Allies prints this as a story similar to his Old Coles legend from Leigh. He takes it from A Rambler in Worcestershire, published in 1851, at page 191, which describes the Court House in Little Shelsley, Shelsley Walsh.
According to the Rambler's account, the people said the house was haunted and that a Lady Lightfoot, who had been imprisoned and murdered in it, came at night and drove a carriage and four fiery horses round some old rooms that were unoccupied. Her ladyship's screams were heard at times over the Old Court. She had been seen to drive her team into the moat, and carriage, horses and all disappeared, the water smoking like a furnace.
The source gives no date, no explanation of who Lady Lightfoot was, and no named witness, and Allies adds no confirmation of his own. The phantom coach and four, and a driver or passenger who vanishes into water, is a stock motif and Allies places it beside similar tales from Derbyshire, Devon, Norfolk and Essex. The exact position of the old moated court was not checked, so the pin is approximate to the village.
Comments