We are thrilled to have been granted exclusive access to this beautiful home.
Hall 'Upstairs Downstairs' Haunted History Tour
Age advisory 14+
Please note a non-refundable 5% booking fee is added to most bookings to cover admin costs.
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A fascinating tour of the beautiful Hall house, a family home for generations, rich in historical elegance.
Stories of their eccentric and impressive ancestors shared with you by the owners.
A tour of the centuries old outbuildings, cellars and derelict servants wing hearing tales of the working class history and their ghosts with Sue Pengelly.
Refreshments served in The Great Hall.
Hall, in Bishops Tawton, has been home to the Chichester Family since the early 14th century.
The house is approached up a mile-long wooded drive. The current Victorian house, a vernacular mansion in the 16th-century style, was built in the 1840s for Robert Chichester by Philip C. Hardwick. Hardwick produced a series of grand reception and family rooms with splendid views over the Taw valley and a staircase hall which forms the centre of the house.
About Sue Pengelly
Sue has long had a fascination for the ingenuity and resilience of the underdog, the working class poor and those marginalised in society.
She says, "Some of them are my ancestors and if they hadn't kept going in brutal times, I wouldn't be here. These people deserve to be remembered."
This fascination led her to dive into historical research, focussed on her home town of Barnstaple in North Devon. As a result she began hosting very popular Haunted History tours of Barnstaple (book through The Plough Arts Centre) and nearby towns and villages, which have now been running for fourteen years.
"The tours began because I was tired of reading about the wealthy element," she says. "I wanted to know how the poor lived and survived, the crimes, the prostitutes ... you know, the really interesting people! I was of the opinion that if they were that reviled in the press, they must have been interesting. And so it proved.
Some of her historical information comes from oral histories. "I'm very lucky to be trusted with snippets of other people's family history which sends me on more research.
"I've met some fascinating people including those who've shared their and their family members' experiences of working in prostitution ... but not as you know it, their antics and money making ideas."