Timberbottom's Farm, Harwood (the Skull House)

 The Inseparable Skulls.

A Haunted House Story.

(From our Correspondent).

Bolton, Tuesday.

An extraordinary story has been revived here concerning two ancient skulls. For generations, it is said, these remains have been preserved together, and any attempt to separate them has been followed by weird disturbances. Tradition says the skulls were originally kept at Timberbottom's Farm, a centureies old building, at Harwood, known locally as the Skull House. The occupants of the farm made many attempts to get rid of the skulls: they had buried them and they had thrown them into Bradshaw Brook, but on each occasion there followed unbearable disturbances at the farm, and the relics were restored to their place. 

The haunting took the form of knocking, prolonged at times for hours, and the origin of the noise could not be traced. All this was a long time ago. For many years the skulls have not been at the farm, the occupants of which believed them to have been lost; but the farm was undisturbed by the knocking.

Of late, however, it broke out again, and to such an extent that the farm dog was rendered unapproachable by terror and rage. Nothing could be done, of course, and the inhabitants had to wait until the haunting ceased, which it did as unexpectedly as it started.

The rest of the story is contained in a letter to the press from Colonel H.M. Hardcastle, who lives near the haunted farm. He states:- 

"Two skulls, those of a man and a woman, have rested undisturbed on our family Bible for 80 years. I recently took one skull to Manchester to have a silver rim put round it to preserve it, and the instant the one skull left the other the disturbances began again at Timberbottoms, a half a mile away."

The two skulls are now together again.

The Manchester Guardian, 4th January 1928.

Skull stolen from Wardley Hall (1930)

The skull of a Benedictine monk, believed to be nearly 300 years old, has disappeared from a glass case at Wardley Hall, Worsley, near Manchester, the new home of the Bishop of Salford (Dr. Henshaw).

Wardley Hall has been known for many years as "The House of the Skull," and legend has it that a furious storm arose when a maid once threw the skull into the moat. Since then the skull has been kept in a glass case on the staircase.

The glass case had been smashed.

From the Lancashire Evening Post, Wednesday 26th November 1930.

 

A stolen skull.

Legends, nearly three hundred years old, will be recalled by the news that Wardley House, Worsley, near Manchester, has been broken into, and the famous skull has been stolen from its niche in the wall at the head of the staircase. Superstitious locals in particular will now have no difficulty in tracing the gales of the last two days to their source.

This skull was the head of a Benedictine monk, Edward Barlow, known as Father Ambrose, who for many years continued the forbidden services of his church in the secret chapel at Wardley House, whose owner, Francis Downes, was a kinsman of his. In 1641 he was discovered and tried, being condemned to death at Lancaster. After the execution his head was impaled on a spike on the tower of the Collegiate Church at Manchester, and is believed to have been secretly removed by Francis Downes, who took it to his home, and preserved it there as a holy relic.

There is a story that once a servant threw the skull into the moat, taking it for the head of an animal. thereupon the most furious tempest arose, and was not stilled until the skull was recovered and restored to its former place. And there was a storm on another occasion when the then occupant of the house tried to bury the head; and eighteenth century writers declare that if the skull was as much as moved from its resting-place strange sounds were heard in the house at night, cattle pined in their stalls, and no luck attended the ventures of the dwellers at the house.

By a curious chance the house where this monk ministered three hundred years ago is to return once again to its former use, for it has been bought by the Roman Catholics of the district as a residence for the Bishop of Salford.

From the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 27th November 1930. 

 

Search for Skull.

Wardley Hall Moat to be drained.

In the hope that the skull of the Benedictine monk, Edwin Ambrose Barlow, which is missing from Wardley Hall, near Worsley, will be discovered, the moat at the hall is to be drained. When a housemaid threw the skull into the moat shortly after it was discovered in a wall at the hall in 1745, the then owner had the moat drained. 

This is the third time that the skull has been missing from the hall.

Manchester Evening News, 27th November 1930. 

 

Ghost as thief of own skull.

Village theory in grim relic mystery.

From our own correspondent, Worsley (Lancs), Wednesday.

Has some malignant fate already overtaken the thief who broke into Wardley Hall and carried away its famous "screaming skull"? For 300 years the villagers of Worsley have been dreading the day when the grisly relic of Ambrose Barlow, who was executed at Lancaster in 1641 for conducting Roman Catholic services, would vanish from its resting place in the old house. The vengeful spirit of Wardley Hall, they believe, is even now dogging the footsteps of the bold intruder, and that the removal of the skull foreshadows trouble for the villagers. Whenever the skull has been disturbed there has been an unusual happening in the village. A remarkable theory that was suggested to me today is that Ambrose Barlow himself is responsible for the theft of his skull. Stories have been told of people who saw a ghostly figure prowling up and down the corridors, and heard it carry on a conversation with the skull.

