Enigma of Borley Rectory

by Harry Ludlum

  Borley Rectory - Garden Front (SE Elevation)

  Borley Rectory - Drive Side (NE Elevation)

  Borley Rectory - Greenhouse side (SW Elevation)

  Borley Rectory - NW Elevation

  Internal courtyard elevations

  The main entrance to the Rectory itself was off this driveway into a porch, which was topped, upon its upper floor, by one of those features so beloved of the Victorians, a sort of turret with fancy ironwork on the top of it. This was an absurd-looking appendage by which the Rectory came to be readily recognisable on old photographs.

  The room, of which the turret formed the roof, was once used as a bathroom, but many years later one of the subsequent rectors turned it into a tiny chapel, complete with altar rail and imitation stained glass window.

  The front of the house, which was technically the back, faced East/South East onto the large lawn that merged into the enormously long garden, long since lost under modern bungalows.

  This front-cum-back façade was of twin gable-end form with, on the ground floor, two large bay- windowed rooms, of which the left-hand one facing an onlooker had what appeared to be full-height French windows, which were in fact false.

  The windows and their bays were of typical flat-top Victorian design, and the French-style windows of the left-handed facing bay illuminated a commodious drawing room. Between the two bays there stretched a glass-roofed verandah from which a door gave access to and from another of those Victorian domestic features, a library. This and the room above it formed the centre span of the frontage.

  The drawing room, Borley Rectory, c. 1890

  Behind this massively gabled face of the house, its skyline was visibly dominated by several tall chimneys and on the far side, facing out over the fields towards Bulmer, following various extensions to the building to accommodate Henry Bull's growing family, there appeared a glasshouse and a boiler room. The glasshouse faced rather oddly into the shade of the trees.

  As time passed, Henry Bull's family grew considerably, to the extent that the rector required his house to be enlarged, so the Rectory reached its final form between 1875 and 1892.

  The result was a new wing on the far side of the house away from the road, in which the upper rooms were mostly given over to sleeping accommodation. Some of it no doubt was intended for some of the girls, whilst below on the ground floor of the extension were storerooms used for coal and lumber. At the back of the original wing, neatly enclosing the internal brick courtyard after the new wing was added, was a small domestic dairy.

  In its final form, Borley Rectory had a room layout as follows:

  Ground Floor

  Entering from the garden via the verandah into the library at the centre-front and then turning right:

  1. The main hall, with stairs up to the first floor, and containing a round iron stove. Off the hall was the dining room.

  2. The front exit via the porch.

  3. The long corridor with a pantry.

  4. A secondary landing with another staircase to the first floor, and also stairs down to the huge cellars.

  5. The sewing room.

  6. A large kitchen.

  7. A rear staircase up to the first floor.

  8. To the right of these stairs, a larder.

  9. The dairy.

  10. To the left of the back stairs, a scullery.

  Returning to the hall, and proceeding through the far side of the house, to:

  11. The drawing room with its pseudo-French windows.

  12. A passageway with an exit to the garden.

  13. Two large cupboards off this passageway.

  From here, the remainder of the ground floor extension was walled off and was only accessible from the courtyard via an arched covered passage. To the left of this passage were the following:

  14. A fuel storeroom.

  15. Another storeroom.

  16. A third storeroom, outside which was the cover of the main well, with a huge hand wheel-operated pump.

  17. A lavatory.

  18. On the far side of the lavatory, a wood store with access from it to the boiler room and glasshouse.

  First Floor

  The top floor of the Rectory was given over chiefly to bedrooms with the layout as follows:

  19. Proceeding up the main staircase from the hall onto the landing, there was the Blue Room, the bedroom that directly overlooked the glass-roofed verandah.

  20. A dressing room for the Blue Room, with a connecting door between the two.

  21. Another bedroom.

  22. Over the porch, a small bathroom later turned into a small chapel.

  23. The upstairs lavatory.

  24. Stairs from a small landing down to the kitchen passage on the ground floor and up to what passed for a loft, where in later years a water cistern was put in with better piping.

  25. Originally a bedroom; this next room was later in use as a bathroom, the old bathroom over the porch having been turned into a little chapel.

  26/27. Two further bedrooms, the end one having an exit via a very small landing down the back stairs. These two rooms ran into one another without a corridor.

  28. To the left, also just off the top of the back stairs was one other bedroom, directly over the scullery and overlooking the internal bricked courtyard.

  One of these end rooms was later partly used for storing fruit and became known as the 'pear room'. Behind a curtain across one part of it was a bed used by one of the maids who reported some curious happenings there.

  29. A bedroom, at which point one entered to the right the long corridor on this side of the house. A short way along it, the corridor slewed slightly to the left, with two steps down, leading to:

  30/31. Two more bedrooms, served by doors off the corridor.

  32. The last room in the wing, at the end of the corridor. From it both the back corner of the garden, part of the courtyard and the stable cottage would have been visible, as would the back of the farm, which is still there today.

