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1. 

   Graham Chapman  |  October 17, 2021 at 10:00 am

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   Firstly, I can tell you that in the 3 years I worked there I stayed in the Hall overnight many times. I can confirm that I have been in every single room in the house, none were locked. I was the Custodian there 1998-2000 and befriended the Curator who had been there for 25+ years previously, she confirmed to me that she had also been in every room in the house and had no knowledge of any room being locked. ——- I do detail hereafter an unexplained happening however —- I was the Custodian of a Stately Home called Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk from 1998 to 2000. My duties included living in the Hall when Lord and Lady Somerleyton were absent for any reason. For the first couple of months I just had my normal duties doing Guided Tours, supervising Volunteers etc.

   Then came the time when their Lordships were away overnight and I had to stay there. As usual when I went to bed I took off my watch and put it on the bedside cabinet. The watch was a wind up one dated 1959 given to me by my Dad, then as now I preferred clockwork to battery watches. In the morning I picked up the watch and was surprised to find it was stopped. I checked that it was wound and it was. After walking the 6 dogs other staff arrived so I went back to our cottage on the village green to see my wife. I told her that it was odd my watch had stopped, but when I showed her it was ticking away happily.

   Over the course of the next few months there was no problem with the watch when I worked during the day, but every time I stayed overnight it stopped and the day came when it would not restart. I took it to a watch repairer in Clerkenwell and after a couple of weeks he informed me that the movement had become magnetised. This was odd as it was a gold watch and they are supposed to be anti magnetic. He managed to de-magnetise and return it to me, but after a few weeks it had totally stopped again and he sourced a replacement movement from another Mappin & Webb watch.

   I used to have tea with a lady who had worked at the Hall for years and she was the Curator. I started to tell her the story about my watch, but she interrupted me and said that when she first went to the Hall her duties included living in when their Lordships were absent. She then told me the story that her clockwork watch used to stop whenever she stayed over and eventually stopped completely. She warned me not to mention the story to Lady Somerleyton because she was not comfortable with such stories.

   Anyway, the Curator had done some research and she found a story about an employee of the Estate. He had various duties on the Estate and in the Hall and as a result had a tied cottage, and one of his important duties was to wind all the clocks in the Hall of which there were around 40. One day the then Lord Somerleyton had found himself needing to reduce staff and he gave this person notice, he was heard having a very loud argument with His Lordship one day. The next morning he was found hanging in the stair well immediately in front of Lord Somerleyton’s bedroom door. I am assured that this story is documented both in books and in newspapers of the period.

   I do not believe in ghosts, but it does seem that the experience shared by the Curator and myself was not uncommon. I moved on to a new Stately Home shortly afterwards, and as their were Ghost Stories associated with most Houses I worked in I did not think about it too much. The older I get however the more I think about it, and I have never been able to find any rational explanation for why wind up watches act this way.