little pa tience with people of lesser intelligence and learning. Her son, William, was one such, in that his work was careless and untidy. His mother seems to have had a short temper and chastised him often and, one day, thrashed him so severely that he died.

Lady Hoby herself died soon after her son and her ghost was seen afterwards, coming from a bedroom washing bloodstains from her hands and clothes, using a basin that appeared to float in front of her without any means of support. The ghost resembles a por trait of her, which still hangs in the hail, but it always appears in the style of a photographic negative, black being white and white black. An old woman dressed in black and sitting in a boat, was seen by two boys returning from an evening fishing trip. Both she and the boat disappeared as the boys approached. During the night various visitors to the abbey have been woken up by the sounds of footsteps and hysterical weeping, and the noise of someone moving along cor ridors that no longer exist.

When Admiral Vansittart lived at Bisham he scoffed at the idea of ghosts until, late one night, when playing chess in the room contain ing Lady Hoby’s portrait, he finished the game and stood quietly look ing out of the window. On turning to look at the painting, he saw that the frame on the wall was empty and that the ghost of Lady HobY was in the room with him. He fled. In 1840, workmen found copybooks hidden in a wall between the joists and the skirting under a l6th.-century window shutter and these were some of the books used by the young William Hoby. The books were untidy and covered in inkblots.

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