Bricked Up Borley

Browsing through the Reader's Digest guide to British folklore I found the following story regarding  Chilbolton (near Stockbridge) Rectory in Hampshire:

'Chilbolton is said to be haunted by a nun. The window where her apparition most often appeared was bricked up to discourage her but, a few years ago, her ghost was again seen by two guests at the rectory. One said that he had seen a beautiful nurse gazing out of a window; the other awoke in the night and saw a nurse standing by his bed. The rector confirmed that there was no such person in the house on either occasion. In 1393 a nun named Katherine Faukener ran away from the nearby Benedictine Abbey of St Cross at Wherwell. On her return seven years later, she is believed to have been walled up alive on the site of the rectory which was then a nunnery.'
Reader's Digest Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain (1973) p.174. See also Wendy Boase The Folklore of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (1976) p.78.

This story once more brought to mind Borley Rectory, with it's bricked up ground floor window and peeping nun. The window can be seen in the photograph at the top of this post. Here is Harry Price's rather repetitive description from The Most Haunted House in England (1940 pp.17-18):

'speaking of windows, the first thing a visitor notices when he enters the carriage drive from the road is a large bricked-up window to the left of the entrance porch ... The disfigurement quite spoils the appearance of this side of the house and one immediately wonders why it should have been done ... I began to make enquiries and from three different sources learned that the window was bricked up because the spectral 'nun' ... habitually peered into the room from the drive thus annoying the Rev Henry Bull, who had the window removed and the aperture bricked in.

Pursuing my enquiries I then heard that the window was not blocked up because of the too inquisitive 'nun', but because people passing along the road could see the Bull family having their meals. Candidly, I do not believe that this was the reason at all, because (a) very few people use the road past the rectory, and fewer must have used it at the time when the window was removed; (b) the carriage drive is so wide ... that it must have been a sheer impossibility to see through the window from the road, as I have proved to myself by trying to peer through the other windows on the side of the house; (c) the hedge and belt of trees separating the drive from the road form an impenetrable screen that would discourage anyone trying to peer in at the window, even if the drive were not so wide. In any case a light curtain or blind would have prevented any person from seeing what was going on in the room. That is, any normal person. But it might have been thought that such a screen would not prevent an entity such as the 'nun' from peering into the room. Whatever the reason, a drastic remedy was decided upon, and the window was strongly and permanently bricked up, as it remains today, completely spoiling this side of the house. The illumination of the room by day is obtained only from the bay window overlooking the lawn.'

The Haunting of Borley Rectory, A Critical Survey of the Evidence by Dingwall, Goldney & Hall (1956) pp.25-26 is characteristically more critical:

'In The Most Haunted House in England Price discusses the mystery of the bricked-up dining room window at the rectory which, it is suggested, was blocked by the Rev. Henry Bull (and therefore prior to 1892) to prevent the nun peering through the window from the drive. No testimony is available other than the mute evidence of the window itself, or if it is, none is offered by Price. The rectory was built rather close to the road and was separated from it by the narrow drive only and there would probably have been some lack of privacy if this window had not been bricked up.

The room was adequately lighted by another large window facing the lawn and had indeed the same amount of natural light from this one window as the drawing room, which was identically illuminated. The other principal rooms on the ground floor, the drawing room and the library, had complete privacy from passers-by (facing on to the lawn as they did) and the bricking-up of the small dining-room window merely made this room uniform with the other two in this respect.

Indeed Price admitted in MHH (p.18) that when pursuing his enquiries in Borley he was told that the window was bricked up "because people passing along the road could see the Bull family having their meals"; but adds that he does "not believe that this was the reason at all." It is curious that he does not disclose that this explanation was made by Mr Walter Bull who, as a son of Henry Bull, was presumably entitled to speak with some authority.'

So, was the window bricked up because a ghostly nun persisted in peering through it, or because it was close to a road where curious passers-by might spy the inhabitants eating and relaxing?

As with many ghost stories, no dates are provided for the Chilbolton haunting, but the resemblance to  Borley is noteworthy - does it predate Borley or does it originate from the popularity and influence of Price's book? Are there a number of similar tales of ghostly bricked-up windows around Britain that post-date the Window Tax (1696-1851)?

