Lydney Docks haunted? (General)

by peteressex , Wednesday, November 03, 2010, 09:42 (5139 days ago) @ barbarajane

Yes, there was a skirmish or two around Naas House in the Civil War, and I've dug out a murder victim who might help explain the ghost.

A report for the owners of Naas House by the Gloucestershire Gardens and Landscape Trust in the 1990s says that in 1644 the house became used as a garrison for Parliamentarians under a Lt Massey. Sir John Wynter, the leading Lydney landowner, was a prominent royalist of the time and had fortified his manor house at White Cross. If you go to british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=23251 and highlight "civil war" you'll land on a paragraph mentioning "minor actions" and "considerable destruction and plundering" around Lydney. It includes a specific reference to skirmishes at Nass (as it was then spelt) in 1644 and early 1645, substantially occasioned, no doubt, by the Roundheads having been briefed to keep Wynter out of mischief.

The same Gardens and Landscape Trust report says that in the 1700s a daughter of Naas House, Mary Jones, was murdered on her way home from dining at the vicarage. It's possible that she was the woman cited as per my earlier post on this thread as having been murdered on marshland near the docks, but I haven't been able to discover whether her killer was apprehended or, therefore, hanged at the docks so as to contribute to the story of the local headless or legless ghost handed down by my "second uncle" Bert Sterrey and others.