Longueville Manor in St Saviour is one of Jersey's grandest hotels, and one of the few with a ghost that keeps an appointment.
The story belongs to Hoste Nicolle, who held the seigneurie of Longueville from 1546 to 1564 and was also Bailiff of Jersey. Jerripedia's history of the manor says that he was 'held up as a bogey to refractory children for four centuries', which tells you something about how he was remembered. The tale that made him a bogeyman concerns a butcher named Antoine. Antoine lived in one of the manor buildings, rented a nearby field on good terms, and had a right of way through the manor courtyard. Nicolle wanted rid of the lease and the right of way.
So, the story goes, he and a servant killed two of his own sheep and hid the carcasses in Antoine's cellar. Sheep stealing was a capital crime. The butcher was tried by a court sitting in the great hall of the manor itself, found guilty and condemned. As he was led out to die, he turned on the seigneur and called on him to appear with him before a righteous judge, and answer to Him for this death, in three weeks from that day. Antoine was executed. Nicolle, the legend says, disappeared and was never seen again.
The haunting is the coda. Channel Eye's round-up of Channel Island hotspots says that on the anniversary of Nicolle's death the galloping of horses can be heard around the manor. Erren Michaels, writing for The History Press, and Spooky Isles both put the killing on 11 June 1564 and make it spectral horses galloping on that night each year, the murdered man returning with Death to collect his lord. Spooky Isles adds maniacal laughter as the horses race away.
Hoste Nicolle was a real man and a real Bailiff, and 1564 is the end of his tenure. The rest is a very old kind of story: the unjust judge summoned to God's court by his victim, a motif told of several medieval kings and nobles. We have not found any contemporary record of Antoine's trial. The manor's own history page does not dwell on the ghost.
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