Ghost
King John's dream
Christmas Eve, midnight, a mass for the dead brothers.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Abbey ruins, cloister and former refectory church
- Legend from
- Medieval chronicle legend / ghost lore
- Tone
- Eerie
A king's nightmare built an abbey, and a vicar said mass for its ghosts.
Beaulieu Abbey was the only religious house King John founded. A legend first told in a Kirkstall chartulary and repeated by William Dugdale says the king, angered by the Cistercians, had their abbots trampled by horses. Terrified by a dream, he then founded Beaulieu for 30 monks. Beaulieu's own website calls it one of the most haunted places in Britain. A vicar of Beaulieu from 1886 to 1939, the Reverend Robert Powles, claimed to talk to ghostly monks by name and to hold a midnight mass for them each Christmas Eve.