Chingle Hall is, in addition to being the oldest inhabited brick building, one of Britain’s most haunted structures. The Hall was built in 1260 by Sir Adam de Singleton on family land dating back to Ughtred de Singleton in 1066. It remained in the possession of the Singleton family for centuries before their relatives, The Walls, then took possession.
The home’s great room boasts wooden cross beams bearing unusual symbols. Tests were done of the wood itself and archaeologists have learned the wood came from an ancient Viking longboat.
One of the ghosts said to haunt the structure is that of John Wall, a Catholic priest during the reformation. It was necessary for him to perform his masses in secret, but eventually word got out and he was arrested and later executed in 1679. Wall’s head, through a circuitous route, purportedly now rests either on the grounds of Chingle Hall or in the house itself.
The smell of wood smoke lingers from when, in the 1950s, one of the mysterious longboat beams caught fire. More mysteriously was how it seemed to extinguish itself before erupting in an uncontrollable conflagration. Was someone watching over the Hall?
Among the ghosts reported, we find several monks, children, vague and shadowy forms, animals, a chimney sweep, Eleanor Singleton, a Cavalier, and an entity known as “The Dizzy Man”.
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