To continue the theme of country houses (and don’t you envy Diane, who is touring such beautiful estates?), I thought it would be nice to talk a bit about the research books I use to build the country houses in my novels.
So without further ado, please follow me into my study:
Since my blogging day has fallen on Halloween, I’ll do my best to get into the spirit of things. (Get that? “Spirit”? Feel free to groan!)
I checked out the Internet and found many suggestions for “10 Most Haunted whatever”. Here are a few.
Listverse’s Top 10 Most Haunted Places (anywhere) has the following in the United Kingdom: Borley Rectory, Raynham Hall in Norfolk, where this famous ghost lady picture was taken, the Tower of London and Edinborough Castle.
Lists for the top 10 in the UK vary. Interestingly, Raynham Hall didn’t appear on either of the lists I checked. Haunted Rooms’ Top 10 Haunted Places in England lists the following places: Borley Rectory, Ancient Ram Inn, Pendle Hill, Berry Pomeroy Castle, Woodchester Mansion, Pluckley Village, Athelhampton House, Tower of London, Salmesbury Hall, Chillingham Castle. Visit Britain’s Top 10 Most Haunted Places lists Highgate Cemetery, Borley Rectory, Pendle Hill, Red Lion in Avebury, Ancient Ram Inn, Glamis Castle, Tower of London, Culloden Moor, Llancaiach Fawr Manor, Berry Pomeroy Castle.
Borley Rectory seems to always hit every list. I’d already read tales of the hauntings, supposedly due to a monk from a monastery that had existed on the site falling in love with a nun. According to the story, he was executed and she was bricked up alive within the convent walls. According to the Haunted Legend of Borley Rectory, this legend has no historical basis. However, there were strange incidents, reports of ghost carriages, an apparition that could have been a nun. However, there’s also some suspicion that a paranormal researcher, Harry Price, faked the phenomena he reported, and also that a subsequent resident, Marianne Foyster, may have faked paranormal activity to cover up her affair with a lodger.
Here’s an image of a purported ghost sighting at Borley.
Another of the places that seems to hit a lot of the lists is Pendle Hill, around which 12 women who in 1612 were tried and hanged as witches in what became known as the Lancashire Witch Trials. Check out this Youtube video to learn more. Given the superstitious nature of the time when these hangings occurred, some are now urging for these women to be pardoned.
The legend of the Lancashire Witches forms some of the backstory for Lucy in Disguise by Lynn Kerstan, one of the Regencies in the ebook set Regency Masquerades. The set also includes the RITA-winning Gwen’s Ghost, co-authored by Lynn Kerstan and Alicia Rasley.
Regency Masquerades will be on sale for 99 cents only for a few more days, so if you’re interested, buy it now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks and Kobo.
What ghost or witch stories or haunted places do you find the most interesting?
Wishing you a happy Halloween!
Elena
Yes, I enjoyed it but let me quibble. Because what else is blogging for? I loved Anna Maxwell Martin in The Bletchley Circle where she played a smart woman trapped by domesticity who brought her formidable intelligence to solving a mystery … oh. I see what they did there. Never mind. But Lizzie? Fine eyes and all that? There was some sweet lovie-dovey stuff with Darcy in the beginning (were they really planning an afternoon bedroom tryst or just planning to meet for a nice cup of tea?). After that she seemed to treat him like a large, unpredictable dog, lots of pats on the shoulder and consolatory treats for the Great Darcy.
No, really, the cast were all fine, although Sir Selwyn Hardcastle’s (Trevor Eve) facial hair scared me a little but I’ll get over it. The trouble is, that the depiction of well-meaning people doing their best to behave well can be rather tedious TV, which is why Lydia (Jenna Coleman, and OMG that military hat and jacket) stole the show: all that screaming and swooning and deshabille made for a lot of fun. She even upstaged Mrs. Bennet.
But this is a series where everyone is upstaged by the settings. Ooh boy. Pemberley is depicted by Castle Howard and Chatsworth House. Here is the Antiques Passage at Howard, where various characters stride. It is a space that demands striding. And here are Lizzy and Darcy in Chatsworth House:
Quite a lot of the interiors were from Chatsworth, including the Turquoise Room:
Hardcastle Crags in Yorkshire were used for the woodland and waterfall. In real life, the stepping stones across the stream lead to somewhere completely different, Stang End Cottage at the Ryedale Folk Museum in Yorkshire, a reconstructed early eighteenth century moor cottage. And I cannot 
resist pointing out that the Museum is at a place called Hutton-le-Hole.
Altogether I thought it was an excellent example of better TV from an indifferent book, and the producers certainly worked hard to make it entertaining and, I think, historically correct. What did you think of Episode I?
Filming at Chatsworth
One of the stops on the Duke of Wellington tour was Horse Guards. Horse Guards was the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces during “our” era, and it exists today as headquarters of two major Army commands: the London District and the Household Cavalry. We were there to tour the Household Cavalry Museum, but we were able to see the retiring of the guards.
When we first arrived, a guard on horseback was posted at the gate and the tourists were using him as a photo op, which bothered me. But I took a photo anyway.
Here’s a short video of the Guards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78PIWgzfrz4&feature=youtu.be
In Apsley House we saw this painting showing the Duke of Wellington leaving his command at Horse Guards for the last time. It is titled His Last Return From Duty. This is a drawing of that painting in the tunnel under the street between Apsley House and the Wellington Arch.
More lovely memories from my England trip!
This past week, I read Mary Balogh’s upcoming (10/28) release Only Enchanting. You know those books that make your heart squeeze tighter with each page? How you love the characters and are hoping they make it through? Yup. I got the worst book hangover from that one, I haven’t even wanted to read a romance since*.
Balogh has written some of my absolute favorite books ever, and she’s also written a few that I’ve DNFed. But even the ones I Didn’t Finish were written beautifully, I just didn’t connect with the characters or the plot in some way.
But Only Enchanting–it is just stunning, and it’s not like it’s got any kind of huge dramatic action. If the two characters didn’t end up Happily Ever After, it’s not as though the world would have shifted; they just both would have remained unfulfilled in their lives. Which would have been sad for them, of course, but not been a crisis.
Refreshingly, when there is a misunderstanding, the hero and heroine TALK to each other. And things aren’t always perfect after, but at least they’ve communicated.
So, beyond highly recommending this book–it got me to thinking about why writers write; we want to capture that heart-squeezing moment on the page and hopefully cause that reaction in our readers.
In me writing news, my editor accepted the revision for my February 2015 novella, When Good Earls Go Bad; this week, I’m revising Put Up Your Duke, which is due to my editor on Halloween (spooky!). And then, no deadlines for a while, good timing with the holidays approaching.
Hope everyone is having a great weekend reading and writing!
Megan
*I’m reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer, which is mind-blowingly awesome.