Burton Agnes Hall: maps

from an OS map of the 1890s

OS Grid reference: TA 102 632;
Latitude and longitude: 54.05299 -0.31816

Burton Agnes Hall: some photos and more ghostly tales

From 'The Lady of Burton Agnes Hall - a ghost story of to-day' written and illustrated by Leonard Willoughby, in the Pall Mall Magazine, April 1906.

 In traditional tale, "As [Anne] neared St. John's Well she noticed two beggars lying on the grass by its side..." Also, "Her hand was at once seized, and an attempt made to draw off the ring, which caused the now thoroughly frightened Anne to shriek for help. "Stop that noise!" shouted the bully, dealing her at the same time a murderous blow on the head...

One Yorkshire chronicler, a few years ago, gave a personal experience of a correspondent who spent a night at the hall. He refers to the fact that some forty years ago John Bilton, a cousin of his own, came from London on a visit to the neighbourhood. Matthew Potter, a gamekeeper on the estate, residing at the hall, invited Bilton to spend th enight there. He mentioned, however, to his guest that the house was hauntedd, and that if he was frightened he should sleep elsewhere. Bilton, who was something of a daredevil, replied, "Afraid! Not I! I care not how many ghosts there may be in the house, so long as they do not molest me."

Potter told him of the skull and portrait of "Awd Nance" on the stairs and asked if he would like to see it  - the skull not just then being in the house. They passed to where the picture is hangin, and Potter held up the candle to show it. It was immediately extinguished, and could by no means be relit. Occupying the same bed, Bilton, unlike his bedfellow, lay awake, thinking in a sorely puzzled frame of mind over the tale of the skull, the extinguishing of the light and the impossibility of lighting it. About half an hour after, he heard a shuffling of feet outside the door, which he took to be made by the servants retiring to bed. But the sounds continuing and increasing, he nudged his befoellow and said, "What the deuce is all that row about?"

"Jinny Yewlats" (owls), replied his companion sleepily, and, yawning, went to sleep again. The noise now becoming uproarious, and as if ten or a dozen persons were rushing in and out of rooms and banging doors with great violence, he gave his friend another nudge, exclaiming, "Wake up, Matty! Don't you hear that confounded row? What does it all mean?"
"Jinny Yewlats," muttered Matty.
"Jinny Yewlats can't make such an infernal uproar as that," insisted poor Bilton.
Matty, now more awakened, listened, and said, "It's Awd Nance, but ar nivver taks nay notice tiv her," and he rolled over and snored again contentedly.

The staircase on which the painting hangs.

After this the fun grew fast and furious, a struggling fight seemed to be going on outside, and the banging of the doors reverberated in the passage like thunderclaps. He expected every moment to see the door fly open, and "Awd Nance" with a troop of ghosts come rushing in, but to his great relief no such thing happened, and after a while the noises ceased.

Now this John Bilton declares - and he was a fearnought, and a thorough disbeliever in the supernatural - that he never passed so awful a night before in  his life, and would not sleep another night in the place if her were offered the hall itself for doing so. Mr. Ross, the narrator, concludes by adding, that John Bilton was a thoroughly truthful man, who might be implicitly believed, and that he had the narrative from his own lips on the day following his strange experience.

The house is now at peace, for the skull is bricked up in a dark room behind the great screen in the Saloon; and no doubt, so long as it is allowed to remain undisturbed, so long will the inmates and guests of Burton Agnes Hall go undisturbed and unterrified.

Burton Agnes - critical of retellings (aka preposterous trash).

A certain class of scribblers have no mercy on crude village tradition, superstition and legend when they sit down with the design of making "capital" out of what they have not investigated. Modern book-legends are rarely genuine, for they have been copied and embellished to each re-writer's own liking; and if you inquire about the legend in the place where it originally sprang from you may get many different versions; or, as often as not, the natives know nothing about what has been ascribed to them.

In a recent Christmas Number of a lady's magazine appeared an account of "The Yorkshire Ghost Story of the Screaming Skull of Burton Agnes Hall," which was said to be "weird and uncanny enough to satisfy the most morbid craving for the horrible." The whole story was, of course, preposterous trash, and it melts away as soon as the limelight of history is turned upon it. As for the plain skull tradition, which deserves no undue prominence in literary pages, the Rev. Carus Vale Collier, F.S.A., of Burton Agnes, convinces me that it is a good story to tell visitors.

Not a few old village folk can remember their grandparents or godparents telling them about seeing the skull placed in Squire Boynton's entrance-hall in a glass case.

