Lady Leonora began documenting spectral sightings at her 13th-century home as early as 1895. Two hundred miles north of Raynham is Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, the former home of American-born Countess Leonora Tankerville. She wrote: ‘I must confess I believe in ghosts and I have for many years lived in a definitely haunted house.’ She was neither the first aristocratic homeowner to hold such beliefs, nor the first to write about them. Readers may be familiar with this image, but most will not know that, less than a year before it was taken, the incumbent lady of the house, Gwladys, Dowager Marchioness Townshend published a book of ‘true’ ghost stories.
The ethereal, veiled form they captured gliding down the hall’s main staircase is widely believed to be the fabled ‘Brown Lady’ of Raynham - the ghost of Lady Dorothy Walpole, an 18th-century mistress of the manor. On September 19, 1936, Country Life photographers on assignment at Raynham Hall in Norfolk took what is probably history’s most famous example of ‘spirit photography’. Was it really the ghost of Lady Dorothy Walpole, an 18th-century mistress of the manor? Caitlin Blackwell Baines takes a look, and tells tales of how many struggling country house owners have found that ghosts help them to stay connected to a more illustrious past.
Some 85 years ago, a picture of the fabled ‘Brown Lady’ of Raynham was taken by Country Life photographers. Country Life's Top 100 architects, builders, designers and gardeners.
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