Ordsall Hall

OVERVIEW

A timber-framed manor house in Ordsall, Salford, the seat of the Radclyffe family for more than three hundred years, bought by the council in 1959 and opened as a museum in 1972; the oldest surviving parts are fifteenth-century. Since 2005 the hall has run live 'Ghost Cam' webcams in the Great Hall and Star Chamber, with viewers reporting what they see.

HISTORY

Margaret Radclyffe, a maid of honour to Elizabeth I, died in 1599 — of grief, the story says, after her brother Alexander was killed in Ireland. Harrison Ainsworth's 1842 novel Guy Fawkes set the plotting of the Gunpowder Plot in the Star Chamber; the Radclyffes were Catholics who knew the Catesbys, but there is no evidence for it, and Guy Fawkes Street beside the hall records the legend.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The White Lady, taken to be Margaret, in the Great Hall and Star Chamber; a figure called Sir John Radclyffe; a small girl in the kitchens. The webcams are the hall's own initiative and its accounts are its own; the entry records the tradition and the camera.

VISITING

Open free most days; gardens. The Ghost Cam runs on the hall's website.