[...]

We have been told by those who profess to know that it is guarded by the Boyntons as a piece of sacred property. I think I hear the present owner of Burton Agnes saying to me:-- "Perhaps no living person has seen this skull nor does anybody seem to have an intelligent idea where to look for it."

Anne Griffith is an imaginary character altogether; so how did the skull story arise? The crest of the Griffith family was a female head, which occurs many times on the spouts of the hall; also on Sir Henry Griffith's tilting-helm in the church. "Undoubtedly," says my correspondent, Rev. C.V. Collier, F.S.A., "this is the origin of the tradition about Anne Griffith or 'Awd Nance Boynton' (no matter which) losing her head. When Francis Boynton came into the property after his  maternal uncle's demise the female head of the Grifffiths would be replaced with the Boynton goat; and this would, of course, be looked upon as a bad omen by the Burton Agnes folk."

There is another local tradition, this time respecting the griffin at the foot of Sir Henry Griffith's monument in the church. It is supposed that the fabulous eagle-lion which this carveing professes to memorialise once haunted the forest near Burton Agnes, and would at times steal forth into broad daylight and pick up succulent maidens or village children, carrying them off to his lair and feeding on their limbs. Sir Henry Griffith went forth to annihilate this monster, but he only succeeded in cutting off its beak. If you doubt this story you are shown the beakless eagle-like head on Sir Henry's tomb.

Leeds Mercury, Saturday 3rd January 1903.

Burton Agnes Hall image

... At last the late Sir Henry Boynton, father of the preesent owner, Mr. Wyckham Boynton, had the head cemented up behind the great screen in the hall, and here it rests. Behind the beautiful carved screen on the left of the picture the skull is bricked in.

From The Bystander, Wednesday 24th November 1909.

Burton Agnes Hall - another legend

[The screaming skull] is not the only eerie legend about the Hall. In the grounds is a figure of Discobulus. A generation or so ago the villagers believed that on the stroke of midnight this figure moved; but no one seems to have the courage to test the truth of the legend.

From the Leeds Mercury, reprinted in the Driffield Times, Saturday 29th April 1899.

Burton Agnes Hall. Where is the skull?! Plus ghosts...

 "I don't know where the skull is," said Mr. Marcus Wickham-Boynton. "It's true my mother liked to think she had seen ghosts, but my father never saw or heard anything, and I've never seen or heard anything.
"My grandfather, Sir Henry, is supposed to have bricked up the skull somewhere in the house, over 60 years ago, but where it is I haven't a clue. Nor has anybody else. In fact there's no record or real evidence that the skull ever existed at all."

So far as I have been able to discover, the last real link with the skull of Burton Agnes Hall, near Driffield, was a bricklayer's labourer, who died some years ago. He worked for the bricklayer who did the actual bricking-up job inside the hall for Sir Henry. The labourer wasn't allowed inside the hall on that occasion, and his story was that not even Sir Henry knew the place where the skull was bricked-up, but only the bricklayer.

Burton Agnes is regularly open to the public, and to see the portraits alone is worth the price of admission. One group is of the three Griffith sisters, in 17th-century ruffs and farthingales, who built the hall in the reign of Elizabeth I. From left to right they are Margaret, Frances and Catherine (otherwise Anne). Anne is almost entirely in black. Whether black was her habitual garb, or whether the group was done after her death, I don't know. She stands slightly hunched, with long arms dangling, and an expression of peculiar intensity. Hers was the skull of Burton Agnes Hall in life.

These wealthy sisters were coheiresses of the estate in Elizabeth's time. They decided that the old hall, dating back many centuries, was out of date, and they replaced it with a magnificent mansion designed (it is said) by Inigo Jones and decorated in part by Rubens. Anne was wrapped up in the new house. It was never out of her thoughts, and even when it was finished she was always devising little additional touches. She seemed to live for the house. You can believe this when you see her portrait. There is something intense and possessive about her. Perhaps she put her soul into this monument of grandeur, which is an unwise thing to do.

In those days Yorkshire was infested by ancesteros of our modern tramps, known as Wold Rangers - mendicants who had formerly been fed and roughly lodged at the gates of the monasteries, but who had in the years succeeding the dissolution of the religious houses grown desperate. One day when Anne was out with no better company than a pet dog she was approached by two of them. She gave them money, but they wanted a ring from her finger, which she defended. Whereupon she was knocked senseless with a cudgel. She was found and carried home but died after five days. In her last conscious intervals she besought her sisters to sever her head from her body and preserve it within the walls of the mansion she had loved.