Another coincidental aspect of bricking-up concerns the unfortunate nun. Legend at Borley tells of a novice from the nunnery at Bures - 7 miles south of Borley on the River Stour (there is no evidence for the nunnery) - attempting to elope with a lay brother from the monastery on the site of the Rectory (no archaeological or written evidence has ever been discovered for this claim). Their escape in an anachronistic coach was thwarted and she was captured and returned to her nunnery to be bricked up alive as her cruel punishment - the monk was hanged. It may be her ghost that haunted Borley and was seen on the 'Nun's Walk' - see The Borley Rectory Companion (2009) 'The Phantom Nun' pp.230-233.

Bricking up of nuns was a motif (often anti-Catholic) in popular literature such as Sir Walter Scott's poem Marmion (1808) and one also recalls Poe's tale The Cask of Amontillado (1846) in which the Italian nobleman Fortunato is immured in the wine cellar of the narrator Montresor for some unspecified insult (for more see here).

A well-researched online essay by Rene Collar that deals with immurement, especially in the work of H Rider Haggard (author of King Solomon's Mines and She - who incidentally lived in St Leonards; the house - North Lodge - is still there, with a plaque) 'They Walled Up Nuns, Didn't They?' can be found here. It references a book called Walled Up Nuns & Nuns Walled In by W Lancelot Holland, see here.

This would appear to be another example of Harry Price's entertaining but speculative use of local legend and folklore to bolster his arguments for the haunting of Borley Rectory.

Gef Finally Returns

I announced the imminent publication by Strange Attractor of Christopher Josiffe's book about the remarkable case of Gef the Talking Mongoose some months ago.  Finally, it will be published next month.  There will be a launch (thanks to London Fortean Society) at Conway Hall on Tuesday 6 June.  See here.

Much as I would like to go, I probably won't be able to.  However, I am trying to arrange a talk by the author at Westminster Reference Library for June or July, where copies will also be available to buy.

THIS FREE EVENT CAN NOW BE BOOKED THROUGH EVENTBRITE HERE

Gef, of course, is yet another sensational case associated with Harry Price (see posts passim).  I'm not writing a book about Price, by the way, he just seems to crop up in most of the research I do these days.

Talking of which, today I found a very useful and diligently researched site dedicated to the lesser-known initiates of the Golden Dawn.  See here.  Unsurprisingly, Sax Rohmer (Arthur Sarsfield Ward) does not appear in the list, despite claims that he was a member.

Piltdown Man, Charles Dawson and Harry Price

Miles Russell Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson & the World’s Greatest Arcaheological Hoax (2003)

An absorbing study that concentrates on Charles Dawson, the man who found the so-called Piltdown Man ‘missing link’ in a gravel pit near the hamlet of Piltdown in West Sussex.  Having read this book most readers will have little doubt that Dawson was solely responsible for the Piltdown Man hoax, despite the fact that many others have been accused over the years, most ridiculously Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (although according to this book his novel The Lost World, published in 1912, may have played a part in inspiring the deception).  Russell lays out his case carefully and methodically, cannily preparing the ground with a lengthy and detailed examination of Dawson’s ‘antiquarian’ collections, parts of which he exhibited in the years before Piltdown.  Almost every piece examined is found to be a fake, of dubious provenance, or a (deliberate?) misinterpretation – tellingly some of these pieces were claimed by Dawson to provide a ‘missing link’ between species or advances in technology.

There are many connections with Hastings (about thirty miles from Piltdown) - Dawson lived in St Leonards as a boy and many of his remarkable ‘finds’ were supposedly dug up in the surrounding area.  He wrote a detailed history of Hastings Castle and worked on a dig that cleared and mapped the ‘secret’ tunnels under the castle.  Yet again, all was not what it seemed: Dawson claimed that as an eight-year-old boy he had seen strange shadowy marks on the walls of one of these tunnels when he had been shown round by the proprietor.  

