Ghost
The Grey Lady
The empty cradle still rocks.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- A black-and-white timber-framed hall with a moat
- Legend from
- Speke ghost legend (Reppion, Haunted Liverpool)
- Best time
- Autumn dusk
- Tone
- Tragic
A grey woman glides through Speke Hall, and in the Tapestry Room an empty cradle rocks.
Speke Hall is a Tudor timber-framed manor, now owned by the National Trust. In 1736 the heiress Mary Norris married Lord Sidney Beauclerk. Legend says he gambled away the family fortune, and that when he confessed, Mary threw their infant son from the window of the Tapestry Room into the moat. She then took her own life. Her ghost, the Grey Lady, is said to glide through the Great Hall and appear at the window, and a cradle is said to rock by itself. The Liverpool Echo notes that their son Topham lived to the age of 41, and that there is no evidence for the story as it is told.