Old houses have often some tradition associated with them, and so it is not surprising to find mentioned in Harland and Wilkinson's " Traditions of Lancashire," that once every year a spectre horseman visits Wycollar Hall. He is attired in the costume of the early Stuart period, and the trappings of his horse are of a most uncouth description. On the evening of his visit the weather is always wild and tempestuous. There is no moon to light the lonely roads, and the inhabitants do not venture out of their cottages. When the wind howls the loudest the horseman can be heard dashing up the road at full speed : after crossing the narrow bridge, he suddenly stops at the door of the Hall, and, dismounting, makes his way up the broad oak stairs (of which no traces are left) into one of the rooms of the house. Dreadful screams, as from a woman, are shortly heard, which soon subside into groans. The horseman then makes his re-appearance at the door at once mounts his steed and gallops off the road he came. His body can be seen through by those who may chance to be present ; his horse appears to be wild with rage, and its nostrils stream with fire. The tradition is that one of the Cunliffes murdered his wife in that room, and that the spectre horseman is the ghost of the murderer, who is doomed to pay an annual visit to the house of his victim. It further goes on to say, that years before it actually happened, the murdered lady had predicted the extinction of her cruel husband's race a race so ancient that its very name is the subject of a tradition, for one of the Saxon kings, being anxious, it is said, to reward a brave follower, said to him, as he pointed to certain fields, " I con thee these lands to live" whereupon, he and his descendants ever afterwards bore the name of Conlive or Cunliffe. Strange to say, the lady's prediction has been literally fulfilled, for the last of the Cunliffes died, a lonely old man, at Wycollar, in the year 1818, and the ancestral home soon became a ruin.
Annals and stories of Colne and neighbourhood by J. Carr
_________________ Mel
Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!
|