Much later in life he recalled that the marks strongly resembled the shapes of two men standing against the tunnel walls in close proximity to metal staples to which they could have been manacled (he made a drawing), thus his conclusion was that these tunnels had to be ‘dungeons’, a name which has stuck to this day (rather than the cellars and storage areas which they most likely were).   Dawson was fond of dungeons and had one constructed at his Lewes house, Castle Lodge, which he acquired in 1904 from the Sussex Archaeological Society (he was a member) in highly dubious circumstances, resulting in his being virtually ostracised (remarkably, the massively publicised Piltdown discoveries were not mentioned in the society’s journal). 

It does seem surprising these days how readily Piltdown Man was accepted by the scientific community – there were some naysayers at the time, but they received little support.  Russell explains how Dawson had motive and means – one witness claims to have discovered him one day in his solicitor’s office experimenting with discolouring bones (!).  Palaeontologist Arthur Smith Woodward would appear to have been a ‘useful idiot’ (rather than part of the hoax) for Dawson in the authentication of the remains.  There is also the hoaxer’s standard modus operandi: he conveniently produced what the scientists of that time were eagerly hoping to find.  Nationalism also entered into events, as previous finds of early man had been on the continent.  Finally England could claim its own spectacular discovery – it’s significant that Woodward’s book was called The Earliest Englishman (not published until 1948 – the hoax was only uncovered in 1953).

For me, an intriguing aspect of the story is Dawson’s possible links with Harry Price (see previous posts), who began his quest for recognition and publicity through a series of apparently important archaeological finds within a short distance of his house in Pulborough.  According to Richard Morris in Harry Price The Psychic Detective (2006):

‘It is absolutely conceivable that Dawson and Price worked together.  They had plenty of opportunities to meet each other, as both were active in the Sussex Archaeological Society and were members of the Royal Societies Club, that most prestigious social club of scientists and industrialists.  Furthermore Price and Dawson would have shared patrons and supporters. (p.32)

Unfortunately, Morris does not produce any evidence, such as correspondence, for their friendship or cooperation.

Dawson and Price both craved academic credibility: Dawson was the more impressive in that, despite having never attended university and holding down a job as a solicitor in Uckfield (the firm is still there), he possessed a lively and inquiring mind and could lecture on a wide variety of subjects well beyond archaeology; he was a member of the Society of Antiquaries.  Much of Price’s knowledge of archaeology was bluff or plagiarised.  Price enjoyed incredibly good fortune with his archaeological discoveries, many of which were found on the surface, so he didn’t even have to get his hands dirty.  An unusually well-preserved Roman statuette of Hercules was pulled out of the river bank at the end of his garden.  He was eventually caught out after a Roman silver ingot, ‘which I picked up in 1909 on the surface of a ploughed field on top of park Mount, Pulborough’ was proved to be a fake.   It bore a mark which indicated that it may well have dated from the period of Honorius at the very end of Roman occupation, making it even more significant.  Coincidentally, Roman bricks found by Dawson at Pevensey Castle and exhibited in 1907 also bore a mark of Honorius – they too were later proved to be fakes.

If anyone reading this is aware of closer links between Price and Dawson I would be interested to know.

Harry Price in Battersea

Yesterday, as I was in the vicinity, I managed to get to Eland Road in Battersea, south west London, to take a photograph of the house which in 1928 was home to the mysterious 'Battersea Poltergeist', which garnered considerable publicity at the time and drew large crowds to the street.  It was investigated by Harry Price and his account appears in his book Poltergeist Over England - it's available online here, so I don't have to go into further detail.  A photo of the house in 1928 and in 2005 can be found here.  Interesting that the poltergeist appeared keen on throwing soap, a feature of the Borley 'poltergeist' sixteen months later, in which Price also played a major role.

The remarkable activity that greeted the arrival of Price at an investigation is also commented on in an extract from SPR files about the Battersea case, written by Dr V J Woolley assisted by a  Mrs Brackenbury, reproduced in The Haunting of Borley Rectory (1956) pp.73-4:

'Mr Price accompanied by two reporters had paid them another visit ... Their story is that he and his friends were shown into the front sitting room to wait.  There was not much furniture in this room but on the mantel shelf there were two metal figures of children.  Mr Price and his friends were taken all over the house and finally into the kitchen.  The two reporters turned to leave, Mr Price was behind them with Lilla and Mrs Perkins standing near him, when suddenly something dropped to the floor, they say it fell with a heavy thud.  They all hunted but could find nothing until Mr Price picked up a shoe and found inside it one of the two little metal figures that had been in the front room on his arrival ... After he left they asked me if I thought he was a medium and attracted things to him.  I said it was not probable.  They complained things always seemed to happen when he was there.'

