In September 1919 Henry Joseph Hewitt, a former owner, woke to see a glowing woman in 14th or 15th century dress cross his bedroom, appearing deeply sad, and pass through a closed door. The local historian Mike White, The Veiled Vale (2016), proposes she could be Beatrice de Braose, who held a building here around the late 13th or early 14th century that had been an Abingdon Abbey rest house.
The nearby fishponds are said to hold a troublesome spirit laid by eleven priests, with the usual warning that if the ponds dry up it will get out. A ghostly horse drawn coach is also said to race past the house as an omen of death. White suggests the owners behind that might be the 19th century Hayward family, including enclosure profiteers, a gambling heir who bankrupted the estate in the 1870s, and Old Madam Hayward, whose will caused lasting disputes.
The 1919 account is the one dated and named report. The fishpond and coach stories are undated traditions, and the identity as Beatrice is only White's suggestion.
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