Brown Lady of Raynham Hall
Encyclopedia
The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall is a ghost
which reportedly haunts Raynham Hall
in Norfolk
. It became one of the most famous hauntings in Great Britain
when the image of the 'Brown Lady' was captured by photographers from Country Life
magazine who were photographing the staircase in 1936, where it would become one of the most famous paranormal photographs of all time. The 'Brown Lady' is so named because of the brown brocade dress it is claimed she wears.
, generally regarded as the first Prime Minister of Great Britain
. She was the second wife of Charles Townshend
, who was notorious for his violent temper. The story says that when Townshend discovered that his wife had committed adultery
with Lord Wharton
he punished her by locking her in her rooms in the family home, Raynham Hall. According to Mary Wortley Montagu, Dorothy was in fact entrapped by the Countess of Wharton. She invited Dorothy over to stay for a few days knowing that her husband would never allow her to leave it, not even to see her children. She remained at Raynham Hall until her death in 1726 from smallpox
.
at Christmas 1835. Stone says that Lord Charles Townsend had invited various guests to the Hall, including a Colonel Loftus, to join in the Christmas festivities. Loftus and another guest named Hawkins said they had seen the 'Brown Lady' one night as they approached their bedrooms, noting in particular the dated brown dress she wore. The following evening Loftus claimed to have seen the 'Brown Lady' again, later reporting that on this occasion he was drawn to the spectre's empty eye-sockets, dark in the glowing face. Loftus' sightings led to some staff permanently leaving Raynham Hall.
The next sighting of the 'Brown Lady' was made in 1836 by Captain Frederick Marryat
, a friend of novelist
Charles Dickens
, and the author of a series of popular sea novels. It is said that Marryat requested that he spend the night in the haunted room at Raynham Hall to prove his theory that the haunting was caused by local smugglers anxious to keep people away from the area. Writing in 1917, Florence Marryat
said of her father's experience:
‘…he took possession of the room in which the portrait of the apparition hung, and in which she had been often seen, and slept each night with a loaded revolver under his pillow. For two days, however, he saw nothing, and the third was to be the limit of his stay. On the third night, however, two young men (nephews of the baronet), knocked at his door as he was undressing to go to bed, and asked him to step over to their room (which was at the other end of the corridor), and give them his opinion on a new gun just arrived from London. My father was in his shirt and trousers, but as the hour was late, and everybody had retired to rest except themselves, he prepared to accompany them as he was. As they were leaving the room, he caught up his revolver, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” he said, laughing. When the inspection of the gun was over, the young men in the same spirit declared they would accompany my father back again, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” they repeated, laughing also. The three gentlemen therefore returned in company.
The corridor was long and dark, for the lights had been extinguished, but as they reached the middle of it, they saw the glimmer of a lamp coming towards them from the other end. “One of the ladies going to visit the nurseries,” whispered the young Townshends to my father. Now the bedroom doors in that corridor faced each other, and each room had a double door with a space between, as is the case in many old-fashioned houses. My father, as I have said, was in shirt and trousers only, and his native modesty made him feel uncomfortable, so he slipped within one of the outer doors (his friends following his example), in order to conceal himself until the lady should have passed by.
I have heard him describe how he watched her approaching nearer and nearer, through the chink of the door, until, as she was close enough for him to distinguish the colors and style of her costume, he recognised the figure as the facsimile of the portrait of “The Brown Lady”. He had his finger on the trigger of his revolver, and was about to demand it to stop and give the reason for its presence there, when the figure halted of its own accord before the door behind which he stood, and holding the lighted lamp she carried to her features, grinned in a malicious and diabolical manner at him. This act so infuriated my father, who was anything but lamb-like in disposition, that he sprang into the corridor with a bound, and discharged the revolver right in her face. The figure instantly disappeared - the figure at which for several minutes three men had been looking together – and the bullet passed through the outer door of the room on the opposite side of the corridor, and lodged in the panel of the inner one. My father never attempted again to interfere with "The Brown Lady of Raynham”.'
Lady Townsend reported that the 'Brown Lady' was next seen in 1926, when her son and his friend claimed to have seen the ghost on the staircase, identifying the ghostly figure with the portrait of Lady Dorothy Walpole which then hung in the haunted room.
On 19 September 1936 Captain Hubert C. Provand and Indre Shira, London-based photographers working for Country Life
magazine, were taking photographs of Raynham Hall for an article to appear later in the year. The two men's account claims that they had already taken a photograph of the Hall's main staircase, and were setting up to take a second when Shira saw 'a vapoury form gradually assuming the appearance of a woman' and moving down the stairs towards them. Under Shira's direction Provand quickly took the cap off the lens while Shira pressed the trigger to activate the camera's flash light. Later, when the negative was developed, the famous image of the 'Brown Lady' was revealed. The account of Provand and Shira's ghostly experience at Raynham Hall was published in Country Life magazine on 26 December 1936, along with the photograph of the 'Brown Lady'. The photograph and the account of its taking also appeared in the January 4, 1937 edition of Life
magazine.
