Hampshire Folklore. 317
Now it is, I believe, a fact that Charles II. and Nell Gwynne did visit this remote manor, and the original old summer-house is still standing in the garden where the man saw the ghosts. But such historical details were unknown to the villager. Nor did he take the " furrin folk " to be merely apparitions. He would have admitted that the house was haunted, for its reputation in the way of ghostly happenings is considerable, which is not surprising, as within the last fifty years children's skeletons were found buried inside. Once a cell of the Abbey of Bee, Oakham Priory has little but its ghosts, some ruined wall, and part of the church remaining. The Manor House that succeeded it has suffered enough at the hands of nineteenth-century restorers to have driven every self-respecting ghost away. Yet I heard tales of a room where something mysterious dripped from the ceiling. I could not effect an entrance, so cannot offer personal evidence for this, but another of the ghostly demonstrations, — the chanting of nuns in one of the rooms, — is possibly to be explained by the proximity of the bells in the grey-shingled spire. The priest's door of that church is known locally as " the wicked man's door," village tales having it that the squire of old entered by it, and the service was never commenced till he had taken his seat. By inadvertence one day this custom was neglected, and the squire came in as "When the wicked man" sounded through the little building. This neighbourhood has many other stories. There is a gallows on the hill above with gruesome memories. Near by lived a damsel renowned throughout the country-side for her magnetic gifts, and on the high downs to the south, only a few years ago, a pedlar told me, " when the sappriminers was here, in old times, they made a telegram, and from there they did use to spy into France they did." Thus, when off the beat of modern progress, will a few years transmogrify a triangulation station of the Royal Engineers! ^'^
^Cf. D. H. M. Read, Highways and Byways in Hampshire, pp. 175, 179.
