Ghost
Jenny Spinner's Warning
Hear the whirr of a spinning wheel, and a Lytton will soon die.
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- What's there
- A Gothic stately home
- Legend from
- By 1800
- Best time
- Seasonal opening, paid entry
- Tone
- Eerie
Ahead lies Knebworth House, where the whirr of a ghostly spinning wheel is said to warn the family that one of them is about to die.
Knebworth House, the Lytton family's Gothic mansion, has its own resident spectre known as Jenny Spinner. She is said to be a young woman who sits at her spinning wheel, sometimes seen but more often only heard, the soft whirr of the wheel drifting through the house. Her work is not idle: the sound of Jenny spinning is believed to be a warning that a death in the Lytton family is approaching. The tale was popular enough to be published as a short book, The History of Jenny Spinner, the Ghost of Knebworth House, as early as 1800, and it has been retold by local historians since.