This was not done. She was buried in the family vault. Disturbances arose in the house. There were mysterious thumps and crashes. Doors slammed unaccountably. The house resounded with weird and inexplicable noises, and the corridors echoed at night with groans. The two sisters reopened Anne's coffin. There is a ghastly story that the head had by some mysterious agency been severed and was already a grinning skull, although the rest of the corpse was as yet untouched by decay. Anyway, when the skull was installed in the Hall, no more supernatural manifestations occurred.

Or not for a long time. When time had elapsed for the ancient tale to become discredited, a maidservant one day threw the skull out upon a passing farm-cart. The horse was literally struck rigid. All the whipping in the world would not move it, until the terror-struck maid disclosed what she had done, and the skull was taken inside again.

When the Boynton family succeeded to the estate they had the skull buried in the garden, but there was no luck about the house until it was restored to the house. "Owd Nance," as the countryfolk styled her, had vindicated her wishes again.

There are people at Burton Agnes today who will tell you confidently where the skull was bricked up by the late Sir Henry's bricklayer, but unfortunately none of them tells you the same thing. Some say it was in the upper wall of the large hall of the house. Others say it was behind the fireplace of the Ghost Room.

The Ghost Room is behind a door in a corner of the first landing as you go up the main staircase. It is not normally open to visitors, but they are very obliging at Burton Agnes, and will allow you to see it on request. There is a four-poster bed with a canopy, and if you examine the doors carefullly you detect 17th Century iron hinges beneath the modern paintwork. Carpet and coverlet and hangings are all in shades of green, which may account for the faintly chilly atmosphere. This, they say, is the room where Anne died, and this, they say, is a room where modern guests sleep uneasily. A guest who, knowing nothing of the ghost story, occupied the room for the races said he wouldn't sleep there again for the winner of the St. Leger. Those who know the story shun the room, although it is one of the best bedrooms in the house.

One prospective guest insisted that he should sleep there. If there was any ghost he wanted to see it. But the night before he was due he rang up and cancelled his visit - no doubt for reasons entirely unconnected with the ghost. Mrs. Cicely Wickham-Boynton (mother of Mr. Marcus), who died in 1947, firmly believed that the ghost of Anne was there to be seen. One night a guest sitting next to Mrs Cicely at dinner was surprised by a woman in an unusual dress standing a little behind the two chairs. She took her for a maid, but when she looked again the figure had gone. "Where did you get that beautiful old dress for the maid?" the guest asked Mrs Cicely. "Oh," said Mrs Cicely, "that's not one of the maids. It's an old friend of ours."

From the Yorkshire Evening Post, Saturday 17th October 1953.

Burton Agnes Hall, extra details of hiding place

Centuries ago, the Hall came into possession of three sisters, co-heiresses of Sir Henry Griffith. One day, the youngest, Anne, when going to visit the St. Quintins, of Harpham, was attacked by two Wold Rangers, roving mendicants, who struck her with a cudgel and stole her heirloom ring.
[...] Formerly the skull was kept on a table in the Great Saloon, but was later built in behind a carved screen from Barmston.

This World of Ours. Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, Monday 7th December 1936.

Burton Agnes Hall, East Yorkshire

By Perigord Grailstone.

Some years ago there was quite a stir in the neighbourhood of Burton Agnes Hall, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, owing to the worthy Baronet who owns the property removing a skull which had been in the home of the Boynton family from "the days whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary."

The present Baronet, however, thought the skull had occupied its position long enough, and had frightened servants and page boys into fits for as many years as such a weird relic ought to do. Having thoroughly settled his mind on this point, he called in his gardeners and instructed them to remove the relic of his ancestors. They did so, and duly buried the skull in the garden.

Strange to relate, that no sooner was this done than dismal, unearthly noises were heard by night. The cries issuing from the vicinity of the skull were, in fact, fearful in their intensity; in the daytime, ever after the burial of the relic, accidents of all kinds took place, and everything in and about the hall went wrong. The servants were simply frantic, and threatened to leave in a body. The more superstitious, in fact, had already left.

The remaining scion of the house of Boynton saw that unless he did something to appease the superstitious feelings of his household he would be left alone; so he made the best of a bad job and ordered his niece to replace the skull in its original resting-place. The relic was dug up, and consigned to a cupboard in the hall, right on the spot it formerly occupied, and by way of a trial it was walled in. To this mode of procedure the skull evidently had no objection, for peace has reigned in the hall ever since.

