The Countess’ Room and the ghosts of Dartington Hall
Every old house has its fair share of ghost-stories, chilling tales that are handed down through the generations, told and re-told by the fireside on dark winter nights. Dartington Hall, with its long and rich history, is no exception.
People have lived here amongst the rolling Devon hills since ancient times. One notable family, the Champernownes, made their home here for over 450 years.
Sir Arthur Champernowne, Vice Admiral of the Fleet of the West, and an important figure in Elizabethan times was the brother of Queen Elizabeth’s childhood governess. He purchased the estate in the 1550s and his descendants owned Dartington until 1925. So it comes as no surprise that the family cherished several ghost-stories.
I’m especially interested in one of them. It concerns ghostly goings on in a room, traditionally known as the ‘Countess’ Room, named after Isabeau, Countess of Montgomery.
Isabeau de la Touche, a French Huguenot noblewoman, found refuge at Dartington during the French Wars of Religion. Her husband, Gabriel de Lorges, Count of Montgomery, gained fame as the man who killed King Henri II of France in a jousting accident. After converting to the Protestant faith, Gabriel became a prominent Huguenot general. Their daughter, Lady Gabrielle Roberda Montgomery, known as Roberda, came to England in 1571 to marry Sir Arthur’s son, Gawen. She is the subject of my historical novel, The Dartington Bride.
After they escaped the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572, Sir Arthur welcomed Roberda’s entire family to Dartington as refugees. Gabriel eventually returned to France to continue to fight for the Protestant cause. Isabeau remained at Dartington for some years.
As a historical fiction author, I strive to bring to life people from the past. Visiting the places they knew is a vital part of my writers’ research. While I was crafting Roberda’s story, I was determined to find the room named for her mother.
My Search for the Countess’ Room
At first I could find no-one at Dartington who remembered the Countess’ Room or knew where it was. I eventually traced it with the help of a labelled archive photo from the 1930s.
The Dartington Trust kindly let me explore ‘behind the scenes’ to see the room for myself. I found it in a part of the house remodelled by Sir Arthur after he took up residence in the late 1550s. In this photo, it is the room on the right, three stories up, with branches partly obscuring the window.
When I visited, I found an almost empty shell, with few furnishings; just a desk, some office chairs, and a tangled mess of cables. I tried to imagine how it looked in the sixteenth century. There would have been a fourposter bed with colourful embroidered hangings, oak coffers topped by vivid turkey rugs, perhaps a stool or window-seat with colourful tapestry-upholstered cushions.
From the window, although the gardens have changed over time, it’s much easier to imagine the view that greeted Isabeau’s eyes. She probably saw an Elizabethan knot garden with trimmed hedges laid out in intricate patterns and beds of herbs and flowers where silk-clad ladies strolled along gravel paths, while gentlemen took their exercise on a nearby bowling green. In the distance, a wooded hillside would have provided a vibrant green backdrop.
As I gazed from the window, lost in thought, images of Sir Arthur and his nephew Sir Walter Raleigh danced before my eyes. Until suddenly a cloud covered the sun and an icy shiver ran up and down my spine. Was it just my excitement at finding the Countess’ Room at last, the realisation that I was standing in the very spot where Isabeau and Roberda once stood? Or does some essence of those two women linger there? Is that why ghost stories are associated with this room?
My further research proved fascinating. In particular, a report amongst the proceedings of the Devonshire Association which shed light on some of the family traditions.
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Family Traditions and Memories
The Champernownes’ fortunes had dwindled by 1925. The buildings and grounds had become dilapidated and run down. That is when Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst bought the estate and established the ‘Dartington Experiment’. It was an extraordinary pioneering enterprise, bringing together the arts, culture, farming, forestry and educational projects.
In 1959 Leonard Elmhirst was president of the Devonshire Association. It seemed fitting for the Association’s Folklore Committee to invite Miss C. Elizabeth Champernowne and her sister to share their thoughts on the many ghost-stories of Dartington. They started with the Countess’ Room.
Miss Champernowne acknowledged that family stories mentioned unexplained happenings in that room. The tradition associated them with Gawen Champernowne and his French wife. Some versions of the story even suggested she jumped from the window to her death.
Miss Champernowne pointed out to the Folklore Committee that there was evidence that added some credence to the story. However, there is no evidence whatsoever of anyone jumping from a window.
