HINTON AMPNER

Opening

In December 1764 William Henry Ricketts, a Jamaica planter, leased the old Tudor manor of Hinton Ampner in Hampshire from Lady Stawell, and the family moved in in January 1765. Almost at once his wife Mary heard doors in the night. Ricketts searched the house, found the servants in bed, and changed the locks, suspecting villagers with false keys. Servants later reported a man in a drab coat and a woman in rustling silk who vanished.

After Ricketts left for Jamaica in 1769 the noises grew. From 2 April 1771 Mary and her servants heard footsteps, voices, crashes and a shriek almost nightly. In August her brother, the naval captain John Jervis, later Earl St Vincent, sat up with a fellow officer, heard it too and told her to leave. She did. In July 1772 she wrote a narrative for her children, published a century later.

Timeline

2 April 1755Lord Stawell, the previous occupant, dies of a stroke in the house.

December 1764Ricketts takes the lease. The family takes possession in January 1765.

1765Mary hears doors slammed at night. The nurse sees a gentleman in a drab suit enter the yellow bedroom. In the autumn a groom sees the same figure in the hall.

July 1767Four servants in the kitchen see a tall woman in dark, rustling clothes rush past and vanish.

1769Ricketts sails for Jamaica. Mary stays with their three young children.

1770Mary hears a man's footsteps walking to the foot of her bed, in a room with no other exit.

27 February 1771A maid, Elizabeth Godin, reports groans around her bed all night.

2 April 1771The heavy disturbances begin.

August 1771Jervis, Captain Luttrell and Jervis's servant sit up, search the house and cannot account for the noises. Jervis writes to Ricketts on 9 August. Mary moves out.

September 1771Lady Hillsborough's agent posts notices offering fifty guineas for the discovery of whoever was making the noises.

July 1772Mary writes her narrative at Hinton Parsonage.

1793The old house is pulled down after a new one is built about 50 metres to the south.

November and December 1872The narrative and family letters appear in The Gentleman's Magazine as "A Hampshire Ghost Story".

Key figures

Mary Ricketts (born Jervis, 1737 or 1738, died aged 91), the main witness, whose truthfulness, her family said, was proverbial.

John Jervis, her brother, later Admiral the Earl St Vincent.

Elizabeth Godin and Hannah Streeter, servants who also heard the noises.

Lady Stawell, later Lady Hillsborough, the owner.

Harry Price, who retold the case in Poltergeist Over England (1945).

Physical and documentary trail

The record is Mary Ricketts's narrative of July 1772, two copies of which she made for her family, plus contemporary letters from her, from Jervis, from the owner's agent, and from her servant Robert Camis, with the reward notice. Her great-granddaughter edited them for The Gentleman's Magazine in 1872. Mary also listed every change of servants to show that no single group of conspirators could have been present throughout.

Soon after we were settled at Hinton I frequently heard noises in the night, as of people shutting, or rather slapping doors with vehemence.

Corrections to the earlier version of this report. The lease was signed in December 1764, and possession taken in January 1765. Mary did not write to a sister; the documents are her own narrative and letters to her husband and friends. She left the house in August 1771. The house was demolished in 1793. The murdered-child story is not a later invention: in 1818 a former servant, Lucy Camis, told Mary's granddaughter, "God knows whether she had a child and killed it", without saying whom she meant.

Things you might not know

• The owner thought it a crime. Lady Hillsborough's notice blamed "some evil disposed person or persons" and offered fifty guineas on conviction. Ricketts later raised the reward to £100. No one was convicted.
• A small skull turned up. When the house was pulled down, workmen were said to have found a small skull under a floor, said to be a monkey's. It was never examined.
• There was a treasure story. An old man told Mary that a carpenter had once been made to lift the lobby floorboards so the former owner, Sir Hugh Stewkeley, could hide something underneath.
• The next tenants left too. A family named Lawrence took the house within about a year, forbade the servants to speak of the noises, and left suddenly after about a year.
• The current house is a different building. The National Trust house at Hinton Ampner stands about 50 metres from the haunted one.

Competing explanations

A haunting. Mary Ricketts concluded that the cause was supernatural, and her brother and Captain Luttrell said they could find no natural cause. The noises were heard by many people over years, including some who had been sceptical.

A trick to drive the tenant out. Mary herself wrote that trickery was "the current belief", and that a local man was thought to be involved, though she was sure no human being could have carried it on. The owner's agent and the reward notice assumed human agency. No one was caught or confessed.

Natural noise in an old house. Wind, timbers and animals explain some sounds. They do not explain the voices and footsteps she described, if her descriptions are accurate.

Later life of the case

Hinton Ampner became a standard English haunting, retold by Price and by later ghost books. Ralph Dutton, the last private owner, left the estate to the National Trust in 1985.

Finding

The noises at Hinton Ampner were heard by Mary Ricketts, her servants, her brother and a fellow officer, and none of them found a cause. The owner offered a large reward to unmask a trickster, and no one was ever named or convicted. The case rests on careful contemporary testimony and remains unexplained.

What still will not resolve: whether someone was trying to drive the tenants out. The man rumoured to be involved is barely identifiable in the printed record, and the house that could have been examined was pulled down in 1793.