Old Soar's
"Haunted House Story"
Old Soar, Plaxtol, Kent England
Old Soar owes it’s name to the mother of Walter
Culpeper4a, Joane (Bayhall). The word “Soar” is the Norman
French for “Grief”.
The ghost of Old Soar Manor does not come from
the Culpeper Family, but is that of an 18th century dairymaid, who
accidentally drowned herself when she was pregnant.
In the 18th century the manor was owned by the Geary
Family and one of the dairymaids employed on the farm was a 17 year-old
called Jenny. She was quite pleasant, but quiet and shy, and was
regarded locally as being a simpleton. She fell in love with a
farmworker called Ted, who was ten years older than herself. He took
advantage of her feelings towards him but was not so serious himself.
At Christmas, 1775, Jenny was employed to assist in
the preparation of the food for the Geary Family Christmas Dinner. It
was during the celebrations that the family priest, drunk with ale,
stumbled into Jenny in the kitchen, as she was trying to do her work. He
dragged her into the barn where he seduced her, she being far too scared
to protest, for he was one of the gentry. Jenny became pregnant.
Midsummer came and Jenny had been totally disowned by
her father and Ted refused to have anything to do with her. She had
nobody to turn to. She could not go to “the master”, because he
would not have believed her and she would have been dismissed. There was
only one thing that she could do, and that was to visit the child’s
father.
The following Sunday afternoon, she visited the
chapel where she knew the priest would be. She heard the priest playing
the small organ and she entered and crossed the floor to the corner of
the room. The priest stopped playing and walked over to the piscina (a
basin in which the priest ritually washes his hands). One
look at the girl made him realize the reason for her visit. He was in a
dilemma. Being a Roman Catholic priest he could not marry the girl, even
if he had wanted to, and at the same time, if it was to become known
that he was the father of the child, he would be defrocked. When he
learned that Ted no longer wanted to have anything to do with her, he
advised her that she should find another boyfriend and marry him for the
sake of the child. After that bit of hypocritical advice he left the
chapel.
Jenny felt faint with hunger, for she had not eaten a
morsel for days because of all her worries. The room began to spin and
she rose giddily and went over to the piscina, think that a little water
would help her. She fainted, and in doing so struck her head on the side
of the bowl and when the priest returned he found her dead. Having
knocked herself unconscious she had drowned, ironically, in two inches
of “holy water”.
It was assumed that Jenny had committed suicide,
although it would have been difficult for her to have killed herself in
such a matter. She was buried in unconsecrated ground.
It was in the 1970’s that reports started to come
of lights being seen in the empty building, which by this time was in
the hands of the National Trust. Music was also heard coming from the
empty chapel. People reported the sudden dropping of temperature in the
chapel and the feeling of a ghostly presence. It was in 1972 that a long
grey cloak was seen hanging in the chapel, but disappeared in front of
the witness’s eyes. A few days later the phantom figure of a priest
was seen bending over the piscina.
It was about this time that an old man said that he
had been employed on the farm in the early 20th century, when the
building was being used as a store for valuable straw and hay, and that
he had often slept the night on the ground floor, to guard the hay from
thieves. He frequently heard the sound of a woman’s footsteps pacing
the floor of the empty room upstairs. The room was the chapel, and the
footsteps were only heard in the months of June.
Source: Ghosts
of the Southeast, a web site describing haunted
houses in Southeastern England.
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