An alternative version of the story was that the Countess herself haunts the room. Isabeau did not die at Dartington, but at Pontorson, in France in 1593. However, it’s likely she was at Dartington, perhaps in that very room, on the day she received the appalling news of her husband’s execution. Could she have left some imprint of intense anguish at Dartington? I wondered if any other family traditions might support that theory.
In 1959, Miss Champernowne told the Folklore Committee she herself had never experienced strange goings on in the Countess’ room. However, she said that her mother, while seated there, once heard someone walking across the floor of the nursery above. Believing it to be the nursemaid, she spoke to the woman in charge of the nursery the next day. She intended to give instructions that the maid should not to stay up so late. However, she was told that the girl had been terrified by a mysterious incident. According to the nursery maid, the previous evening a woman had walked into the room, burnt a piece of paper in the fire, and gone out again without speaking.
Miss Champernowne’s sister also recalled that, when she was a child, an ancient lady would come into the room and lean over her bed. A brother had told her he had a similar experience.
Perhaps the nursemaid and the children were dreaming, but both stories concern the room over the Countess’ room. Is it fanciful to imagine that the nursery maid saw Isabeau’s ghost burning the letter that bought such evil tidings of her husband’s death? Was Isabeau the woman in white the children remembered?
Or could the footsteps be echoes of Roberda herself?
Other Strange Events and Apparitions
While I was mainly interested in the Countess’ room, the sisters also told the Folklore Committee about other strange happenings.
The White Lady
The sisters reported a story that just before someone is going to die, a lady in white is supposed to appear to members of the Champernowne family.
Miss Champernowne’s sister remembered a vivid dream she had in 1889. She dreamt a woman in white was sitting on the front stairs with her head in her hands. Three weeks later, her brother Henry, who was in the army, died in India. Apparently, before his death, he had been trying to get a message back to his mother.
On another occasion, in 1890, a maid saw a lady in white walking across the lawn. Three weeks later, Richard Champernowne, the rector of Dartington, died.
The Scattered Papers
On the day Leonard Elmhirst concluded his purchase of the estate, Miss Champernowne’s sister climbed up the tower stairs to the small ‘Steward’s room’ and found papers scattered all over the floor. She replaced the documents, estate bills from the eighteenth century, in the pigeonholes covering the walls, wondering what had caused them to blow about the room. When she shared the story with her cousin, Mr Martin, the rector, he mentioned a similar incident with the same set of papers. Again, there was no explanation for their scattered state.
Could it be that they were unpaid bills and a ghostly creditor was demanding payment before the Champernowne’s left?
The Piano with no Pianist
One sister remembered hearing exquisite piano playing coming from the drawing room, but found the door locked from the outside and the room empty. The other sister confirmed that she too had once heard piano chords while walking below the drawing room. Again, there was no one there. When they told their mother, she said it was extraordinary, since her own mother (the girls’ grandmother) used to hear piano playing like that too.
The Headless Horseman
Perhaps the most scary story of all is that of the Headless Horseman. The sisters remembered the old steward telling a tale about a frightening figure with no head, who galloped through the lowest gate in the drive, close to the river.
Many people have ridden in those woods. The Norman lords who held the land after 1066 left their mark on the landscape. In the early fourteenth century, Nicholas Fitz Martin was granted the right of free warren at Dartington, and by 1326, he had enclosed a deer park covering some 100 acres. With his huntsmen, no doubt Nicholas often frequented the woods near the river, where the headless horseman was supposed to appear.
In the late fourteenth century, Richard II granted the estate to his half-brother, John Holand, Earl of Huntingdon, later Duke of Exeter. John built a magnificent hall fit for royalty, with courtyard accommodation for his retainers. But in January 1400, he took part in the ‘Epiphany rising,' a failed rebellion against Richard’s cousin, King Henry IV, who had taken the throne. John Holand was beheaded, although his execution happened far from Dartington, at Pleshey Castle in Essex on 9 January 1400. His head was placed on London Bridge and his body buried in the Collegiate Church at Pleshey.
Of course, many ancient places have tales of headless horsemen. Perhaps the old man was just having fun, telling frightening stories suitable for Halloween. Perhaps he was borrowing a tale he had heard attached to some other property. Or could it be that some long dead Champernowne, John Holand himself, or Nicholas Martin’s medieval huntsman rides headless through the woods?
Who can say?
Happy Halloween!
Rosemary Griggs
October 2024
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