Storyteller: The haunted properties of Peter de Savary

Since setting up my own tourism business, Moors and More Tours, a few years ago, I’ve attended several networking events for promotional and marketing purposes.

All have been at different venues, and all have been interesting for various reasons.

The first one was at Princetown Visitor Centre, based in the former Duchy Hotel, with its connection to Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, plus the ever-present Hound of the Baskervilles.

I was fortunate to have a guided tour of the building, which has an atmosphere that makes you feel as though you aren’t alone, especially in the old rooms upstairs.

Another was held at Buckfast Abbey, which is always an incredible place to visit.

The other week I was invited to a workshop at the stunning Bovey Castle Hotel.

Once the learning part of the day was out of the way, we were offered guided tours of the building to view some of the opulent bedrooms and excellent facilities as well as an off-road tour of the estate, which was good fun.

At the end of the tour of the main building, I asked our guide if there were any ghost stories attached to the old castle. He admitted he wasn’t the best person to ask about that sort of thing, as he didn’t believe, but our conversation was overheard by another member of staff, who admitted they did have a haunted room, that had a bit of a reputation among both staff and guests.

Having checked it was empty, I was taken up to the room, in the oldest part of the property, to satisfy my curiosity. It was a stunning state room, as opposed to a suite, with an old interior door that acted as a fire escape on to a spiral staircase inside a tower that took you down to the car park area below.

We even discovered an empty space next to a built-in wardrobe by tapping on the walls, as is my habit in old buildings, plus an old walled-up fireplace. My guide told me that guests often reported odd knocks and taps coming from that room.

His main story concerned one shift, coming on duty to relieve the night porter, who had been plagued throughout the night by random calls coming from the room. He would see the light for that particular room flash on the switchboard but when he answered it, expecting it to be a request for room service, all he got was the sound of young children giggling and laughing. No-one spoke to him. This happened on several occasions.

When my guide arrived, the night porter told him that if the room rang again, to ignore it as it was just children messing about. When they checked the guest register to see who to have a word with in the morning, to their surprise they found the room was empty, and would have been securely locked all night.

Until a few years ago, Bovey Castle was owned by Peter de Savary, who sadly died last year. He had sold it, in order to buy The Cary Arms at Babbacombe. This also has an unfortunate reputation, as the house where the infamous John 'Babbacombe' Lee - the man they couldn’t hang who allegedly murdered his employer, Emma Keyse - used to stand in the car park.

The most interesting property that Mr de Savary used to own, from a haunted point of view, has to be Littlecote House in Wiltshire. The place has had many sightings of spectral beings in guests’ bedrooms over the years but the most disturbing story relates to one of the earlier owners, William Darrell, who cruelly threw the body of his newborn child on a roasting fire and let it burn to death.

He was never brought to justice for his wicked crime but legend has it that one day he was out hunting on his estate and, as he was approaching a particular stile, now known as Darrell’s Stile, the ghost of the burnt baby appeared before him.

The apparition so startled his horse, that it reared up, throwing its rider forcefully to the ground, breaking Darrell’s neck in the process. His unwanted child had had its revenge.

Peter de Savary once had his own encounter with a spirit in the house, which he was only too happy to share. Not long after he took up ownership of the property, he instructed that any old artefacts they no longer had need of, should be sold off.

On the morning of the sale, he was walking through the Long Gallery, when he was confronted by the agitated figure of a woman, who proceeded to chastise him, saying he was a wicked man, and no good would come of him unless he returned the casket containing baby clothes to the chapel, where he had found them. She told him they had belonged to her own child, and with that she disappeared in front of him.

Slightly shaken by this experience, he went at once to find the box, and take it back. Fortunately, it had not yet been sold, and, when he opened it, there were the clothes the woman was so desperate for him to keep. He returned it to the window ledge in the chapel, where it remains to this day, and never suffered the mother’s wrath again.

As we know, he went on to become a very successful businessman. Maybe it just goes to show that when an apparition from the spirit world makes demands of you, it’s probably best to do as they ask.