WARNING: GRAB A CUPPA OR A BEER – THIS IS A LONG BLOG AND ITS FULL OF GHOSTS!

One thing that really surprised me when I started doing my latest research into the crumbling ruins of the sinister Devonshire castle, Berry Pomeroy, was just how many ghostly images have been captured there and how many stories exist. Some of them are probably just wispy mist or can be marked down to pareidolia. But there are others that are really quite weird. Many, many stories exist, and many people seem to have had experiences at Berry Pomeroy. There’s a lot to tell you about today!  

The reason we are in Devon instead of Wiltshire is that I took a trip down there a couple of summers ago (it’s taken me that long to write this up), my third visit to Berry Pomeroy. If I’m in the vicinity of anywhere with a ghost story or something spooky connected to it, I like to take advantage and squeeze in a quick trip. I wanted to come back again for a third time with my writer’s hat on and camera in hand. This place has fascinated me since I was a kid. It’s the location of one of those very early ghost stories I remember my mum and dad telling me, all of which are responsible for my lifelong ghostly interest.

My mum and dad told me that they had visited Berry with me as a babe in arms back in the late 1970s, long before it was developed by English Heritage into a tourist spot. It had been autumn time, they said, and it was getting dark early. In this damp and isolated Devonshire valley the autumn fog and gloaming seemed to be descending mid-afternoon. My parents arrived at the spooky castle ruins to have a look around and found there was a gang of workmen there. They were hastily packing up their tools, ready to leave. ‘Bit early to finish, isn’t it?’ my dad said by way of a joke. ‘Oh no,’ came the reply, ‘we don’t hang around here after dark, I can tell you.’

Whilst they didn’t have a story to tell of their own, when I was told about that day, in my overactive child’s mind’s eye, I imagined the crumbling ruins and the ghost of a grey lady and blue lady, condemned to re-live tragic events forevermore. This was aided by a guidebook on our family bookshelves, which devoted (most happily for me because I was such a fan of ghost stories) a small section to the ghosts of the castle. We’ll come to them later!

Berry Pomeroy Castle was built in 1496 by the Pomeroy family in the days of the Wars of the Roses. Devon housed both Lancastrians, the majority, and Yorkists, including the Pomeroy family, through this turbulent period of history. 

Violent local feuds escalated through this time and Devon was a dangerous place to be. The castle was built on a spur of land in the deer park of the Pomeroy’s manor house, which was deemed too secure and safe. A natural defensive site with three steep slopes around three sides of the castle, it made access tricky for invaders. The front of the castle was protected by a double-fronted gatehouse and battlements ran around the castle walls. It was built to withstand attack and to also allow castle soldiers to bombard would-be attackers with a barrage of weapons.

The Pomeroys continued to live at Berry until the castle was sold to Sir Edward Seymour, Protector Somerset, in 1547. His son inherited the castle and between 1560 and 1570 he built an Elizabethan Manor on top of some old original domestic buildings, only the shell of which remains today. Just a couple of decades later, a Jacobean wing was added to the building, and by now, Berry Pomeroy would have been an immense Tudor home owned by the Seymour family for several generations.

Alas, during the English Civil War, nobody lived there and Berry Pomeroy was abandoned. It ended up partially demolished after one of its owners stripped out anything of use for another building, leaving behind a picturesque ruin, the perfect stop-off for anyone heading off on their Grand Tour. Now back in the hands of the Pomeroy family, as it is owned by the Duke of Somerset today, a descendant of the original Berry Pomeroy family. It is managed by English Heritage, though, so you can visit year round.

My Visits to the Castle

Obviously, I don’t remember my visit there as a baby, but I did go back there in my 20s once. I was in Devon on holiday, and I wanted to visit Pomeroy as an adult, given that it had been of interest to me for so long.

I remember the drive up to the castle ruins. It heads through the rolling Devonshire countryside, a typical rural road, which then turns into thick, dark woods as you approach the castle. It was a gloomy, autumn afternoon. There weren’t many people about. It was not unnerving, but not exactly welcoming.

I was with my boyfriend of that time and our dog. We explored the castle, listening to the guided tour. It was very quiet there. This was before it was properly on the tourist map. We walked down a couple of the paths with our dog and then headed off. I remember it was fantastic to finally see in real life somewhere that, in my mind, was so very chilling and definitely haunted. I do remember saying, though, I felt nothing spooky there. It didn’t give me any ghostly vibes.

In the same way, the next time I visited, many years later, I didn’t find it spooky. It was, however, a lovely, hot summer afternoon. Cloudy but not at all atmospheric. There were a few people walking around and I was there with the long-suffering family, trying to prevent the kids from falling off a castle wall or similar! Hardly lends itself to having a spooky experience. That’s not to say others haven’t, though. There are lots and lots of stories of paranormal experiences told about Berry Pomeroy.