 Daily Herald, 27th November 1930.

 

Stolen Skull.

Theory that thief wished to test superstition.

The theory that the famous skull of Wardley Hall, Worsley, near Manchester, reputed to be that of Ambrose Barlow, a Benedictine monk, has been stolen to test the superstition that a calamitous happening would follow its removal is being discussed. 

Only twice before has the skull been disturbed, and each time, according to legend, its removal has been followed by calamity.

Father A.N. Barre, joint secretary to the Bishop of Salford, by whom Wardley Hall is being acquired for diocesan purposes, said he thought it likely that the thief had taken it to test the superstitious legends attached to the skull, and that the thief was "probably waiting to see if anything will happen now that the skull has been taken."

Shields Daily News, 27th November 1930. 

 

Skull Thieves.

A sensation has been caused by the discovery that the skull of the Benedictine monk, Ambrose Barlow, who was executed in 1641, was stolen from Wardley Hall, Worsley, during the week-end. the skull had reposed for many years in a glass case in a recess in the wall of the oak staircase, and was safe when workmen employed by a firm of auctioneers left the place. On their return it was seen that the case had been smashed and the skull removed.

Besides taking away the skull the intruder, or intruders, opened drawers in several of the rooms, but after having examined the contents left them intact.

The household effects of the late owner, Capt. T. Nuttall - the hall has been purchased by the Catholics of the Salford diocese for the future residence of the Bishop of Salford - are to be sold by auction.

Horfield and Bishopston Record, 28th November 1930. 

 

Sequel to return of martyr's relic.

Police search for midnight caller on bishop.

Man who carried gun.

It is now learned that the Lancashire police are searching for the mysterious man who recently returned, under unusual circumstances, the skull of Blessed Ambrose Barlow to Wardley Hall, Worsley, Lancashire, the residence of the Bishop of Salford, from where it had been stolen last November. It is understood that the police have received additional information, and, as a result, have been able to circulate some details of the man they are anxious to see.

It is also revealed that the masked man who visited Wardley Hall at midnight and asked to see Bishop Henshaw, to whom he returned the sacred relic, carried a revolver or some such firearm.

At the end of the talk the man produced the skull from a brown paper parcel, which he carried under his arm, and left as he had come. 

A report from the district states that the man sought by the police is thought to be a native of Birmingham. He is about 5 ft. 7 ins. in height, and about twenty-five years of age. At the time of the midnight visit he was wearing a fawn belted raincoat, a light cap, and a white and pink striped muffler. 

Nottingham and Midland Catholic News, 7th March 1931. 

 

A knock on the window in the night.

The Bishop, the thief and a martyr's skull.

By Kevin McGarry.

Across the wide lawns of Wardley Hall, Worsley, home of the Bishop of Salford, one night crept a man. In one hand he carried a gun and in the other something wrapped in paper. It was very late. The intruder had expected the hall to be in darkness. But a light still burned in a downstairs room. The man cursed under his breath - then crept towards the french window. Inside he saw the bishop - a tall, well-built man with a long, lean face. A young man, you would say, for such an office.

And as he sat at a bureau poring over papers, he pushed his skull-cap to the back of his thick black hair with a boyish gesture. This was Bishop Tom Henshaw - everybody called him that. Indeed, they could hardly get used to thinking of him as a bishop. Only a while back, it seemed, he had been plain "Father Tom," beloved by the scholars at St. Bede's College, Manchester, where he had been vice-rector for six years, and loved by parishioners of the churches where he had served - St Alban's, Blackburn; St. Mary's, Heaten Norris, Stockport; the Church of the Holy Saviour, Nelson; and at St. Gabriel and the Angels, Castleton, near Rochdale. Strangest claim to "our Father Tom" came from parishioners of St. Anne's, Blackburn. For it was while he was rector there in 1925 that he was named fifth Bishop of Salford - the first ever to be raised to the office direct from the priesthood. 

Suddenly the stranger made up his mind. He tapped softly on the glass - then stepped back into the shadows. The bishop looked up startled. Then he got to his feet and came towards the windows. He opened the catch. "Is anyone there?" The man stepped into the light, his face now half-hidden behind upturned coat collar. The gun-barrel glinted as it pointed towards the tall figure in the dark robe. "Keep still. I only come to give this back. Here." The parcel rustled as the man thrust it into the bishop's hands. Then he began to back away. But the bishop's voice stopped him. "Thank you, my son. I see you took good care of the skull."

