Endsleigh House

A Ghost's Tale

     It was with such stories in mind that I set out one evening accompanied by Freddie, our lovable one-eyed Pekingese dog, to go and check the floors and rooms, as requested by my mother. Freddie was well acquainted with the house and in spite of only having one eye he went about with ease, having got the measure of all possible obstacles and picked up a fair speed when trotting down the middle of the long corridors of Endsleigh House.

It was evening and we had finished dinner. Mother had asked me to go and check something so I left her office, I think it was, with Freddie tailing. I turned right, out of the office, and went along the flagstone floored corridor down to the front entrance hall, where the log fire in the enormous fireplace was dying down. Checking that the windows were all tightly shut I left the entrance hall I turned left and climbed up the main stairs to the first-floor landing, where the "Master" bedroom, the Duke's bedroom, was situated.

Once on the first floor and after having checked the Duke's room I then turned right. From the initial landing in front of the duke's high-ceilinged and spacious bedroom, the corridor then narrowed considerably. With Freddie following, all this time, I had gone about my business and was advancing down the corridor when all of a sudden the air went icy cold and I felt as though something brushed passed me. As I turned to follow the sensation I saw Freddie let out a yelp and scamper from the middle of the corridor to cower against the wall. I managed to collect Freddie and I finished my round by going down the 02nd flight of stairs, along to the annexe then back to the office where I told my Mother about what happened.

Apart from the fact that Freddie was, ever after, always reluctant to go along the 01st-floor corridor and when he did it always to the one side, the episode was not talked about again until one day at the start of the following season.
A client, a woman of a certain age and character, who happened to be staying in one of the rooms in the annexe, came into the dining room one day. My mother approached the client and exchanged the usual courtesies. As she turned to go the client asked my mother who the gentleman was staying in the annexe as the client thought that she was alone there, her husband having not yet arrived at Endsleigh. Her curiosity aroused my mother turned and asked what man the client was referring to. My mother told the client that there was no else staying in the annexe and there were no outsiders in the house, for meals or coffee either . My mother thought that it might have been me until she remembered I was at school at the time so who was it?

We never found out who it was nor saw the man ourselves but we were absolutely sure of one thing. No one had entered the main house or the annexe from outside, neither from the gardens nor from the courtyard side. All the other doors had been locked from the inside and my mother made regular rounds to check that this remained the case.
Anyone wanting to enter the house would have had to have done so by using the front entrance and be thus be seen by my mother in her office. So for the Cooks and the Gillies, Endsleigh's living memory, this episode was just another in a series to be remembered.

This experience was an episode in a chapter which in turn made up a period that was relatively speaking Halcyon. When I wasn't working and I wasn't at school or in Town or roaming around the moors, I was up in my rooms listening to a lot of Alternative Rock, notably the group "Yes" with "Yessongs" or their complex concept album "Tales from Topographic Oceans" plus George Harrison and many, many more like that.

I was also reading a lot at the time. I had been reading a lot in London, mostly Asimov, Clarke and Moorcock and when I arrived at Tavistock, entered the lower 6th form, and made friends with the some of the Upper 6th, I got initiated into a new style of reading and ultimately discovered Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings".
The mixture of "The Lord of the Rings" and Alternative rock music such as "Yessongs" and "Tales from Topographic Oceans" had an enormous influence on me at the time and ever since... but that's another story.

Endsleigh House, Devon

Epilogue

     I know one is not supposed to go back to past haunts but I was recently reading an article about Endsleigh on Internet and I learnt a couple of interesting facts that raised an eyebrow or two.

Apart from the fact the estate is/was (at the time of writing) up for sale, I found out that the house had actually undergone important restoration. The article went on to say, and here I was rather surpised to learn, that the House had been on the decline since the eighties. It had all really started with the death of the 12th Duke of Bedford in 1953, and the subsequent ceding of the estate by the Duke's family to a fishing association, but it would seem that conflicting interests, lack of foresight or planning and possibly less than rigorous management since the 80's had accelerated the decline.

Even at the time we were there, in the early to middle 70's, conflicting interests were at work. The so-called established members of the fishing club would not willingly accept fresh capital into the club if it was thought to come from less than noteworthy sources. I remember my mother telling me at the time that certain new clients came down from London or the North, with their sports cars and pretty wives and were virtually ostracized as "Nouveau Riche" by the club members, those same club members who awkwardly re-patched their own clothes because they could not or would not, for whatever reason, buy new ones.

I remember my mother's frustration at the members' attitude. The members politic of maintaining the Status Quo and only allowing new members if their pedigree survived a serious vetting was a handicap. Unfortunately for the future of the club, the vetting didn't necessarily take into account an applicant financial solvability but rather his social standing and the more this social standing resembled the members' the better chance the applicant had of joining the club.

Irony of Ironies. Not only did the members' selection criteria eliminate a certain category of potential member, ex: the so-called "Nouveau Riche". It apparently also had the perverse effect of shying away the visitors who frequented Endsleigh at the time of the Bedfords, the nobility, who, it would seem, had their own opinion of the caste of club members, mostly middle-class magistrates, country doctors, notaries, well-to-do but socially accepted shopkeepers and the inevitable ruddy-faced major or colonel.

It was a shame to read that such a remarkable place had suffered such a slight of fortune. The Bedford family had had to part with the estate to acquit themselves of the 12th Duke's death duties in 1953 and looking back, after a certain period of time in various managerial posts, my first reaction, on reading the article, was to ask why the Fishing Club didn't do anything to stem this decline. But as one would say Hindsight is 20/20 and one shouldn't go back but I did enjoy a happy time while I was there.

NB. Photos courtesy of the official Endsleigh house site

© Nicholas Richards 2004