Harry Price at Pulborough

Last week on the same excursion to West Sussex to visit Lyminster we also went to Pulborough to see the house - Arun Bank (no blue plaque) - in which Harry Price lived from 1908 to 1948 and in which his wife spent most of her time while he was travelling around investigating spirits and poltergeists and having affairs.  He died there in his study on 29 March 1948 from a massive heart attack - he was working on a third book about Borley Rectory, which was never finished or published.

We also went to St Mary's Pulborough where Price and his wife are buried and found the grave.  On this occasion there was a small bunch of flowers by the gravestone with a message "Dear Harry, Hope you enjoy your conversations with Gef the Mongoose."  Christopher Josiffe's long-awaited study of this extremely bizarre case investigated by Price will be available next month.  I can't wait to read it.

Borley Rectory: The Final Analysis

While we were staying in Clare, Suffolk last week I bought a copy in the local bookshop of Borley Rectory: the Final Analysis (2003), signed by the authors Edward Babbs and Claudine Mathias.  Having been primed by reading four other books on the subject I was interested to discover what this 'final analysis' might be.  It has to be said that it would be little use reading this book without having read anything else on the rectory, as the narrative is confused and omits vast amounts of material (mostly of a critical nature), although the basic threads of the story are here.  The authors claim to have written an unbiased account,  but it is very clear from the first pages that they support the idea that Borley was haunted and use a number of opportunities to attempt to discredit the work of 'scoffers' and 'cynics', especially the painstaking research undertaken by the authors of The Haunting of Borley Rectory (which admittedly isn't without its flaws, but raises many awkward questions).  Most of these consist of ad hominem arguments, rather than a detailed unpicking of accusations and documented statements.

One of their least convincing rebuttals comes in the final summing up, when the topic of the possible influence of ley lines that allegedly pass through Borley is discussed.  After a fairly long description of ley lines and the alignments that are supposed to pass through the site they pause to admit that (pp173-4) 'not everyone agrees with Alfred Watkins' theories.  One such was the late Dr Simon Broadbent ... primarily an advertising statistician but he also had an interest in megalithic monuments.  In a paper read to the Royal Statistical Society he argued against claims made for the existence of ley lines, emphasizing that the number of alleged lines was fewer than would be expected from a random distribution of locations between which lines could be drawn.'  The authors then comment: 'Dr Broadbent was using his professional skills to try to disprove the beliefs of Alfred Watkins.  However other people have reservations about statisticians and will quote Disraeli's sardonic comment: "There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics".' So that's that argument successfully dealt with then!

The book is useful in including many reports of alleged sightings made well after the rectory was seriously damaged by fire in 1939 and totally demolished in 1944.  The authors have interviewed some of the few survivors who knew the earlier participants in the story and provide background to some of the more obscure characters and places.  There are 'testimonies' of sightings of the nun, a phantom coach and other 'inexplicable' events.  However in almost all cases a supernatural or 'open-minded' rather than everyday explanation is preferred: for example, a woman finds a bracelet on a heavily overgrown grave, that eluded her a few minutes previously when she was mysteriously 'drawn' to it - must be paranormal.  In 1941 one of a party of hikers 'felt the need to answer the call of nature' and went into the rectory grounds 'in order not to be visible from the road'.  Suddenly within sight of the ruined rectory 'he became aware of a feeling of intense cold and an awful smell which reminded him of rotting vegetation' - perhaps his 'call of nature' was more pressing than he thought!  He then saw three large hissing cats which promptly vanished causing him to run back to his friends and ignore his original intention, although you would have thought his experience might have accelerated it.  And so on.

