The New Murrey and Blue blog

Having recently written about Minster Lovell and the fact that the remains of Francis Lovell may have been found walled up there, I found myself drawn to yet another Cotswold house with a similar legend. This is Owlpen Manor on the western flank of the Cotswolds. This Owlpen Manor link mentions four ghosts, but only identifies Margaret of Anjou.

Margaret is a well-known ghost at Owlpen, where she is reputed to have stayed on her way to the Battle of Tewkesbury. But who were the other ghosts?

So I looked elsewhere to identify them and came to this site, whic identifies Owlpen Manor as Tudor. Really? It’s 900 years old, for Heaven’s sake! To hell with the Tydders. They were still crawling around in their own little primitive murk back then.

But at least the site does identify the other ghosts, one of whom is an early 17^th-century sorcerer who may have been the tutor of the then resident family’s children.

Another is a mischievous child. It seems to me that a large number of ghostly children are on the naughty, giggling side of things. Certainly they are on the silly TV programmes to which I am addicted. If they really are ghosts, they appear to be quite happy about it.

Then there is a Black Monk (when isn’t there?) He’s apparently either a Benedictine from St Peter’s Abbey in nearby Gloucester, or he’s fleeing from the sack of Kingswood Abbey during the Reformation. He is the one who rivals Minster Lovell, because he was supposedly walled up and starved, and his bones crumbled to dust when he was found.

So, is it a Cotswold speciality to wall folk up and starve them?