Springhill is a 17th-century plantation house near Moneymore, held by the Conyngham and later Lenox-Conyngham family and left to the National Trust. Its blue room is the centre of the story.
According to Richard Jones, George Lenox-Conyngham, a man prone to melancholy, was serving in the Irish Volunteers in 1814 when he heard his children had smallpox. He left his post and found his wife Olivia had nursed them back to health, but he was then to be court martialled, having been, as the story goes, let down by a commanding officer who was a friend. A daughter died soon after and a long depression followed. In November 1816 he took a pistol from the gunroom, returned to the blue room and shot himself. Olivia, realising what he meant to do, rushed upstairs and had just reached the bedroom door when she heard the shot. She wrote in the family Bible that he had lingered from the 20th to the 22nd of November and died. Jones quotes the entry.
Olivia is said to repeat that dash, and has been seen on several occasions standing at the blue room door with her hands raised in horror. Jones tells of a late 19th-century house guest, a Miss Wilson, who had sat up chatting with the daughter of the house, Milly Conyngham. When Miss Wilson went to return a diary Milly had left behind, a tall woman appeared at the top of the stairs, moved to a bedroom door, raised her arms as in despair and slowly faded away.
Spirited Isle and the Great British Ghost Tour describe the same figure, a tall grey lady fond of children, and the Great British Ghost Tour notes knocking. The National Trust guides are said to stress that the presence is kindly. Jones adds that the blue room turns cold the moment you step into it.
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