Following a great deal of anecdotal evidence a chapter entitled 'The documents and what they tell us' raises the reader's hopes, only to be dashed when they reveal that these consist of: the wills of Revs Henry and Harry Bull, an article from The London Gazette, an article written favourably about the haunting (and referencing F W H Myers) from The Suffolk and Essex Free Press from 13 June 1929, the electoral roll for 1935, a surveyor's report from 1938, two letters from the son of the owner of the rectory in 1939 Capt William Hart Gregson (suspected of arson when the building burnt down, he had been a member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists), a quote from a newspaper article supporting the authors' opinion that the SPR report was a 'dastardly attack on Mr Price when he is no longer here to defend himself' and, er, that's it.

In their 'balanced and impartial' (p.184) summing up of the case they note: 'With regard to the two books on the subject written by Harry Price, sceptics have claimed that because of his love of publicity, he altered statements to suit his own purposes, in other words, to make them more sensational.  There is an element of truth in this, but it is no argument for dismissing the entire contents of the Borley books as nonsense.'  Rather than undertake a detailed refutation of the contents of The Haunting of Borley Rectory they instead refer to a talk given by one of the authors to the SPR in 1975 (20 years after publication) after which some members of the audience criticised the author's premises and conclusions.  One member who had visited Borley on a number of occasions 'too disagreed with Mrs Goldney's emphatic views on the lack of genuineness of the Borley hauntings and it was quite clear that the majority of the audience did so as well.'   Another decisive victory for the yeasayers.  They also have this advice for 'non-believers' (p.183): 'they are entitled to their view, but we must emphasise the point that it is necessary to be careful at all times not to allow rigid disbelief to interfere with logic.'  If this is indeed the 'final analysis' it is a flawed and misleading one.

Another review can be found here.  Foxearth is very near Borley.

Borley Rectory 2

Perhaps the most damning criticism of the 'evidence' for the haunting of Borley Rectory comes from the pen of Harry Price himself in private correspondence.

Considering the later interest he claimed to have expressed in the case it is a fact that he only visited the house once during the incumbency of the Rev Foyster and his wife Marianne (1930-35), when alleged paranormal activity reached a peak, and this was enough to convince him of the bogus nature of these events.  On 15 October 1931 he wrote to Dr D F Fraser-Harris: 'Well, we went to Borley on Tuesday last, and have had two nights on the premises.  It is the most amazing case, but amazing only in so far that we are convinced that the many phenomena we saw were fraudulent because we took steps to control various persons and rooms [and] the manifestations ceased.  We think that the rector's wife is responsible for the trouble, though it is possible that her reactions may be the result of hysteria.  Of course we did not wire it to you because although, psychologically, the case is of great value, psychically speaking there is nothing in it.'

In a letter to Eric J Dingwall on 17 October 1946 he wrote: 'I agree Mrs Foyster's wine trick was rather crude [a glass of wine turned to ink in their presence, a common conjuring trick using a small pill slipped into the glass, Price himself was a skilled conjurer], but if you cut out the Foysters, the Bulls, the Smiths etc. something still remains.'  That 'something' must be a reference to the large number of reports submitted by a group of volunteers Price recruited through The Times to observe supernatural phenomena at the rectory during the period when he acquired the lease for a year between 1937 and 1938 - all volunteers were given a pamphlet explaining the types of phenomena they were likely to encounter and how to deal with them, thus priming them perfectly.  But in a letter to Gordon Glover written in February 1938 he wrote: 'As regards your various criticisms, the alleged haunting of the Rectory stands or falls not by the reports from our recent observers, but by the extraordinary happenings there of the last 50 years' thus discounting all the 'evidence'.

Despite the fact that a number of observers remarked that the rectory possessed unusual acoustic properties, owing to the house being built around a three-sided courtyard very close to a farm, that gave the impression of noises made outside being produced inside the house, Price chose to omit this from his books.  Complaints of unpleasant odours detected inside the house could also have their origins in the farm rather than some supernatural source.  On the other hand, there were many descriptions of cooking and perfume-like odours wafting through the house that were often given a paranormal origin in the absence of any logical explanation; turns out there was a factory nearby that manufactured fragrances and condiments.  Who knew?

