The Sealed Room

Beside the River Windrush, a few miles west of Witney, the ruins of a great house stand open to the sky. Minster Lovell Hall was built in the 1430s by William, Lord Lovell, one of the richest men in England, as a statement of what his family had become. Today it is roofless walls, a broken tower and empty windows, with the river sliding past below and the old church watching over it.

Its last Lovell lord was Francis.

Francis Lovell was the closest friend of Richard III. They had grown up together, and when Richard took the throne in 1483, Lovell rose with him: Viscount, Lord Chamberlain, one of the handful of men who ran the kingdom. That summer, it is said, the new king came to stay with him here at Minster Lovell.

Two years later, Richard was dead on the field at Bosworth, and Lovell was a hunted man.

He did not give up. Twice he tried to bring down the new king, Henry VII. The second time, in 1487, he fought for the pretender Lambert Simnel at the Battle of Stoke, the last real battle of the Wars of the Roses. The rebels were crushed. Lovell was seen riding away from the field, and spurring his horse into the River Trent.

After that, nobody saw him again.

Some said he drowned in the Trent. Some said he escaped to Scotland, where a safe conduct had been issued in his name. And some said he went home.

This is the story they tell at Minster Lovell.

Lovell came back in secret, by night, to the only place he could trust. A loyal servant hid him in a small chamber concealed deep within the house, and brought him food and drink each day, and locked the door behind him each time he left. Only the servant had the key. Only the servant knew where the master was.

And then the servant died.

Perhaps he fell ill. Perhaps he was arrested, or killed in an accident, or simply never came back. The legend does not say. It only says that Lovell waited, in the dark, behind a locked door in his own house, while above him the household went about its business and nobody heard him call.

Two centuries passed.

In 1708, so the account goes, workmen were rebuilding a chimney at the hall when they broke through into a hidden vault. When the dust settled and their lights went in, they saw a man.

He was sitting at a table. Before him lay a book, and paper, and a pen. A cap lay mouldering nearby. The whole room was grey with age and decay. In later tellings, a little dog lay curled at his feet, faithful to the last.

And as the fresh air rushed into the room for the first time in two hundred years, the figure crumbled into dust before their eyes.

Was it Francis Lovell? Nobody could ever say for certain. The story was written down in 1737 by William Cowper, Clerk of the Parliaments. Historians are doubtful. But at Minster Lovell, the matter was settled long ago.

The ruins have collected other stories since. A horseman is said to ride through the grounds in the dusk, and some visitors have described a thin, ragged figure among the walls, moving slowly, as if searching for a way out. The house even acquired a second legend, borrowed from elsewhere: the tale of the Mistletoe Bride, who hid in a chest during a Christmas game of hide and seek on her wedding night, and was not found for many years.

It is a quiet place on a winter afternoon. The river runs, the rooks call from the trees, and the walls cast long shadows across the grass.

Somewhere in there, a man once sat at a table and waited for a key to turn.