Soon after the noted paranormal
investigator Harry Price
interviewed Provand and Shira and reported: 'I will say at once I was impressed. I was told a perfectly simple story: Mr Indre Shira saw the apparition descending the stairs at the precise moment when Captain Provand’s head was under the black cloth. A shout – and the cap was off and the flashbulb fired, with the results which we now see. I could not shake their story, and I had no right to disbelieve them. Only collusion between the two men would account for the ghost if it is a fake. The negative is entirely innocent of any faking'.
Experts called in by Country Life stated that the photograph and its negative did not appear to have been interfered with. Since then, however, some critics have claimed that Shira faked the image by painting grease or a similar substance on the lens in the shape of a figure, or by himself deliberately moving down the stairs during an exposure. Others claim that the image is an accidental double exposure or that light somehow got into the camera.
Ghost
In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...
which reportedly haunts Raynham Hall
Raynham Hall
Raynham Hall is a country house in Norfolk, England. For 300 years it has been the seat of the Townshend family. The hall gave its name to the area, known as The Raynhams, and is reported to be haunted, providing the scene for possibly the most famous ghost photo of all time, the famous Brown Lady...
in Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
. It became one of the most famous hauntings in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
when the image of the 'Brown Lady' was captured by photographers from Country Life
Country Life (magazine)
Country Life is a British weekly magazine, based in London at 110 Southwark Street, and owned by IPC Media, a Time Warner subsidiary.- Topics :The magazine covers the pleasures and joys of rural life, as well as the concerns of rural people...
magazine who were photographing the staircase in 1936, where it would become one of the most famous paranormal photographs of all time. The 'Brown Lady' is so named because of the brown brocade dress it is claimed she wears.
Identity of the ghost
According to legend, the 'Brown Lady of Raynham Hall' is the ghost of Lady Dorothy Walpole (1686-1726), the sister of Robert WalpoleRobert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
, generally regarded as the first Prime Minister of Great Britain
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
. She was the second wife of Charles Townshend
Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend
Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend Bt, KG, PC was a British Whig statesman. He served for a decade as Secretary of State, directing British foreign policy...
, who was notorious for his violent temper. The story says that when Townshend discovered that his wife had committed adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
with Lord Wharton
Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton
Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton , powerful Jacobite politician, notorious libertine and rake, profligate, and alcoholic, was one of the few people in English history, and the first since the 15th century, to have been raised to a Dukedom whilst still a minor and not closely related to the...
he punished her by locking her in her rooms in the family home, Raynham Hall. According to Mary Wortley Montagu, Dorothy was in fact entrapped by the Countess of Wharton. She invited Dorothy over to stay for a few days knowing that her husband would never allow her to leave it, not even to see her children. She remained at Raynham Hall until her death in 1726 from smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
.
Sightings
The first recorded sighting of the ghost was made by Lucia C Stone concerning a gathering at Raynham HallRaynham Hall
Raynham Hall is a country house in Norfolk, England. For 300 years it has been the seat of the Townshend family. The hall gave its name to the area, known as The Raynhams, and is reported to be haunted, providing the scene for possibly the most famous ghost photo of all time, the famous Brown Lady...
at Christmas 1835. Stone says that Lord Charles Townsend had invited various guests to the Hall, including a Colonel Loftus, to join in the Christmas festivities. Loftus and another guest named Hawkins said they had seen the 'Brown Lady' one night as they approached their bedrooms, noting in particular the dated brown dress she wore. The following evening Loftus claimed to have seen the 'Brown Lady' again, later reporting that on this occasion he was drawn to the spectre's empty eye-sockets, dark in the glowing face. Loftus' sightings led to some staff permanently leaving Raynham Hall.
Frederick Marryat
Captain Frederick Marryat was an English Royal Navy officer, novelist, and a contemporary and acquaintance of Charles Dickens, noted today as an early pioneer of the sea story...
, a friend of novelist
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, and the author of a series of popular sea novels. It is said that Marryat requested that he spend the night in the haunted room at Raynham Hall to prove his theory that the haunting was caused by local smugglers anxious to keep people away from the area. Writing in 1917, Florence Marryat
Florence Marryat
Florence Marryat was a British author and actress. The daughter of author Capt. Frederick Marryat and his wife Catherine, she was particularly known for her sensational novels and her involvement with several celebrated spiritual mediums of the late nineteenth century...
said of her father's experience:
‘…he took possession of the room in which the portrait of the apparition hung, and in which she had been often seen, and slept each night with a loaded revolver under his pillow. For two days, however, he saw nothing, and the third was to be the limit of his stay. On the third night, however, two young men (nephews of the baronet), knocked at his door as he was undressing to go to bed, and asked him to step over to their room (which was at the other end of the corridor), and give them his opinion on a new gun just arrived from London. My father was in his shirt and trousers, but as the hour was late, and everybody had retired to rest except themselves, he prepared to accompany them as he was. As they were leaving the room, he caught up his revolver, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” he said, laughing. When the inspection of the gun was over, the young men in the same spirit declared they would accompany my father back again, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” they repeated, laughing also. The three gentlemen therefore returned in company.