Another significant omission was any mention of rats and mice in the house that could easily have caused the many scurrying and scuffling sounds reported.  In fact Price goes out of his way to state: 'on no occasion have I ever seen or heard the slightest indication of these rodents.  And never once has any observer, to my knowledge, mentioned rats.'  Amongst many examples that prove the contrary, given in The Haunting of Borley Rectory, is an instance when two observers wrote in their report that they: 'Heard faint "scrabbling" sounds outside which we attributed to the activities of mice.'  This is edited in Most Haunted House (p199)to read: 'while sitting in the Blue Room in semi-darkness, they heard faint "scrabbling" sounds outside' with no mention of the likely cause.  Even in MHH (p82) Price quotes an extract from Foyster's account of events, 'a terrific noise started up in the hall, which we found was due to the cat having its claw caught in the rat trap.'

The arrival of the Foysters was an unfortunate coincidence that helped perpetuate the legend thanks to Marianne Foyster's apparent faking of poltergeist-type phenomena.  This was probably inspired by the fact that immediately prior to moving to Borley, Lionel Foyster had been the rector in Scotville, Nova Scotia, Canada, five miles from Amherst, scene in 1878-79 of a famous and much-publicised outbreak of poltergeist activity centred around a young woman.  In Haunting of Borley Rectory the authors list 19 points of similarity between the events in Amherst and those at Borley, including the violent throwing of small objects, small outbreaks of fire and, unusually, messages written in pencil on walls in the house.  Price reports that over 2000 unexplained events took place during the five years of the Foyster incumbency (almost all reliant on the personal testimony of Marianne, who in later interviews admitted to faking most of the events), but as noted earlier, he only bothered to visit the rectory once.  Admittedly he was busy with other cases,  but this does seem odd.

Finally, one of the reasons for Price's reluctance to visit the rectory much after 1929 may be an incident that was said to have occurred in the early days of his involvement that year when he conducted a journalist Charles Sutton from the Daily Mail around the house.  According to Mr Sutton: 'Many things happened that night I spent in the famous Borley Rectory with Harry Price and one of his colleagues [his secretary Sheila Kaye], including one uncomfortable moment when a large pebble hit me on the head.  After much noisy 'phenomena' I seized Harry and found his pockets full of bricks and pebbles.  This was one 'phenomenon' he could not explain, so I rushed to the nearest village to phone the Daily Mail with my story, but after a conference with the lawyer my story was killed.  The News Editor said: 'Bad luck, old man, but there were two of them and only one  of you.' This story emerged soon after Price's death in 1948 and many apologists claim that it was simply made up to discredit the reputation of somebody who could not answer back.  The authors of Borley Rectory: the Final Analysis (pp80-81) helpfully point out (also with reference to another accusation of 'hocus pocus' made by a journalist from Life magazine in 1944 about the notorious 'flying brick') that the writers were 'in the employ of popular and not particularly intellectual publications' and that 'Frankly, sensationalism is part of the stock-in-trade of some newspaper reporters and although many people felt that Price was far too concerned with publicity, there is the possibility that in regard to these two alleged incidents it may have been a case of being sinned against rather than sinning.'  The hundreds of sensationalist newspaper reports written uncritically about the Borley haunting escape censure however.

Borley Rectory 1

Recently I've been reading quite a lot about Borley Rectory, so-called 'Most Haunted House in England' (which I probably first came across in one of Colin Wilson's books in the 1970s - my friend Gary Lachman, who spoke at the event on Saturday has just completed a biography of Wilson, out in the autumn).  There are a number of books on the subject - I've read about half and probably cannot face any more - but most incline towards belief rather than scepticism.

