Actors conduct ghost hunt at Clegg Hall

Jon Comyn Platt as Henry, Peter Dignam as Richard and Claire Heathcote as Simone with the only boggart found on the ghost hunt

A group of people from Milnrow’s MAD Theatre Company visited Clegg Hall, off Wildhouse Lane recently to conduct a ghost hunt.

History tells us that the majority of sightings of the Clegg Hall ghost were around sunset, so last week the group, with permission of Jason Stead who is refurbishing the 17th Century Hall, when on their own search.

The story of the haunting, known locally as The Boggart of Clegg Hall, is the subject of the upcoming play to be performed by MADs at the Ellenroad Steam Mill in September.

The ghost, or boggart, is said to be of Henry de Clegg’s eldest son who was murdered, along with his brother, by his uncle Richard in 1241 in an attempt to secure the inheritance of the much larger Clegg Hall that was built on the same site as the one that stands today.

Jon Comyn Platt, who wrote the play said: “It was fantastic to move around the Hall in costume, trying to connect with what had happened at the very spot over 700 years ago”.

Claire Heathcote, who plays the part of Henry’s French maid Simone in the play, was particularly unsettled to hear of one version of the sightings which is the eerie flipping over and turning of the pages of open books in completely airless rooms in the Hall and in houses in the locality.