The corridor was long and dark, for the lights had been extinguished, but as they reached the middle of it, they saw the glimmer of a lamp coming towards them from the other end. “One of the ladies going to visit the nurseries,” whispered the young Townshends to my father. Now the bedroom doors in that corridor faced each other, and each room had a double door with a space between, as is the case in many old-fashioned houses. My father, as I have said, was in shirt and trousers only, and his native modesty made him feel uncomfortable, so he slipped within one of the outer doors (his friends following his example), in order to conceal himself until the lady should have passed by.
I have heard him describe how he watched her approaching nearer and nearer, through the chink of the door, until, as she was close enough for him to distinguish the colors and style of her costume, he recognised the figure as the facsimile of the portrait of “The Brown Lady”. He had his finger on the trigger of his revolver, and was about to demand it to stop and give the reason for its presence there, when the figure halted of its own accord before the door behind which he stood, and holding the lighted lamp she carried to her features, grinned in a malicious and diabolical manner at him. This act so infuriated my father, who was anything but lamb-like in disposition, that he sprang into the corridor with a bound, and discharged the revolver right in her face. The figure instantly disappeared - the figure at which for several minutes three men had been looking together – and the bullet passed through the outer door of the room on the opposite side of the corridor, and lodged in the panel of the inner one. My father never attempted again to interfere with "The Brown Lady of Raynham”.'
Lady Townsend reported that the 'Brown Lady' was next seen in 1926, when her son and his friend claimed to have seen the ghost on the staircase, identifying the ghostly figure with the portrait of Lady Dorothy Walpole which then hung in the haunted room.
Country Life magazine
Country Life (magazine)
Country Life is a British weekly magazine, based in London at 110 Southwark Street, and owned by IPC Media, a Time Warner subsidiary.- Topics :The magazine covers the pleasures and joys of rural life, as well as the concerns of rural people...
magazine, were taking photographs of Raynham Hall for an article to appear later in the year. The two men's account claims that they had already taken a photograph of the Hall's main staircase, and were setting up to take a second when Shira saw 'a vapoury form gradually assuming the appearance of a woman' and moving down the stairs towards them. Under Shira's direction Provand quickly took the cap off the lens while Shira pressed the trigger to activate the camera's flash light. Later, when the negative was developed, the famous image of the 'Brown Lady' was revealed. The account of Provand and Shira's ghostly experience at Raynham Hall was published in Country Life magazine on 26 December 1936, along with the photograph of the 'Brown Lady'. The photograph and the account of its taking also appeared in the January 4, 1937 edition of Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine.
Soon after the noted paranormal
Paranormal
Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
investigator Harry Price
Harry Price
Harry Price was a British psychic researcher and author.-Early life:Although Price claimed his birth was in Shropshire, he was actually born in London in Red Lion Square on the site of the South Place Ethical Society's Conway Hall. He was educated in New Cross, first at Waller Road Infants School...
interviewed Provand and Shira and reported: 'I will say at once I was impressed. I was told a perfectly simple story: Mr Indre Shira saw the apparition descending the stairs at the precise moment when Captain Provand’s head was under the black cloth. A shout – and the cap was off and the flashbulb fired, with the results which we now see. I could not shake their story, and I had no right to disbelieve them. Only collusion between the two men would account for the ghost if it is a fake. The negative is entirely innocent of any faking'.
Experts called in by Country Life stated that the photograph and its negative did not appear to have been interfered with. Since then, however, some critics have claimed that Shira faked the image by painting grease or a similar substance on the lens in the shape of a figure, or by himself deliberately moving down the stairs during an exposure. Others claim that the image is an accidental double exposure or that light somehow got into the camera.
External links
- 'The Brown Lady of Raynham' on the Museum of Hoaxes website
- 'The Brown Lady of Raynham' on paranormaland.com
- http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/86/the_brown_lady_of_raynham_hall.htmlAnalysis of the photograph of the 'Brown Lady' in Fortean TimesFortean TimesFortean Times is a British monthly magazine devoted to the anomalous phenomena popularised by Charles Fort. Previously published by John Brown Publishing and then I Feel Good Publishing , it is now published by Dennis Publishing Ltd. As of December 2010, its circulation was approximately 18,000...
] - 'The Brown Lady of Raynham' on Haunted Hamilton