Blickling Hall

OVERVIEW

A red-brick Jacobean mansion in a loop of the River Bure north of Aylsham, built from 1616 for Sir Henry Hobart by Robert Lyminge on the ruins of a Tudor house that belonged to the Boleyns between 1499 and 1505; Anne Boleyn was probably born there. It has one of the great country-house libraries and passed to the National Trust in 1940 from the Marquess of Lothian. The Trust has named it the most haunted house in its care.

HISTORY

Anne Boleyn was beheaded at the Tower on 19 May 1536; her brother George died two days earlier. Their father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, who did nothing to save them, is in the tradition cursed to drive across forty Norfolk bridges each year. The house saw Sir John Fastolf and the Hobarts, and in the twentieth century RAF officers from Oulton billeted in it.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

On the anniversary of her death Anne is said to arrive at the door in a coach drawn by headless horses with a headless driver, her head on her lap, and vanish; Trust staff have reported a grey lady in the house and a figure in the library. The National Trust publishes the story on its own site. It is tradition, well recorded, with a documented death behind it.

VISITING

National Trust opening; house, garden and park. The Trust runs Halloween events.