I did ask one of the volunteers about the ghosts but she said she had not seen anything. When I visited the café to grab a coffee I asked the manager there. She told me a funny little story. Apparently, a couple of years back they had been making a pan of jam and had left it to cool in the café kitchen overnight. The place was locked; only the manager had the keys. When they came in the following morning, the lid of the jam pan was knocked off and several jammie handprints went up the tiled wall behind the cooker. The manager said it was very creepy. She doesn’t hang around long after the castle closes and the staff go home. She said it has a very creepy atmosphere after dark.

The Many Hauntings of Berry Pomeroy Castle

Pomeroy’s Leap

One of the most popular tales associated with the castle is that of two Pomeroy brothers. The castle was under siege, as many castles have been through our tumultuous history. Things were not looking good for the brothers, they were starving and weak and the enemy sat outside waiting for them.

They decided they would not be taken prisoner to await a harsh death; they would dress in full suits of armour and ride their horses to their deaths from the top of castle ramparts. A gruesome end for the brothers and I can’t help but feel sorry for the horses. Since then, visitors have said they hear screams, loud thuds, and the sounds of dying horses coming from the area known as Pomeroy’s Leap.

I’m sorry to disappoint you but this story is not likely to be true as it is a borrowed story from St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. Plus, Berry Pomeroy never actually came under siege. But it’s not to say there haven’t been strange noises in that area!

The Blue Lady

The Blue Lady is one of the most famous ghosts at Berry Pomeroy. The story goes that a poor 14th-century Pomeroy girl strangled her own child in a high state of emotion because the baby was the result of abuse by her own father. The Blue Lady normally appears to men, calling out for help. She tries to lure them to dangerous parts of the castle, to push them over the ramparts to their deaths. She is seen with a blue cape and on one particular night of the year, a blue light is seen in St Margaret’s Tower, where a baby is heard wailing.

The first known account of the Blue Lady was told by Sir Walter Farquhar (1738-1819), who said he encountered the Blue Lady in a panelled room with a stained glass window sometime late in the 18th century. But by this time, the castle was already a ruin, as the lithograph from William Gauci in approximately 1840 shows. Was it a made-up story or did he get his dates mixed up?

Jump forwards in time and a doctor was called to the castle to attend to the steward’s wife. As he entered their home he asked the steward who the lady in the blue cloak was. Understandably, the steward was shocked and told the doctor he had seen a ghost.

The steward was convinced the appearance of the apparition was a bad omen and he feared for his wife’s life. The doctor assured him she would be okay but during the night his wife passed away.

Other people have encountered this Blue Lady with an account from Julie Lane on Facebook telling of a visit to Berry Pomeroy in 1994. She said she found it immediately oppressive and hated it. As they were exploring, she went to walk down some winding steps and sees a blonde-haired woman with a braid in a medieval long blue dress. She says she gets this overwhelming sense that the apparition hates her and if she heads down the steps she will push her hard and make her fall.

She stumbled away but said her legs were giving way underneath her. Somehow she made it out of the castle and got herself into her car, swearing never to visit the place again, ever.

Many visitors report seeing a blue light, sometimes caught on camera, usually at the top of St Margaret’s Tower or inside it, hovering. Sometimes, the lights are seen above the gatehouse and castle walls and have also followed visitors around the castle. Some visitors report seeing a face in the blue orb.

The White Lady

The other famous ghost of Berry Pomeroy is another lady, this time a white one, another of the Lady Pomeroys! Evil Elinor Pomeroy was jealous of her pretty younger sister’s success with the man Elinor took a fancy to, so she shut Matilda in the dungeon for many years and eventually, she starved to death. Matilda is also known as Margaret.

Sorry to poo-poo two stories in one blog today but this is also fictional. The story comes from The Castle of Berry Pomeroy by Edward Montague (a pseudonym) in 1806. The dungeon is supposed to be in St Margaret’s Tower but in fact, the bottom of the tower is a medieval gun emplacement.

Whether the story of the White Lady is true or not, the stories of a ghostly white figure, which emits a feeling of fear and malevolence when she is in your presence, still persist. Seen and felt on the stairwell to the dungeon, throughout the tower and witnessed walking on the wall walk, the white lady (or so it is thought) is the one often captured on film. Seen in a long white dress, she has black plaited hair.

On Facebook, a man called Paul tells of his experience with the White Lady:

“Back in the early eighties, I was photographing and visiting historical sights with my close friend John as we tried to scratch out a career in photojournalism. We photographed every nook and cranny of Berry Pomeroy Castle. It was free to enter in those days, and we could come as often as we liked. In fact, we would often come to just chill out as it was so peaceful. Somehow, we’d always end up outside Margaret’s tower on the ram parts.

