Ghost
The Queen's Night
One night's refuge for a queen, and music from empty rooms.
Private, don't visit
- What's there
- Tudor manor house, private; seen from church area
- Legend from
- Tudor, 1553
- Tone
- Eerie
Sawston Hall sheltered a fleeing princess for one night in 1553, and some say faint spinet music still plays there.
In July 1553 Mary Tudor, fleeing the Duke of Northumberland after Edward VI's death, spent a night at Sawston Hall with the Catholic Huddleston family. Legend says she slipped away at dawn disguised as a dairymaid and, looking back, saw the hall burning behind her, so she promised to rebuild it once queen, reputedly with stone from Cambridge Castle. Ghost stories followed: some claim to have seen Mary's apparition, and in the 1930s Clare Eyre-Huddleston heard a spinet playing in an empty room. Others in the village reported music in the hall when no one was there.
One sourceOnly one written account of this legend has been found so far.