He had unwrapped the paper, and now by the light from over his shoulders a skull gleamed whitely in his hand. This was the skull of Blessed Ambrose Barlow, which has just been declared authentic by the Right Rev. G.A. Beck, Bishop of Salford. Special services to allow Catholics to venerate the relic of this Benedictine monk who was executed at Lancaster 320 years ago have been held. It had been stolen from Wardley Hall while Bishop Henshaw was in residence. And he had prayed hard for its return.

Now he looked up into the muzzle of the gun. He motioned towards the man... "Come in a moment. I won't call the police." He turned and walked back into the room. He placed the skull on the bureau and examined it. The gunman was soon sitting talking to him. What was said is not known. But this scene - despite its flavour of a television thriller - actually happened.

The Bishop let the thief go free into the night. And when he gave the glad news of the skull's return to the diocese he was purposely vague about how it was given back. It was years later that he told the true story to his sister Mrs Margaret McGarry, of Westmoreland, Sale. 

She remembers many incidents from the early life of the bishop, who died in 1938. The  family lived in Hill Cottage - a house with stables attached for a thriving coal business - at the back of Tetler's Mill, near Varley-street, Miles Platting, Manchester. "He was a great scholar," says his sister. "I remember he used to take snuff to keep himself awake while studying late at night."

Bishop Henshaw was an expert motorist, too. Except on ceremonial occasions, he regularly drove his own car. As a student priest he had a motorbike and sidecar. He was driving it once through the city when he saw a crippled boy. He stopped and asked: "Would you like a trip to Blackpool?" The boy was overjoyed - and so were his parents when the young priest came to the house to get their permission. He was back in an hour or so, lifted the boy into the sidecar - and away they went to the seaside.  These were the traits which endeared Bishop Henshaw to his people. The common touch...

He was always ready with a joke too . One of his favourite stories was about seeing a small boy playing in the mud... "What are you making?" he asked. "A cathedral," said the boy. "Oh. But where's the bishop?" The boy looked up with a frown. "Bishop? Ain't got enough muck to make a bishop."

When Bishop Henshaw went to live at Wardley Hall the skull of Blessed Ambrose Barlow was in the shrine where it will remain - a small, glass-fronted cupboard let into a wall on the staircase. What led to the burglar to break in and steal it is a mystery. Did he plan to ask for a ransom - like the Goya thief? But even more intriguing is the reason he came back to the hall, obviously intent on breaking in to replace the skull... Was he perhaps "prompted" to do so? It is an explanation which is not quite as naive as it seems, in view of the history of the skull. For it had seemed to demand respect on another occasion...

After it was found in a walled-up treasure chest in the hall after the 1765 Jacobite rebellion a maid thought it had belonged to an animal and threw it into the moat... That night a furious gale lashed the house, and the head of the family, Matthew Morton, drained the moat and recovered the skull. Today it is England's closest material link with the cause of the canonisation of the Forty English Martyrs.

 Manchester Evening News, 6th October 1961.

Tresmarrow immigrations

"The Dawe family emigrated to Canada from Tresmarrow circa 1908, taking with them the ‘screaming skull’. The skull was returned to Launceston in 2001, and is now on display in the Lawrence House museum."

From  Jim Edwards on the Launcestone Then website.

The Lawrence House Museum website doesn't seem to feature the skull, though a visitor reviewing the museum on their own website (It's full of old stuff) says "Both the delights and frustrations of this collection are epitomised by the display case containing a chunk of bone which, so a label tells us, is what remains of 'The Screaming Skull of Tresmarrow' - but offers nothing of its history or nature!"

 

Tresmarrow emigrations

But if there remains but the most meagre trace of the worship of saintly relics in England, there remain tokens of what appears to have been at a remote period a veneration for the heads of ancestors or founders of houses.

Near Launceston is the ancient house of Tresmarrow that belonged to Sir Hugh Piper, Governor of Launceston Castle under Charles I. By the marriage of Philippa, daughter and heiress of Sir Hugh, the house and property passed into the Vyvyan family; then it passed to a Dr Luke, whose wife was a Miss Vyvyan. He sold it to an old yeoman farmer of the name of Dawe, and it remained in the Dawe family till about five years ago, when it was again sold.