I think it's instructional to first read Harry Price's famous/notorious The Most Haunted House in England (pub. 1940) and The End of Borley Rectory (pub. 1946) and then to immediately go on to The Haunting of Borley Rectory (pub. 1956 by three members of the Society for Psychical Research).  The latter is a carefully constructed major debunking exercise of the whole Borley legend and is especially critical of Price's role in its development; the study took five years to complete and the authors had access to a vast amount of correspondence, notebooks and material in Price's archive which he donated to the University of London; they also interviewed a number of surviving witnesses.  Despite this, a handful of books have since been published that attempt to reclaim the supernatural nature of the Borley phenomena and clear Price's name.  Personally I found the SPR book to pose some fundamental problems with the evidence that I don't feel have been adequately answered by subsequent researchers who all accuse the SPR writers of conducting a personal vendetta against Price.  It has to be noted that unusual phenomena were recorded there before and after Price's intervention, but his arrival was certainly the catalyst that propelled Borley into worldwide prominence and he was eventually to benefit considerably both financially and in terms of publicity from the association.

One of the central problems with Price's account is the way that he presents the 'evidence', especially with what he often leaves out, rather than what is put in.  There are many instances of manipulation of witness accounts given in the SPR book, but I think one of the most important examples of Price's chicanery is that of the so-called 'Borley medals'.  Put briefly and according to his account in MHHE (p.59): on 5 July 1929 Price visited the Rectory with his secretary Miss Kaye and SPR member Lord Charles Hope, during their time spent there a number of 'paranormal' manifestations occurred, including 'a shower of keys ...  a small gilt medallion, such as are presented to Roman Catholic children on their confirmation; and another medallion or badge ... issued in Paris after the French Revolution.'  He adds 'many of the phenomena at Borley are connected in some way with Roman Catholicism: the "nun" and monks, the medallions; France ...and so on.'  To put this in context: in 1937 the Glanville family (Sidney Glanville assisted Price in his investigations) conducted some planchette experiments and claimed to receive communications from a French Roman Catholic nun giving the name Mary or Marie Lairre.  In her account she had come to England to be a novice at a nunnery in Bures and was murdered at Borley in 1667 and buried in the grounds of the rectory.   The medals that mysteriously appeared in 1929 would appear to provide some form of evidence for the presence of a French Roman Catholic at Borley, at least according to Price and his supporters.

However, there is one major problem: according to Price himself in an earlier account and a couple of contemporary witnesses, only one medal was found in July 1929, it was made of brass, minted in Rome c.1700 and depicted St Ignatius Loyola in what could be described as 'monkish' garb.  Price's secretary confirmed that it was this medal that appeared on that date and she was given it for safe keeping.  Lord Charles Hope in his notes of his visit described the discovery of '6 or 7 keys (I think) and a medallion with Latin words on it & the head of a monk all lying about on the bare floor.'  Price himself wrote a piece for the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in August 1929 in which he notes 'amongst the keys was a brass Romish medallion, which the rector could not identify'; the medal was also found amongst Price's Borley papers after his death.  It is never mentioned in his books about Borley.  Price was a numismatist and had a large collection of coins and medals.

Subsequent non-sceptical writers have claimed that Price made a 'simple mistake' when he came to write up his account 11 years later, substituting two different medals for the one recorded in 1929.  However, suspicion is heightened by the fact that at the time Price believed the local legend that the rectory was built on the site of a Benedictine monastery - an image of a monk found in the house would help bolster the belief (even though the medal significantly post-dated the Reformation).  When he later discovered, thanks to the local archaeological society, that there was no evidence whatsoever for the monastery, the story was conveniently changed to that of the murder of the French nun, which again seemed to be supported by the medals later described in MHHE.  Even as I write this, the notion that these medals are 'evidence' that somehow supports these theories seems absurd.  So there we have it - a simple error or an attempt to bolster up the most recent far-fetched theory about the ghosts of Borley (based on the 'evidence' of a seance using a planchette)?

There is an excellent website with a series of clear-eyed, well-researched essays written by a local author that should surely convince any doubter about the manner in which the legend of Borley was constructed and manipulated here.

