Ghost
Lady Ursula's Lament
She mourns a church torn down for her son's mansion.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Tudor brick mansion with free public gardens
- Legend from
- Tudor tradition
- Best time
- Christmas Eve (per tradition)
- Tone
- Eerie
Madingley Hall: a Tudor mansion partly built from a demolished church, and a lady who never forgave it.
Madingley Hall was built by the Hynde family in the 1500s. Around 1588 to 1591 Sir Francis Hynde continued the work, probably using materials from St Etheldreda's church at Histon, which was pulled down about then. Tradition holds that his mother, Lady Ursula Hynde, was so distressed at the church's destruction that her ghost still walks, said in popular retellings to pass between the hall and the old church site on Christmas Eve. The awkward detail, as the Museum of Cambridge notes, is that Ursula died in 1555, decades before the demolition.
One sourceOnly one written account of this legend has been found so far.