Haunted place · England, United Kingdom

Hinton Ampner

Updated November 20269 sources How to visit

Hampshire manor where tenant Mary Ricketts recorded noises and figures from 1765 to 1771; her accounts appeared in 1872. The old house is gone.

The story

Hinton Ampner is a village in Hampshire, near Alresford, and a National Trust estate with a garden. The house at the heart of the haunting is not the one that stands now. It was an older Tudor manor, which Wikipedia says was pulled down in 1793 after a replacement was built a little to the south; Ingram (1897) says 1797. The 1872 text says only that the house was pulled down and gives no date.

In the account left by Mary Ricketts, Lord Stawell had a fit of apoplexy in the manor on the evening of 2 April 1755 and died the next morning. After Henry Bilson Legge died in August 1764, his widow, Lady Stawell, who later married the Earl of Hillsborough, decided to let the property. William Henry Ricketts took the lease in December 1764 and the family moved in during January 1765. Late in 1769 he left for Jamaica, leaving his wife with three young children and eight servants.

The noises were almost continuous from April to August 1771, by the family’s account. Mary Ricketts wrote to a clergyman, the Reverend Newbolt, and her brother, Captain Jervis (later an admiral and Earl of St Vincent), wrote to her husband from Portsmouth on 9 August 1771. His letter says the house had been “disturbed by such strange, unaccountable noises from the 2nd of April to this day.” Jervis and a Captain Luttrell sat up at night and heard them. Mary Ricketts left in August 1771: her letter of 17 August is written from Winchester and says noises were heard “since we quitted the house.” She stayed with the Newbolts and then at Wolvesey, the Bishop of Winchester’s palace. After her husband came back, the family rented the parsonage for two years and then bought another property, Longwood.

The legend

The reports from the house come from Mary Ricketts herself, in narratives signed by her, with a second account signed by her son Edward Jervis Ricketts. She writes: “Soon after we were settled at Hinton I frequently heard noises in the night.” The first sounds, in 1765, were doors banging. Later she describes footsteps in a neighboring room, the rustle of silk against her bedroom door, a pistol-like report followed by groans (heard by her and her brother but not by the nurse in the next room), a huge weight seeming to fall from a ceiling (her brother’s experience, as she reports it) and, in a servant’s letter, a rolling noise taken for thunder. She stresses that some noises were heard by one or two people while others close by heard nothing.

Two apparitions are recorded. A man in a drab-colored coat was reportedly seen by the nurse, Elizabeth Brelsford, around 1765, and then by the groom, George Turner, in the autumn of 1765. In July 1767 several servants in the kitchen reported a tall woman in dark clothes, rustling like stiff silk, who rushed past the open door. Neither figure is named in the accounts, although a note taken from her dictation says a groom, Joseph, saw a man in a drab coat before the family arrived, his hands behind him “in the manner his late master held them.” Mary Ricketts also wrote that her cat would suddenly hide under her chair although neither she nor her brother could perceive any noise; a spaniel reportedly did the same, but that detail is servants’ hearsay.

On identity, the accounts we read give nothing firm, so we do not name a ghost. A rumor traced to an old man in the West Meon workhouse had Sir Hugh Stewkeley hiding something (a treasure, in the telling) under the floor. Mary Ricketts passed it on to the landlady’s agent, later suggested that the idea of treasure probably came from a dishonest steward, and says she never heard that any was found. Ingram reports that the neighborhood’s most popular explanation blamed the late Lord Stawell. The family’s notes add that papers and a small skull, said to be a monkey’s, were found under a floor when the house was pulled down, with no inquiry. After she left, two young men of the family, George and Poyntz Ricketts, are said to have heard a racket in the empty house and found no one.

The oldest trace is the set of August 1771 letters, together with Mary Ricketts’s own narrative, printed under the heading Hinton Parsonage, July 1772. Further notes in her hand came later, and one says the two narratives were for her granddaughters, not to be read until they were twenty-one or older. At the end of the main narrative she writes: “There is another copy, and no more to be taken unless either be destroyed.” These are first-hand documents, but they were published only in 1872, after an incomplete version in a life of Richard Barham that the magazine calls recently published. The Gentleman’s Magazine ran them in November and December 1872 under the title “A Hampshire Ghost Story,” submitted by Mrs Wm. Henley Jervis, a great-granddaughter, from manuscripts left to two granddaughters.

In between, the story circulated by word of mouth. In July 1818 a granddaughter, Martha Jervis, questioned an old servant, Lucy Camis, who had recently visited another, Hannah Streeter. In 1836 the Reverend Richard Barham noted a version told by a Mrs Hughes, which his son later said contained errors about the people involved. The 1897 printing of Ingram’s Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain draws on Dalton Barham and on the 1872 articles.

On skepticism: Wikipedia reports that Trevor H. Hall (Four Modern Ghosts, 1958) blamed underground water, or even ground movement, and that Harry Price wrote at length on the case in Poltergeist Over England (1945). We read neither book. We found no hoax demonstrated in the texts we did read. Mary Ricketts herself describes changing locks and searching the house, and argues that a servants’ plot was unlikely. It remains one household’s testimony, backed by a brother’s letter.

What remains today

The old manor no longer exists, so the scene of the events cannot be seen. Hinton Ampner survives as a village and as a National Trust estate with a garden. Historic England lists two entries under the name, “Hinton Ampner House” (grade II, listed 5 December 1955) and “Hinton Ampner Place” (grade II*). Wikipedia gives the first entry, with the same grid reference, for the Trust’s house. The present house postdates the haunted one.

Visiting

Wikipedia says the garden and house are open to the public, but the National Trust’s own page refused our automated request, so confirm opening times and access with the Trust before you go (our research is dated 6 November 2026). The estate is not the site of the events themselves. To follow the case in depth, read the 1872 Gentleman’s Magazine articles on the Internet Archive.

The ghosts

Spirit

Man in a drab coat

A man in a drab-colored coat was seen by the nurse Elizabeth Brelsford and then by the groom George Turner. Mary Ricketts does not identify him.

Apparitions

First reported: Before January 1765 in a later dictated note; summer 1765 (nurse); autumn 1765 (groom). Reported by: Mary Ricketts, from servants’ reports (Gentleman’s Magazine, 1872)

Ghostly lady

Tall woman in stiff silk

Several servants saw a tall woman in dark clothes and stiff silk in the kitchen. She is described only by her clothing and effects, not named.

Apparitions

First reported: July 1767. Reported by: Servants, recorded by Mary Ricketts

Poltergeist

The Hinton noises (poltergeist-type disturbances)

Said to be No identity established; a rumor about Sir Hugh Stewkeley is reported, and nothing was ever found

Banging doors, footsteps, silk rustling, a pistol-like report followed by groans and a weight seeming to fall from a ceiling. Some noises were heard by only one or two people. Her brother and Captain Luttrell kept night watches in 1771 and heard sounds.