On this occasion there was a strange feeling about the place. The more I became conscious of the feeling the stronger it became. I even mentioned it to John who could feel it too. My attention drew to a window that I was standing next to, inside the window was a room, and there was some movement in the room. I knew the Seymour building was a ruin, but I was getting a flash of a completed building. I looked away, and then looked back and a saw the lady in white looking out of the window only a few feet away from me. The feeling I was getting was that we were trespassing and that we had intruded upon her privacy.

John who was now standing on the wall, didn’t see the lady in white, but was being overwhelmed by the vibes of the place. He began to click his fingers to distract me. The presence was now closer to him. He jumped down from the wall and wanted to leave immediately, and I followed.

As I walked away from St Margret’s tower and through the gate, everything seemed back to normal, but as I followed John down the path into the valley, I saw flashes of the lady in white in the woods. It was only when we left the grounds at the bottom of the path, then everything was truly back to normal and the presence had gone.

John would never again go back to the castle.”

There are more stories of the White Lady here if you fancy a read:

https://simonday.com/berry-pomeroy-ghosts/berry-ghosts.htm

The Man in the Tricorn Hat

A male apparition has also been sighted within the grounds of the castle over the years, he is described as wearing a tricorn hat.

Is he the same ghost described as a smiling Cavalier? He is seen hanging around on the road to the castle, with his cavalier outfit, curled long dark hair and large moustache. He sometimes interacts with people who encounter him, and giving them a smile, he confesses he is heading to the local inn.

Time Slips

We heard about one example of a momentary time slip in Paul’s account when he witnessed the White Lady, but I came across another momentary one written by Andrew, who is now living in Brittany, France. He posted it on the Facebook page, Berry Pomeroy Castles Haunted Heritage. That was just one of his experiences at Berry Pomeroy:

‘Back in the 70’s and 80’s, a group of us used to go out pub crawling in pubs around Totnes. We were all teenagers, we had a couple of cars and when the pubs shut at 11pm, we avoided the nightclubs of Torbay (not our scene at all) and headed for Berry Pomeroy, armed with torches, candles and packs of beer.

We parked our cars by the old gallows gate, down in the valley behind the Castle. Our objective was to climb up through the woods to the back of the castle where we could climb over the wall in silence. Our biggest fear was to draw attention to the gatekeeper who we knew had a shotgun.

In those days the castle was a real ruin. It hadn’t yet been discovered by the National Trust or whoever owns it today. A few stories that happened to me and my comrades have convinced me that the castle is indeed haunted.

The first was a story told by an elderly couple who lived up in Marldon. They loved walking. One sunny Sunday afternoon they were walking by the gallows gate, down in the valley behind the castle. They came across a small person, dressed in medieval attire, who was quite simply floating above the gallows. They quickly backtracked and returned home, petrified.

Then there were events that I personally witnessed. The first was one moonlit night when one of my friends, who was walking along the ramparts, fell off. Luckily, he fell inside the castle, not outside, otherwise he could have been killed. He wasn’t injured but swore that the wall was continuous. In fact the wall had collapsed hundreds of years before. He also said that he had been beckoned by a beautiful lady, dressed in white, at the entrance to…yes you’ve guessed it, the ‘white lady’s tower’. So that event did send a few shivers up our spines. But it didn’t put us off from returning time and time again to the castle.

My last visit was in about 1985. This time there was a large group of us, as usual, doing the country pubs first then Berry to finish off the night. It was Halloween to add to the eeriness.

We climbed silently through the wood as we had done tens of times before and got inside the castle in the usual way. I remember it was a beautiful full moon, the courtyard of the castle between the Renaissance château to the trellis gatehouse was perfectly illuminated. We heard noises and shouts. A group of youngsters were trying to get in through the main entrance but couldn’t. We decided to play a trick on them.

I climbed up on the shoulders of one of my companions, put my wife’s black shawl over my head and headed towards the gatehouse. To scare them, I spoke in French (I have been living in France for 40 years now, but my roots are in Torbay and South Devon) , asking them who they were and what they were doing there.

That’s when it happened. Something I will never forget. A man appeared in front of us, about halfway between the mansion, behind us, and the gatehouse, about ten yards in front. He was dressed as a monk, his face was lined and haggard and most of his teeth were missing.

To add to all this, he spoke to me in French!

‘Who are you?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Why are you speaking French?’

