The Southern Charm of Northern England

Phantom Echoes

It's cool this evening, so owner-chefs Ken and Elizabeth Marley have lit a fire in the downstairs drawing room where Gail and Bob Jordan and I sit drinking a perfumey Medoc, eating tartlets of wild nettles and Cotherstone cheese (made in a village three miles up the dale) and trying to decide what to have for dinner. The menu at Blagraves changes often, reflecting the seasons: venison, pheasant, pigeon, salmon (lots of hunting and fishing around here), plus local beef and lamb.

Upstairs in the dining room, we feast on asparagus, rabbit terrine, trout and guinea fowl as Bob explains that Blagraves House was built in 1483 and belonged to Richard III -- as did the castle and most of the lands around here. You can still see his heraldic emblem, the Boar Passant -- that is, with one trotter raised -- on the south wall of the house.

For dessert there's homemade ice cream and sticky toffee pudding (the most sublime use of sugar known to man), but I'm having the lemon posset with fresh berries. We move onto the subject of ghosts: Bob and Gail's house has a phantom staircase that some spirit clunks up and down; the old Manor House down the Bank has an angry maidservant from several centuries ago who makes pinging noises in empty rooms; Blagraves may be haunted by Oliver Cromwell, who spent a night here in 1648, and a ghost kitty cat. The feline spectre apparently rubs up against diners' legs and when they look, there's nothing there.

"Maybe it's just Sparky," Gail says.

Bob speculates that the tunnels that run under the Bank, used in innkeeping times as a way to move beer barrels when the road above was covered in snowdrifts, might give rise to some of the stories of hauntings, with strange noises apparently coming from nowhere. Some of the tunnels are ancient and may reach as far as the castle or the medieval monastic buildings by the river.

Bob says he thinks history leaves a sort of imprint on places and people, an echo. "It's like we have some memory genes passed on by our ancestors. Could be why you feel so at home in certain places."

Could be this is why I feel so at home in Barnard Castle: It's those Southern memory genes calling back across the Atlantic to the place whence they came.

Diane Roberts last wrote for Travel about Tallahassee.