  The courtyard just referred to was originally open to the garden, but the 1875 extension on the far side of the house all but boxed it in, except for a narrow gap just wide enough to walk through. With the exception of one tiny sash, only the main stairs and those rooms in the original wing had any windows overlooking the courtyard. The inner wall of the extension, except for just that one tiny window indicated on the Glanville floor plans, seems to have been blank brick, and in wet weather the outlook in the courtyard must have been most dreary.

  At both ends of the main landing at the front of the house there were corridor archways of typical Victorian design, these being close to the Blue Room. Both the landing and the Blue Room featured extensively in the subsequent history of the building, and these details will be enlarged upon later.

  The Cellars

  The large and irregularly shaped cellars of the Rectory were reached by a stairway from the ground floor between the pantry and the sewing room, but in no way did the cellars correspond to the layout of the building itself. Instead they ran roughly diagonally across the house from beneath the kitchen corridor to a point beneath the library.

  When, after the Second World War, the site was completely dug out, as distinct from the digging carried out in the ruins in 1943 under Harry Price's directions, the reason for the odd shape of the cellars seemed to reveal itself in the foundations of at least one if not two much older buildings. These findings will be described later.

  Peter Underwood and Paul Tabori dwelt at length upon these post-war excavations in their book, The Ghosts of Borley, and owing to their obvious interest in relation to many aspects of the story of the Rectory I have no hesitation in setting them out again.

  From these cellars ran a well, one of two in this part of the house. The other was more of a shallow tank than a well. The main well was the one in the courtyard and it was of considerable depth (some 80 feet in fact) and from it was taken the water for both the Rectory and the stable cottage, with a wheel-operated pum
p being used to effect supply. This appliance was hard work to operate and noisy in use.

  Plan of the cellars

  The reader should be able to follow the foregoing description of the layout of Borley Rectory from the plans, one of each floor, drawn up during the late 1930s by Harry Price's near neighbour and dedicated assistant Sidney Glanville and first published in Price's book, The Most Haunted House in England.

  I feel it is now worthwhile to turn to some of the oddities inside and outside the house.

  The turreted porch has already been mentioned and it will suffice here merely to add that the outside corners of the porch were buttressed like a church tower. Close alongside the porch was another curiosity with very direct links to the story in hand. Butting onto the hallway and porch was the dining room, being the right-hand room of the two bay-windowed rooms viewed from the lawn.

  As well as the large bay window as originally built, the dining room also had a side window, like most in the house a conventional sash type with a stone lintel over the top. The Rectory had not been occupied for long when, it is believed on the orders of the Rev. Henry Bull, that window was taken out and the opening bricked up. As Harry Price was later to comment, the blocked-up window rather spoilt the balance of the building on that side.

  This window looked out onto the driveway and as to why it was blocked up, the writer will elaborate in due course.

  Another curious feature of the place were the heavy iron bars on several windows on the ground floor. These were apparently not as one might suppose to keep out burglars, for in a quiet area like Borley in those days there would have been little need for such precautions, especially as the other ground floor rooms had substantial internal shutters. Rather, the iron bars were supposedly there for the purpose of preventing young maidservants from receiving the attentions of suitors or boyfriends, or slipping out for elicit rendezvous, when they should have been in bed asleep. The kitchen, kitchen passage, the scullery, larder and dairy windows were all barred in this fashion.

  How much truth there was in the popular belief as to the barring of these windows is hard to say, but Victorian ideas on servants' behaviour were often strict, despite the fact that the social behaviour of the employers sometimes left much to be desired.

  From barred windows to bells!

  Another interesting item, and one of very few relics of Borley Rectory to have survived the years since the fire, was the big Rectory bell. This hung from a bracket high up on the wall overlooking the internal courtyard and was positioned roughly over the top of the kitchen passage doorway. Originally it had a long bell rope, which would have reached nearly to the ground, but by the time Harry Price came upon the scene, the rope had gone, rendering the bell officially inoperative; but according to some reports, this did not prevent the bell from sounding of its own volition and under curious circumstances. Of these happenings, more later.

  The exact purpose of the Rectory bell in that position could be said to be something of a mystery. There were, of course, stables at the rear of the Rectory, but a stable bell is more usually placed over the stable roof in a little cupola, or hung from a bracket under the eaves.

  So why, if it was a stable bell, was that at Borley hung in the inner courtyard of the Rectory? Of course, if the bell was installed when the house was first built, then that courtyard could well have served as the family's carriage yard, with the bell being rung to inform the Bulls' coachman that the carriage was required. However, once the courtyard was, to all intents and purposes, blocked off by the later extension, one would think that the bell would have been moved accordingly.

  Various other possibilities present themselves. It could, perhaps, have been used to summon the Rector from the church when he might have been pottering around therein. Alternatively, it could have served as a meal bell within the Rectory grounds, to call in the various members of the family, especially in the summertime when folks might be walking around in far parts of the great garden. One wonders whether the blocked-in nature of the courtyard might not have muffled the effect to some extent, although it has been more than once suggested that the shape of the Rectory caused sounds to be amplified and carried, though the writer will make some personal observations about this point later on.