Now, in a niche in the old buildings for centuries was to be seen a human skull. All recollection of whose it was had passed away. One of the Dawes, disliking its presence, had it buried, but thereupon ensued such an uproar, such mighty disturbances, that it was on the morrow dug up again and replaced in its recess. The Dawe family, when they sold Tresmarrow, migrated to Canada, and have taken the skull with them.

From Sabine Baring-Gould's 'Book of Folk-Lore', 1913.

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.

Parsonage Farm, Marshborough, Kent

"Parsonage Farm - In the attic of Parsonage Farm there is a shrieking skull.When the skull is moved,one room in the house screams."

From Domesday Reloaded, recorded by pupils from Cartwright and Kelsey CE Primary School in the 1980s.

Wardley Hall, Lancashire - "The Skull House" (1892)

Roger Downes, who succeeded as heir to the patrimonial estates on the death of his father, John Downes, in 1648, was the last of the family seated at Wardley. His history is not a pleasant one to contemplate. Living in an age when the people could take delight in the dissoluteness of the sovereign, he abandoned himself to the vicious courses of the time, and became one of the most profligate of the profligate court of Charles the Second. The patrimony which had descended to him was wasted in riotous extravagance, and, to use the figurative language that Johnson applied to Rochester, he "blazed out his youth and his health in lavish vooluptuousness," and brought his career to a violent and untimely end at the early age of 28. He was the roger Downes of whom Lucas speaks when he says that, according to tradition, while in London, in a drunken frolic, he vowed to his companions that he would kill the first man he met; when, sallying forth, he ran his sword through a poor tailor. Soon after this, being in a riot, which severed his head from his body, and the skull was enclosed in a box and sent to his sister at Wardley Hall.

From the Manchester Times, September 9th 1892.

"The skull," adds the narrator, "has been kept at Wardley ever since, and many superstitious notions are entertained respecting it."  The late Mr. Roby, in his entertaining Traditions of Lancashire, wrought the incidents into a pathetic story, under the title of the "Skull House." Tradition, which always delights in the marvellous, took up the story, and many and incredible are the legends which the ghastly relic of mortality had given rise to. Certain it is that from time immemorial a human skull has had an abiding place at Wardley, carefully secured in an aperture in the wall beside the staircase. According to popular belief the grim fixture is as strongly averse to removal as the miraculous skull of "Dickey of Tunstead," which caused so much trouble to the engineers when constructing the railway near Chapel-en-le-Frith.

Its rayless sockets, we are told, love to look upon the scenes of its former enjoyments, and it never fails to punish with severity those who venture to disturb or lay irreverent hands upon it. How the story originated it is impossible to say, but, though a skull whitened by long exposure, is still exhibited, it is very certain that it never graced the shoulders of young Roger Downes. Thomas Barrett, the antiquary, in his MS. pedigrees, gives the following explanation:- "Thos. Stockport," he says, "told me the skull belonged to a Romish priest who was executed at Lancaster for seditious practices in the time of William III. He was most likely the priest at Wardley to which place his head being sent, might be preserved as a relique of his martydom," and he adds, "The late Rev. Mr. Kenyon, of Peel, and librarian of the College in this town (Manchester), told me about the year 1779 the family vault of Downes in Wigan Church had about that time been opened, and a coffin discovered, on which was an inscription to the memory of the above young Downes. Curiosity led to the opening of it, and the skeleton, head and all, was there; but whatsoever was the cause of his death, the upper part of the skull had been sawed off, a little above the eyes, by a surgeon, perhaps by order of his friends, to be satisfied of the nature of his disease; his shroud was in tolerable preservation. Mr Kenyon showed me some of the ribbon that tied the suit at the arms, wrists, and ankles, ; it was of a brown colour. What it was at first could not be ascertained." The name of Roger Downes is perpetuated on a massive marble slab affixed to the wall of Wigan Church, in which his remains are interred.

From an article in the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, Saturday 14th January 1882.

Warbleton Priory, Sussex

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Waddon Farm, Dorset

Turton Towers, Lancashire

Tunstead Farm, Derbyshire

Tresmarrow Farm, Cornwall

In the farmhouse of Tresmarrow in Cornwall, in a niche, is preserved a human skull. Why it is there, no one knows. It has been several times buried, but, whenever buried, noises ensue which disturb the household, and the skull is disinterred and replaced in its niche. Formerly it occupied the gable head.

From Sabine Baring-Gould's 'Strange Survivals' (1892) in which he talks about heads and figures on gables.

Threlkeld Place, Cumbria