Re: Passenham -- Ghost Watch UK

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Date Posted: Sunday, May 21, 08:38:02 GMT-4
Author: Nigel Wilson
Subject: Re: Passenham
In reply to: Andy 's message, "Passenham" on Friday, November 11, 05:18:04 GMT-4

Andy

TH White was having some fun when he wrote Soft Voices. I am studying the history of the part of the Ouse valley in which Passenham lies. I can advise as follows from my researches to date.

The story of `Bobby Bannister' is a legend about Sir Robert Banastre who held the manor of Passenham from 1626 to his death, aged 80, in 1649. He died of old age. He was not popular as he enclosed the fields for his own benefit. He was a supporter of the King in a locality that tended to prefer the Parliamentary side. The haunting story was put about as a piece of local revenge. The haunting is described in an original text of a poem written William Druce which is an Appendix to Passenham: The History of a Forest Village: by OF Brown & G Roberts, published by Phillimore in 1973.

This book will also explain the Saxon burials as Passenham was a royal estate used by Edward the Elder as a fortification to support the building of another fort in the old Roman town of Towcester in 921AD. These bodies are often disarticulated and some were even found under the floor of the Rectory. The view is that there was a Saxon burial ground on this site which was later taken over for residential use in a later time.

The people caught in Beachampton Grove and hung at Calverton are, as far as I can see to date, a myth. Although since TH White infers they were in the wood it is possible that a gang of poachers were caught and hung there at some time and he conflated the two incidents.

The true story is that Lady Grace Bennet, an ancestor of the Marquesses of Salisbury, was buried at Beachampton on 27 September 1694. She had been murdered in her manor house at Calverton by a Stony Stratford butcher who had broken in looking for her money. She was the widow of Sir Simon Bennet, a stalwart of the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, who had fallen on hard times as someone had misappropriated her funds. She was also old, possibly senile, and lived on her own as she could not afford servants.

Her murderer may have been called Adam Barnes. A name of Peter has also been used. However the murderer was hanged and his body displayed in a gibbet at the junction of Gib Lane and Watling Street: now called Galley Hill. His corpse is believed to have been finally interred in a local field.

I am currently trying to find other stories of ghosts at Passenham but they all seem to lead to either TH White and Sir Robert Banastre. `Steady. Steady, I am not ready.'

Have fun!

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