Warwick’s Most Haunted?
Quick! Did you see that? It’s the headless ghost of the Lord Leycester. With almost a thousand years of history, is it surprising that these buildings have been haunted? Come with us for a tour of the unnatural at The Lord Leycester.
Chapel of St James
If you were a resident of The Lord Leycester at its institutional foundation in 1571, it would not have surprised you to see this ghostly apparition. Headless and armoured, this shadowy apparition would wander the rooms and halls of the Lord Leycester. With no purpose and unidentifiable to the Brethren who lived at hospital, the apparition remained a mysterious source of supernatural activity for hundreds of years.
That is, until the eighteenth-century restoration of the Chapel of St James, which sits atop West Gate, and is the oldest building of The Lord Leycester. Upon the discovery of a bricked-up cavity in the wall of the chapel, builders allegedly uncovered a skeleton hidden inside. Bedecked in rusted armour, the headless skeleton was believed to be the source of the apparition that had wandered limitlessly for so many years. Given a Christian burial, the headless knight ceased to wander the halls of the Lord Leycester forevermore, never to be seen again.
The Guildhall
Long before the founding of Robert Dudley’s hospital, the site was used by the Guilds of Warwick as a space for meeting and debating current business affairs. As a religious fraternity, leading devotional and charitable activity in the town, the Guild of Holy Trinity and St George was led by an annually elected Master. The final Master of the Guild, Thomas Oken, although deposed following the dissolution of the Guilds by Henry VIII, never truly left Warwick.
Thomas Oken is a familiar presence for those who visit his house, situated by the town gate, as guests. Known to be a generous benefactor for the town, the merchant is often reported to appear as a distinguished gentleman, wearing splendid clothing and using a walking stick. The apparition is known to walk from room to room, smiling gently upon the guests who visit his home almost five hundred years later. Even if he is not seen as an apparition, his presence appears in the form of shaking door latches.
Oken’s house is also known as the location for time slips. In one report, a guest, sitting in the top room of the house, recounted how the chatter of other guests slowly disappeared around her, traded for the sound of carts clattering, horses nickering, and people shouting: the very sound of a medieval market.
Oken’s presence in The Lord Leycester, however, becomes sinister. The Guildhall, transferred to the ownership of Robert Dudley as an apology for a lacklustre greeting by the Burgesses upon his arrival to Warwick, was a slight to the benevolent Oken. A mass of tension and resentment fills the Guildhall, a sensation of never quite being alone, watched; that chill in the air is what the unsuspecting must be wary of.
The Schoolroom
The chilling sensation of the Guildhall seeps into the schoolroom; once a bedroom in the Master’s house, the schoolroom is now home to a ghostly inhabitant. Master after Master warned all those who entered; once upon a time, even the Queen Mother, visiting the Lord Leycester in 1966, was warned about the room after she sought a place to take a nap. Odd sensations befall those who dare enter: cool, unexplainable grazes and touches of an invisible presence. Do you feel that? A tap on your shoulder, even when you are certainly alone. Who is trying to get your attention? That… we will never know for sure.
The Great Hall
The oldest ghost of The Lord Leycester is a resident of the Great Hall. The spirit of a medieval monk is the subject of our final tale. Whilst now the men’s toilets, it was once believed that the space was a sleeping quarter for monks; keeping to the shadows, The Lord Leycester’s previous gardener recounted this ghostly sighting, the monk watching her in a vigil, protecting the medieval hall. Even today, those tasked with locking up the hall at night quicken their pace, attempting to escape that unease and those watching eyes.