SECRET CHAMBERS AND HIDING-PLACES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Mr. Fea seems to have found a congenial spirit in your reviewer (Spectator, June 29th). People are so credulous about prieSts'-holes and such matters, and so ready to invent, that a wise man should follow the traveller's maxim and believe nothing that he hears and only half that he sees. As Woollashall (one word) is mentioned in Mr. Fea's book, I may say that I have lived there, and the secret chamber is only the odd end of a garret cut off about 1800. when a chapel was constructed out of some attics in the roof for the benefit of the family, whose head about that time turned Roman Catholic. Before that the family was Protestant, and neither secret chamber nor chapel existed,—at least, so I was told by the rector of the parish. Woollashall (not Wollas Hall, if you please,—the word is said to be a corruption of Wolves Hill) is also the scene of one of the best-known ghost-stories. I was the first tenant after the ghost was started. He was such a success that he drove the tenants (one of whose visitors invented him) in whose time he first appeared back to their own home, and kept the place unlet three or four years, but I never had the slightest trouble, nor have, I believe, my successors. Curiously enough, the ghost, however, is still believed in round Malvern, and I have been shown his photo- graph, taken within the last two or three years by a young lady who was unaware that he had been laid some time.—I
Previous page
