Ghost
The Plague Master
He stayed when plague came; some say he never left.
Check opening times
- What's there
- Cambridge's oldest enclosed medieval court
- Legend from
- 1632; sightings 1904
- Tone
- Chilling
Corpus Christi's Old Court: a Master who stayed through the plague, and a long-haired face at a window of a locked room.
Henry Butts was Master of Corpus Christi and Vice-Chancellor when plague struck Cambridge in 1630. He stayed behind when almost everyone fled, writing that he was alone and forsaken. On Easter Sunday 1632 he failed to appear to preach and was found hanged by his garters in the Master's Lodge. Upper rooms in a corner of Old Court have since been said to be haunted, usually by him. In 1904 an undergraduate saw a long-haired man glaring from a window of rooms that were locked and empty, and a group of students later attempted an exorcism there.