Curse
The Busby Stoop Chair
Hung high, so no one sits.
See it clearly
- What's there
- An old wooden chair hanging high on a wall
- Legend from
- Thirsk tradition
- Best time
- Museum season
- Tone
- Sinister
Sit in Busby's chair, they said, and you would not live long.
In 1702 Thomas Busby, a coiner and drunkard, murdered his father-in-law Daniel Auty. He was hanged, and his body was hung in chains from a gibbet at a lonely crossroads near an inn later called the Busby Stoop Inn. His ghost was said to haunt the place, and a chair at the inn gained a sinister reputation. Thirsk Museum says wartime bomber pilots thought it unlucky to sit there, and that fatal accidents in the 1970s were linked to it. In 1978 the landlord asked the museum to take it. It now hangs from the ceiling so no one can sit in it.