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mysteries |
Embalmed In Tar |
Other Information |
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| In the eighteenth century a certain Miss Beswick lived in the manor house at Birchen Bower, Hollinwood, now a part of Greater Manchester. At the time her house was surrounded by woods and fields and her estates included Rose Hill and Cheetwood. Most of the manor house was demolished after her death. She seems to have been a rather eccentric woman and farmed her own land until she became too old to do so. When Miss Beswick received news of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 she believed that the Scottish Army, with Prince Charles at the head, would sweep through England claiming the fortunes of the landowners. Like so many wealthy landowners she hid as many of her own treasures as she could around her estates in locations known only to herself. And although the Jacobite Rebellion did not reach her lands she did not disturb her hidden treasures. Later in life she was to receive a shock which profoundly affected her, or so it would seem from the provisions she made in her will. She believed that her brother had died; indeed so did the doctor who certified him dead. But as she looked into his coffin as the lid was being screwed down she suddenly saw that he was showing signs of life; the undertaker was stopped and her brother returned to his bed where he lay in a coma for some days until he recovered to live for many years. As Keith Poole relates in his book Britain's Haunted Heritage, Miss Beswick was clearly not very taken by the idea of being buried alive. She drew up a will leaving her estates to her family doctor, Dr White, and his descendants on the condition that after her death her body was always to be kept above ground. To add to the strangeness of her will, it also stipulated that every 21 years her body should be returned to Birchen Bower for a whole week. When she died in around 1768, Dr White made the arrangements to have her body shrouded in bandages, leaving only the face exposed, and then embalmed in tar. The corpse was presented to the Natural History Museum and indeed was on the show in the Manchester Museum for a century. As reported in the Manchester Guardian on 22nd July 1868 they then apparently decided that enough was enough, the Commissioners of the Manchester Natural History Society 'deeming the specimen undesirable' and she was at last laid to rest in Rarpurhey Cemetery. According to local villagers, Miss Beswick's wish for her body to be returned to Birchen Bower every 21st year was also carried out; it had been there five times, and had always been placed in the granary of the old farmstead. After Miss Beswick's death her ghost was seen by many villagers. While the manor house remained it was divided into separate dwellings and she was seen by people as they were having supper. Her appearance would be preceded be the rustling of her silk dress; she would then be seen in black gliding through the kitchen. In the kitchen the apparition disappeared, always at the same flagstone. The apparition was seen as late as 1920, at that time next to a well near the stone cottage into which she had moved after she had become too infirm to live at the manor itself~ A villager going to draw water saw a lady standing there and said she saw the apparition dressed in black silk and wearing the same white cap with trilled edge that she had worn while alive. She was apparently standing in a hostile, even threatening, attitude. There were also reports that on many occasions the barn glowed as if there was a fire inside, light appearing through the cracks in its structure. It also gave off unearthly noises and few people would go near it. Whenever the barn was searched after such an occurrence there were no signs of charred wood any-where. The story goes that the barn's the hiding place of the bulk of Miss Beswick's hidden treasure. Although one local man, Joe, did find a box of gold wedges which kept him in relative prosperity, it is believed that the bulk of the treasure has never been located. |
Place: Hollinwood, UK Source: Keith Poole Date: 18th C |