Wilderhope Manor Youth Hostel

A ghostly horse charges out of the mansion, up the drive and along the lane to Much Wenlock. At a certain point in its journey, the horse turns off the road and charges off a cliff where it vanishes. The "certain point" is the reason the spectral horse appears: in 1647, Major Thomas Smallwood lived at the manor and he was suspected of trying to free the imprisoned King Charles I. When Parliamentarian soldiers arrived they placed Smallwood under house arrest but he escaped on his horse. At the sight of a Roundhead patrol, he forced the horse off the road but they plunged over the cliff. The patrol saw the dead horse at the bottom but the Major had escaped, caught in the branches of a tree. Thinking him dead, the patrol and the Roundhead force returned to London. Smallwood fled overseas and only returned when King Charles II was crowned. Inside the hall, there is the spectre of a man in a green cloak and a brown hat with a white plume; he is thought by some to be Major Smallwood himself.

Update 14/3/22: Abbie, a worker at the hostel, replied to my email asking about any recent occurrences: "Nothing new to report though since I’ve been here over the last 10 or so years." I recontacted the hostel nearly two years later to establish the current ghostly status quo and Laura Williams, the deputy manager told me, "I have heard that there have been some ghost experiences here at YHA Wilderhope Manor, but there isn't anything I can corroborate at the moment."

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