Ghost
The Grey Nun
A silent nun at the bedside, who came by secret tunnel.
Private, don't visit
- What's there
- 17th-century house on Barnwell Priory site, seen from street
- Legend from
- Edwardian sightings, medieval backstory
- Tone
- Eerie
On Abbey Road, Barnwell, stands a house built from a priory's bones, and a grey nun is said to have kept watch at its bedsides.
Abbey House, built in the 1600s from the ruins of Barnwell Priory, has been called the most haunted house in Cambridge. From 1904 to 1910 it was home to Professor J. C. Lawson of Pembroke College, whose family heard midnight crashes and later saw a robed nun who stood silently at the foot of Mrs Lawson's sickbed. Local tradition said she was a nun from St Radegund's Priory, now Jesus College, who crept through a tunnel to meet a lover among the Barnwell canons, and in some versions was walled up for it. Ghostly animals, and the tall ghost of Squire Jacob Butler, were also reported.
One sourceOnly one written account of this legend has been found so far.