  So much then for the Rectory bell and its purpose. After belonging to Harry Price for several years, having been given to him by Captain Gregson during the demolition, it now reposes at Peter Underwood's house in Bentley, Hampshire.

  Inside the Rectory, the dining room and the drawing room both possessed features that were of more than passing interest. In the dining room was to be found perhaps the most prominent and unusual interior item. The bricked-up window has already been referred to, but the real eye-stopper was the fireplace.

  It was a heavily carved marble monstrosity, but what made it especially interesting was that on each of the side columns was carved a monk's head, one hooded and one not. The significance of these lay in the once popular belief that Borley Rectory occupied a site on which had once stood a monastery. Arguments about this have rumbled on for years and the writer will deal with this controversy later on. Whatever the truth behind the idea of a Borley monastery, the dining room fireplace at Borley Rectory certainly did reflect the idea in very solid form.

  The dining room fireplace: note the carved monks' heads

  It is said to have come from the Great Exhibition of 1851, though if so, where it had been in the intervening years was anybody's guess. It was of Italian origin, as was the one in the drawing room.

  The drawing room fireplace was of similar peculiarity, but minus any carved monks' heads, and was of coloured inlaid marble. It looked something like an arched portcullis in shape and was entirely typical of some of the more preposterous bits of Victorian interior design.

  Another notable room in the house was the now famous Blue Room, which was the upstairs front bedroom overlooking the glass-roofed verandah. This room was interesting, not because of any structural feature, but because of the phenomena reportedly experienced in it, and seen in the remains of it after the fire. It also featured in one of the many stories connected with the Rectory, that of the 'Screaming Girl', which was briefly mentioned in passing by Harry Price in his first book about Borley Rectory. I will elaborate on that in due course.

  We finally turn to the chapel. This oddity, the room over the porch with its steeple roof, was first used as a bathroom but some time after the end of the Bull era a later rector, the Rev. Lionel Foyster, turned it into a tiny chapel. This curiosity in turn created another, in that in order to provide a replacement bathroom an adjoining bedroom was commandeered for the purpose, resulting in the rather unusual combination of a bathroom with a fireplace.

  Borley Rectory in June 1929

  In the strange history of Borley Rectory the big garden was to play its own curious part, just as odd as events in the Rectory itself.

  The top section from the Rectory itself to roughly the point where the second bungalow from the corner stands today was the lawn. From there, the garden became a wooded copse, crossed about halfway down by a tiny pond-cum-stream.

  Aside from the upper and lower drive gateways, there appear to have been two other gateways into the grounds from the lane. These two gateways, with their curious stone wings, still survive, now somewhat broken up and on two different properties. It is this last fact that suggests that they were at one time part of the Rectory grounds. The gates that they sport are, however, not original or even very old.

  One the side of the garden nearest the road, the lawn was screened by the Cedars of Lebanon, whilst on the other side was a low boundary wall, now gone, together with more trees, also now largely gone.

  Part of the garden has often been thought to occupy the site of an old plague pit, a burial ground for the victims of that awful pestilence that carried off a goodly proportion of the population of the Home Counties.

  There were two rather interesting structures in the garden, together with one o
ther curiosity. At the top of the lawn, fairly close to the lower drive gate, stood a large rustic octagonal summerhouse, which faced out towards the far side of the garden, giving an unimpeded view. It was built around a solid centre pole of timber around which was fixed a table.

  The octagonal summerhouse

  The inside perimeter of the summerhouse was supplied with stout wooden garden seats in which Henry Bull and his son Harry are said to have sat for many a long hour, smoking their pipes and, so it is said, watching for one of the strange figures seen at Borley Rectory.

  Further down, right at the foot of the copse, was another smaller summerhouse, an ornate and rather pleasing little Victorian Gothic structure, open at the sides and with a roof rather reminiscent of the lid of an old-fashioned tea caddy. In this, Harry Bull used to sit to commune with the spirits we are told, often at all sorts of odd hours. Both these summerhouses survived the fire of 1939, but during the following couple of years or so some army personnel who tried to use the grounds as a billet pulled down the small summerhouse. It would seem that the big summerhouse was demolished not long afterwards.

  Now we turn to the curious oddity mentioned earlier. One of the most amusing aspects of Harry Bull's tenure at the Rectory was the huge entourage of pet cats that he kept, amounting to about 32 of them in all. He is said to have known them all by name and it must have been more than a little comic to see them all follow him about the Rectory. It was Harry's cats that gave rise to the oddity mentioned earlier, because as they died they were buried in a little pet's cemetery located in the copse. Each of the graves has its own little memorial board, inscribed with the name of the departed moggy. Rollo, Sandy and Gem were just three of this great brigade of cats. This cemetery was the scene of another of Borley Rectory's curious goings-on, as will be related later.