Knighton Gorges

The story

Knighton is a nearly deserted hamlet near Newchurch, in the east of the Isle of Wight. Its manor, Knighton Gorges, was demolished. The estate belonged in the Middle Ages to the de Gorges family (Adams’s 1884 history names Theobald de Gorges, Lord of Knighton) and Adams says the house was rebuilt under James I (Garle says it dates from Henry VIII, and the County History calls it Tudor work). In the early reign of George III, according to the same book, its owner, a Mr Fitzmaurice, entertained Garrick and Wilkes.

The central figure is Sir Tristram Dillington, who died on 7 July 1721 according to Wikipedia. Notes and Queries (1917) confirms that he died in 1721 without issue and that his property passed to his sisters Hannah and Mary. Wikipedia’s biography of him, citing the History of Parliament (which refused our request), says he died unmarried. The Victoria County History (1912) says the house was burnt and demolished in 1820; Wikipedia’s page on the manor gives 1821. A 1905 travel book by Hubert Garle says only gateposts, foundations and garden walls remained.

The legend

The oldest strand is a noise. A text from a book titled Walks Round Ryde (date and author unknown to us), quoted in Nelson’s Handbook (1873) and by Adams in 1884, says Knighton House “was reported to be haunted,” though the nature of the visitant was not stated, and that it announced itself with a sound like clanking chains, in a sealed room whose door bore a Latin inscription.

The Dillington story comes from the same text. After the loss of his wife and children, Sir Tristram is said to have taken his own life, and his steward is said to have disguised it as a drowning by driving the horse into the pond, so that the estate would not be forfeited, since a suicide’s property could be seized (the source says it was easy to avoid an inquest). If Wikipedia is right that he never married, the wife and children of this tale cannot be historical. In 1905 Garle adds that a skeleton found in a walled-up niche in the garden was “said to have been that of Sir Tristram,” which does not square with the drowning version. Garle also reports that villagers “still maintain that a headless horseman is occasionally seen riding about the spot,” and sweet music, although the farmer there could not confirm any of it.

Wikipedia gives a different account: gambling after his wife’s death, a horse named Thunderbolt, a ghostly rider each 7 July, and a New Year’s Eve night when the house is said to reappear and people gather to watch. None of our older sources mention a horse’s name, gambling, a 7 July ride or a New Year’s Eve apparition. A secondary site we did not open dates a New Year’s Eve sighting to 1915. We could not trace these details further back; they look recent, though we cannot date them.

Traced as far as we can, the tradition of a haunted house and the Dillington story are told in an undated text, written when the death was said to be “at least a century ago,” so likely between about 1820 and 1873, when it was already in print. Adams (1884) quotes it, Garle (1905) gives his own version, and Stone’s Legends and Lays of the Wight (1912) turned the story into a poem, “Sir Tristram’s Weird (1721),” with a prose summary. The story may be a tradition meant to explain Dillington’s death, though we cannot show it. We found no evidence of an investigation and nothing from 1721 itself about the circumstances. Wikipedia cites a Ghost Club page for the Thunderbolt version; that page would not open for us. Our US newspaper search found nothing for “Dillington” or “Knighton Gorges.”

What remains today

A hamlet of farmhouses, most now converted to homes, with a sand pit a little way off, according to Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s page on the manor says the site is now private and shows its gateposts, which Garle recorded in 1905; we did not check what survives on the ground.

Visiting

The site is private according to Wikipedia, and we found no statement of public access to the area of the manor. We give no route, and we ask you not to trespass or to gather there on any date. If the story interests you, the best approach is reading: Adams, Garle and Stone are on the Internet Archive.

Sources

1. Wikimedia Commons category : Knighton, Isle of Wight — Wikimedia Commons
2. A Driving Tour in the Isle of Wight (Garle) — Internet Archive, 1905
3. Knighton Gorges Manor — Wikipedia
4. Legends and Lays of the Wight (Stone) — Internet Archive, 1912
5. Nelson's Handbook to the Isle of Wight — Internet Archive, 1873
6. Notes and Queries, 12th series, vol. III — Internet Archive, 1917
7. Parishes: Newchurch (A History of the County of Hampshire, vol. 5) — British History Online, 1912
8. Sir Tristram Dillington, 5th Baronet — Wikipedia
9. The Isle of Wight: its history, topography and antiquities (Adams) — Internet Archive, 1884
10. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.