He stank. His breath and body odour. I couldn’t reply, I was too shocked. The monk disappeared to our right, climbing a sheer face with ease to the top. My friend who was carrying me just continued walking to the gatehouse where he collapsed in a state of shock. We headed home quickly but all of us came back the next day, determined to see how this monk could have scaled a sheer rockface so quickly and so easily. We could not find an answer. Ten of us were witnesses to these events. I haven’t returned to the castle since.”

The final story of a timeslip I came across is more substantial and is told by Alison Crocker in Strange Sightings and Mysterious Creatures in the New Forest and Beyond. How odd it must be to suddenly glitch into another dimension and be able to witness the place in which you stand in times gone by, particularly if you happen to be standing in an ancient castle!

Alison tells us of the first time she visited Berry Pomeroy. She is a dowser and she met someone called Bob doing the same. Teaming up, they walked down the pathway that leads to the valley at the foot of the hill. They walked past a small cottage and suddenly noticed the lively spring birdsong had ceased and the place took on an eerie stillness. Everything appeared to have a strange shimmering appearance and looking to the cottage they noticed no curtains at the window, an old-fashioned laundry mangle on a table outside and a strange looking plant in the garden. She said the whole garden looked like something out of the 1800s and Alison said it had the same eerie kind of feel of an experience she had back in the total eclipse of 1999.

It was only a minute or so later that the birds began to sing again and the cottage returned to it’s modern appearance with sets of curtains and net curtains at the window. It was a most uncanny event. Alison notes that she later found out a light aircraft pilot had flown over the castle and had seen smoke coming from chimneys that had long been in ruins.

Other Ghosts of Berry Pomeroy

There are even more reports at Berry Pomeroy. One of a gardener seen scything grass at the front of the  castle, a friendly dog that appears almost lifelike before fading away and one that is less friendly, growling and snarling when the living approach.

There’s a medieval guardsman, carrying a lantern and he stands on the castle ramparts. Should anyone approach him, attracted by his lantern, he may cast an evil grin your way before disappearing before your very eyes. Lastly there is a cane bearer, a young woman dressed in rags, carrying bunches of canes to turn into baskets. She makes no sound but may poke witnesses with her canes.

Before we finish up exploring the ghosts of Berry Pomeroy Castle, have a look at this final image.

A Famous Ghost Image of Berry Pomeroy

I remember this famous photo of a ghost captured at the castle. I’ve no doubt there are technical explanations for it but that’s not my area of expertise. We’ll let our imaginations take over here today, and just believe this is, in fact, a ghost. Here’s what Tim Brook had to say:

” I have attached the photo I took in 1973, with my Instamatic camera.

The ‘ghost‘, as it appears to me, is in the left–hand bottom corner, which looks like a young girl in a bonnet and holding maybe a spray of flowers. It‘s certainly intrigued me over the last 30 years!

It was a summer day when we visited and we had no prior knowledge of the ghost stories surrounding the castle. My mother‘s first comments were, ‘What an evil feeling it has‘, which I’ve since read about in the books on its history. The ghost wasn’t visible as I took the photo but appeared after it was developed but doesn’t seem to be a camera fault. I hear many people have seen a similar figure there over the years.

I’ve visited the castle since over numerous years and only once since, have I ‘heard‘ a ghost.  A young voice shouting ‘Maggie, Maggie‘ coming from the vicinity of the castle. I was alone at the time. Could that have been connected to Margaret Pomeroy I wonder?“

Rounding up the Ghosts of Berry Pomeroy

Well, this has turned into a mega-blog. I didn’t quite plan it to be this long when I sat down to write it but as I gathered all my evidence together, plus all of the personal experiences, I realised just how much unexplainable stuff happens at this castle.

If I’m honest, I don’t think I have even come close to writing about all the experiences there. If this isn’t the most haunted castle in England, it definitely should be up there at the top of the list.

Thanks for joining me today. Next time, we are back in Wiltshire and it’s time to re-examine Grovely Woods through sceptical eyes. David Aneurin Morgan returns with some interesting new evidence.

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References

Berry Pomeroy Castle from the book Haunted Dartmoor by Kevin Hynes

Berry Pomeroy Castle Guidebook by English Heritage

Strange Sightings and Mysterious Creatures in the New Forest and Beyond by Alison Crocker

www.facebook.com/p/Berry-Pomeroy-Castles-Haunted-Heritage-100075745603996/

https://discover.hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/The-Ghosts-of-Berry-Pomeroy

*I try to find as many credits as possible for images and stories. Unless otherwise stated, the images of ghosts on this page are from Facebook. I do not access to FB to accredit names to them but if anyone recognises their image, please get in touch so I can credit you.

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Don’t forget; I’m always on the lookout for spooky and weird stories from Wiltshire and beyond. If you have a tale you would like to share I’d love to hear from you. Contact me here.

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