The ghost of Ightham Mote

Unearthly chill
Some time in 1872, or so one version of the story goes, workmen were called in to deal with an unexplained draught in the tower at Ightham Mote. Try as they might, the owners had never been able to overcome the coldness of the air in that part of the property. It was, according to those who felt it, an unearthly chill, which normal heat could not affect.

Behind a panel, the workmen were to make a discovery that would chill them to the bone. For as they removed it, they uncovered a small sealed-up space, just large enough to accommodate a chair and the skeleton of a woman seated in it.

Gunpowder Plot
The skeleton was reputed to be that of Dame Dorothy Selby, whose family owned Ightham Mote from the end of the Elizabethan era through to Victorian times. The Selby family were diehard Catholics and it was said that in November 1605 they knew of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Dame Dorothy was supposed to have sent an anonymous letter to her cousin, Lord Monteagle, warning him not to go to Parliament on 5 November. The letter was intercepted, however, the plot revealed and the conspiracy thwarted.

Subsequently, Dame Dorothy's role in betraying the conspiracy came to light and friends of the plotters resolved to punish her. According to the story, she was seized and walled up in the tiny space in Ightham Mote's tower.

Even after her body had been discovered (and presumably reburied), the strange chill continued to haunt the tower. The local bishop was supposed to have been brought in to carry out an exorcism all to no avail. The ghost of Dame Dorothy is said to continue to haunt the tower to this day.

The truth
All of which makes a great story, except that there's hardly a scrap of truth to be found in it.

The whole thing seems to stem from a misreading of the memorial to Dame Dorothy, which is where it has always been, even when she was supposed to have been walled up in Ightham Mote – in the local church in the village of Ightham. Well known for her needlework, Dame Dorothy chose the Gunpowder Plot as one of the subjects for her tapestries.

The memorial says that she was a woman 'whose art disclosed that Plot' which means simply that it was depicted in her needlework. Those few words have been misinterpreted, however, to suggest that she revealed the Gunpowder Plot to the king and parliament, and on such flimsy foundations were the subsequent fantasies about a walled-up skeleton, ghost and exorcism built.

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