The Tale of the Hanbury Hall Ghost of Lost LoveHanbury Hall is a large 18th-century stately home in parkland at Hanbury, Worcestershire and is said to be haunted by spirit of Emma Vernon.
In 1580, the Reverend Richard Vernon (1549 - 1628) arrived in the village of Hanbury to take up his post as local vicar. Over the following fifty years, he and his family would acquire land within the area, and by 1630, his eldest son, Edward, had purchased the manor house, and the Vernons started an affiliation with Hanbury Hall that would last until 1962 when the house was taken over by the National Trust.
The man accountable for the existing William and Mary style house finished in 1706 was the immensely wealthy legal professional Thomas Vernon, Richard's great-grandson.
Emma Vernon (1754 - 1818) spent her formative years at Hanbury Hall. She grew up to become a famed society beauty, and her good looks, coupled with the undeniable fact that she was a heiress at the Hanbury estate, made her extraordinarily desirable as a possible wife. Henry Cecil, Earl of Exeter in waiting, married Emma in 1776, and the couple set about remodelling parts of the house to turn it into an appropriate family homestead.
Unfortunately, a mixture of elements blended to ensure that the direction of true love would, in their case, not run smoothly. Firstly, they got into heavy debt. Secondly, even though they had several children, none survived infancy. As a result, the couple became disappointed with each other and began to grow apart. In 1785, the local vicar, William Burslem, took on a brand new curate named William Sneyd. Soon, Sneyd was a regular guest at the Hanbury Hall dinner table, where he had caught Emma's eye unbeknown to her husband.
By 1789, the lady of the house and the parish curate had been conducting an illicit liaison. Emma steals away from her husband as frequently as possible to spend time with her lover. The couple were determined to be together and hatched a cunning plan they hoped would make that conceivable.
On June 12th 1789, the Cecils went to Birmingham on business. Emma had sent word of their destination to Sneyd, and with her husband away at a meeting, the two lovers met at an inn from which they eloped. Over the next few months, they travelled together as man and wife, staying at numerous inns and hotels nationwide.
The crestfallen Henry, not able to endure the idea of remaining at Hanbury Hall, retreated to a farmhouse in Shropshire, where he lodged with one Thomas Goggins and his family, adopting the nom de plume John Jones to keep his true identity and social standing secret from his hosts. But it wasn't long before he fell in love with Goggins's beautiful 16-year-old daughter Sarah, often called Sally. On June 10th 1791, he divorced Emma, and in October of that year, he and Sally were married.
The divorce left Emma free to marry Sneyd, which she did the same year, although their happiness was short-lived, as he died in 1793.
As for Hanbury Hall, following the divorce, Cecil refused to allow his wife to return to her cherished house, and he sold off all of the contents. It remained empty until his demise in 1804, after which Emma could move back in, and she lived out the remainder of her days there with her third husband, John Philips, until her demise in 1818.
The emotional effect of those long-ago events has lingered at Hanbury Hall, and there have been several sightings of Emma's ghost, dressed in black, around the grounds.
She is particularly fond of drifting serenely alongside the path between the house and the church that her living self used to take to enjoy her affairs with her lover.