Netherwood and Borley

Still in a Halloween mood I've been looking through a few ghost books in my collection and came across photographs of the notorious Borley Rectory, subject of some highly imaginative 'psychic investigations' by ghost hunter Harry Price.  I couldn't help noticing a certain architectural similarity with Netherwood - both houses were built in the 1860s.  There's also a link to Price through C.E.M. Joad who was a regular visitor to Netherwood and who collaborated with Price on a number of projects.  Photos above: top Borley Rectory; two of Joad and Price in the Brocken, complete with goat; bottom Netherwood.  Some relevant text by me below:

Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad (1891–1953) was an English philosopher and prolific writer, a socialist and a member of the Fabian Society.[1]  Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he later produced a steady stream of philosophical texts while working as a senior civil servant, until in 1930 he was appointed Head of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London.  He left his wife in 1921 and lived thereafter with a succession of lovers, introducing them all as ‘Mrs Joad’.  In his opinion sexual desire was like a buzzing bluebottle that had to be swatted before it distracted a man of intellect; he had been expelled from the Fabian Society in 1925 for sexual misbehaviour at a summer school (he did not rejoin until 1943).  Learned, opinionated, witty and a gifted explainer, through books such as his Guide to Modern Thought (Faber & Faber, 1933) and Guide to Philosophy (Victor Gollancz, 1936) Joad became this country’s foremost popularizer of that thorny subject.  He was interested in Eastern philosophy and regularly contributed to the Anglo–Indian Theosophical journal Aryan Path.  In 1932 he founded, with H. G. Wells (1866–1946) and others, the Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals. 

Joad also became involved in psychical research and from June 1934 was Chairman of the University of London Council for Psychical Investigation (not an official body of the University and not based there), whose Honorary Secretary was the controversial psychic investigator and ghost hunter Harry Price (1881–1948).[2]  In June 1932, as part of the centenary celebrations of the poet Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Price and Joad had travelled to the Brocken in the Harz Mountains (where the Devil had tempted Faust) to conduct a black magic experiment, the so–called ‘Bloksberg Tryst’, in which a goat, through the incantations at full moon of ‘a maiden pure in heart’, was to be transformed into a ‘youth of surpassing beauty’; unsurprisingly, the demonstration, which in any case was intended to show the inefficacy of ritual magic, failed.[3]  On 5^th October 1932 Harry Price invited Aleister Crowley to speak at his National Laboratory of Psychical Research at No.13 Roland Gardens, SW7.  The Great Beast delivered an erudite talk on ‘Amrita’, the ‘Elixir of Life’ while avoiding the subject of sex magick.[4]

A garrulous and gregarious figure like Joad could always be sure of receiving dinner and speaking invitations.  In his autobiography he described visiting an establishment very similar to Netherwood, although the book was published in the same year (1935) that Vernon and Johnnie took over the guesthouse:

‘I have been in the habit for many years of spending occasional weekends in the country with a couple who cultivate weekend entertainment as an art.  Very carefully they select their guests.  The chief qualification in a guest is that he or she should be a prominent person, with the reservation the kind of prominence should vary as much as possible from guest to guest and from weekend to weekend.  For example, if there are prominent politicians one week, there will be prominent painters the next.  If famous people cannot be had, they will stage a weekend consisting entirely of the relations of famous people.[5]

---

[1]  Geoffrey Thomas Cyril Joad (Birkbeck College, 1992); Kingsley Martin ‘Cyril Joad’ New Statesman and Nation 45.1154 18^th April 1953 pp.446–447; ODNB article by Jason Tomes

[2]  Paul Tabori Harry Price, the Biography of a Ghost–Hunter (Athenaeum Press, 1950), Trevor H. Hall Search for Harry Price (Duckworth, 1978), Richard Morris Harry Price, The Psychic Detective (Sutton Publishing, 2006)

[3]  Harry Price Confessions of a Ghost Hunter (Putnam & Co. 1936) pp.334–343; Morris Harry Price, The Psychic Detective op. cit. pp.155–160.  This absurd publicity stunt was witnessed by, amongst many others, Dr Heinrich Brüning (1885–1970), Chancellor of Germany, author Boris Pastenak (1890–1960) and artist Paul Klee (1879–1940)

[4]  Aleister Crowley ed. and intro. by Martin P. Starr Amrita, Essays in Magical Rejuvenation (Thelema Publications, Kings Beach CA, 1990) p.xv

[5]  C.E.M. Joad The Book of Joad, A Belligerent Autobiography [first pub. as Under the Fifth Rib 1932] (Faber & Faber, 1935) p.57