Yorkshire Gazette, Saturday 28th June 1890.

Burton Agnes Hall, East Yorkshire

There are told of certain houses many weird skull stories, the popular idea being that if any impious hand should be foolish enough to move, or in any way interfere with, such grisly relics, death and misfortune will inevitably overtake some member of the family. I had heard so many stories of screaming skulls in various parts of England that I determined to find some haunted skulls myself - or the people who have seen them.

I put an advertisement in the newspapers... "Will anybody who can give me information about haunted skulls please send particulars or telephone me.." The advertisement produced some surprising letters, and some bizarre telephone calls. One voice said: "If you want to hear all about a famous haunted skull come to Burton Agnes, near Driffield, Yorks. This village has been mixed up with the mischievous habits of a haunted skull for 300 years. It still breaks loose occasionally and goes spinning along the lanes like a travelling humming top. Everybody here calls it 'Owd Nance.' It plays bowls with itself; and puts up bottles in a row and throws itself at them with terrific gusto... chuckling and screaming all the time."

Now it isn't often that you hear of a skull which has remained "active" for 300 years. This telephone message was therefore of particular interest. I decided to investigate. Burton Agnes is a very beautiful spot possessing sturdy cottages, a hoary twelfth century Manor House and a stately Hall built in 1598. It has a magnificent old church, containing several tombs of the Boynton, Griffiths and Somerville families. Members of the Boynton family have lived at the "new" Burton Agnes Hall for three hundred years.

About "Owd Nance." Well, it all started in the days of Sir Mathew Boynton, who was enrolled a baronet in 1619. He married the daughter and heir of Sir Henry Griffiths of Burton Agnes - thus the Hall passed to the Boynton family. A painting of the three Miss Griffiths, daughters of Sir Henry Griffiths, may be seen in the small hall at Burton Agnes. This portrait introduces the original owner of the skull - "Owd Nance" - who is the spirit which haunts this ancient mansion. The skull of the lady sat grinning on a table in the great hall for some hundreds of years, and at times it caused "most diabolical disturbances," resenting any attempt to bury it or even hide it in a cupboard.

One of the girls, Anne, was brutally attacked by robbers and died as a result of her injuries. She was buried in the church of Burton Agnes. Before she died, she said: "Never shall I sleep peacefully in my grave in the churchyard unless I, or a part of me at least, remain here in our beautiful home as long as it lasts. Promise me this, that when I am dead my head shall be taken from my body and preserved within these walls. Here let it for ever remain, and on no account be removed. And make it known to those who in future shall become possessors of the house that if they disobey this my last injunction, my spirit shall, if so able and so permitted, make such a disturbance within its walls as to render it uninhabitable for others so long as my head is divorced from its home."

Her sisters, to pacify her, promised to obey her instructions, but without any intention of keeping the promise, and the body was laid entire and unmutilated under the pavement of the church. About a week after the interment, as the inhabitants of the Hall were preparing one evening to retire to rest, they were alarmed by a sudden and loud crash in one of the upstairs rooms. The two sisters and the domestics rushed up together in great consternation, but after much trembling came to the conclusion that some heavy piece of furniture had fallen. The men servants, of whom there were two in the house, went upstairs to ascertain the cause of the noise, but were not able to find anything to account for it.

Nothing more occurred until the same night in the following week, when the inmates were aroused from sleep in the dead of night by a loud banging of doors. Things went from bad to worse. The noises took place on the same night of the week that Anne had died, and then the sisters remembered her dying words, and their promise that some part of her body should be preserved in the house; also her threat that if her wish were not complied with she would, if she were so permitted, render the house uninhabitable for others, and it appeared evident that she was carrying out her threat.

The question then was: What was to be done in order to carry out her wish! A clergyman suggested that the coffin should be opened to see if that could throw any light on the matter. This was done the following day, when a ghastly spectacle presented itself. The body lay without any mark of corruption or decay, but the head was disengaged from the trunk, and appeared to be rapidly assuming the semblance of a fleshless skull. This was reported to the ladies, who, although terrified at the idea, agreed to the suggestion of the vicar that the skull should be brought to the house. So long as it was allowed to remain undisturbed on the table where it was placed, the house was not troubled with visitations of a ghostly nature.

Many attempts have since been made to rid the Hall of the skull, but without success; as whenever it has been removed the ghostly knockings have been resumed, and no rest or peace enjoyed until it has been restored.

R. Thurston Hopkins, Aberdeen Evening Express, Monday 21st December 1953.