Athelhampton House: The Phantom Ape of Dorset
A Tudor manor near Puddletown whose builder's crest was an ape. The house's best-known ghost is a pet ape said to have starved behind the panelling, joined by a grey lady, two duelling swordsmen and a tapping cooper.
Athelhampton House stands beside the River Piddle near Puddletown in Dorset. Its Great Hall was built around 1485 for Sir William Martyn. The Martyn family crest showed an ape sitting on a tree stump, holding a mirror. That ape has become the house’s most famous ghost. The story says a pet ape followed one of the Martyn daughters into a secret room behind the panelling, was shut in by accident, and starved. Scratching is still said to be heard in the walls. The house also claims a grey lady, a hooded priest, two duelling swordsmen and a cooper who taps in the wine cellar. In May 2002 it was the setting for the very first episode of the television series Most Haunted.
The house and its builders
Athelhampton appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 under the name Pidele. The Bishop of Salisbury held it then, with a tenant named Odbold. In 1350 Richard Martyn married the heiress of the de Pydele family, and the manor passed to the Martyns.
Sir William Martyn built the present Great Hall in about 1485. He was granted licences to enclose a deer park and to fortify the manor. He is often identified with the Sir William Martyn, a Skinner, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1492. Wikipedia’s article on that Lord Mayor places him at Athelhampton, says he kept a pet monkey and gives the family crest as a monkey sitting on a tree stump, holding a mirror. The same encyclopedia also keeps a separate article on the Athelhampton Martyn, so the link is not settled.
When Sir Nicholas Martyn died in 1596, his four surviving daughters became co-heiresses and the estate was split. Sir Robert Long bought three quarters of it in 1665. Later owners included George Wood from 1848 and Alfred de Lafontaine from 1890. For Lafontaine the architect Inigo Thomas laid out the formal gardens in 1891 and 1892, including the Great Court with its twelve giant yew pyramids. The Cochrane family bought the house in 1918, the Hon Mrs Esmond Harmsworth in 1930 and Rodney Philipps in 1949.
Robert Victor Cooke bought Athelhampton in 1957. His family owned it for more than sixty years. A serious fire in 1992 destroyed most of the attic and first floor of the east wing. In 2019 the contents were auctioned and the house was sold to Giles Keating, who reopened it and began restoration.
The Martyn ape
The house’s own ghost page tells the story this way. Sir William Martyn was a trader with access to ships coming into port, and an ape was brought in and kept as a pet. The Martyns were a Catholic family. One of the daughters wanted to marry outside the Church and was forbidden. She hid in a secret room behind the panelling of the Great Chamber. The ape followed her in without her noticing. When she came out, it was left behind and starved.
The house says the ape is seen in the Great Chamber, sitting and looking into the eyes of visitors, and that scratching is heard behind the panelling at night. The Paranormal Database gives a shorter version, a monkey bricked up behind a wall that now tries to escape.
The story has problems as history. The house’s version speaks of ships from the New World, which does not fit a hall built around 1485. Columbus first crossed the Atlantic in 1492. The ape on the Martyn crest was a heraldic device, and the legend may well have grown from it. Earlier versions of this page said a skeleton of an ape was found when a secret passage was opened. We could not find any record of such a find, and the house itself does not mention one. We have removed that claim.
On the first Most Haunted episode, the medium Derek Acorah appeared to be taken over by the spirit of the ape in the Great Hall. Steve Higgins, revisiting the house for the show’s twentieth anniversary, noted that Acorah also insisted the ape had never been trapped in the secret stair at all.
The grey lady
The grey lady is the most often reported ghost, according to the Most Haunted episode. Presenter Yvette Fielding told viewers that a housemaid once took the figure for a member of the public and asked her to leave. The lady stood up and disappeared through the wall.
The house says she is usually seen in the Great Chamber and the upper passages, and that she does not interact with anyone and seems friendly. Because she appears in parts of the house built after 1650, the house treats her as a later ghost than the Martyns. It suggests she might be the wife of James Long, who is said to have died of fright in her bed after a confrontation with debt collectors. The Paranormal Database places her walking through walls in the east wing.
Earlier versions of this page gave her a Tudor gown and made her the daughter who hid with the ape. The house’s own account does not support that link.
The duellists
Two swordsmen are said to fight in the house. On Most Haunted, Fielding placed them in the Great Hall and called them Civil War soldiers who duel and then sit down to eat together. One was said to be a Martyn descendant killed in battle. Higgins notes that more recent accounts move the duel to the Great Chamber in the west wing. The house’s ghost page says only that two swordsmen have been seen in the Great Hall on a few occasions. The Paranormal Database adds headless figures seated around the dinner table and duellists outside. No witness is named in any of these.
The cooper and the hooded priest
The house links its cooper to history. A William Martyn collected wine duty at Poole, and wine was stored at Athelhampton. The cellar door was widened for barrels. From that room, the house says, comes a sound of tapping, metal on metal. Nobody claims to have seen the cooper. Earlier versions of this page described an old man in working clothes checking barrels. No source we found describes a figure.
A figure in a dark hooded cloak is said to walk down the drive and through the Great Hall. The house suggests he may be the Martyns’ private Catholic chaplain. Earlier versions of this page described priest holes, priests who died in hiding and whispered prayers. We found no source for priest holes at Athelhampton, so we have removed that section.
The poltergeist and newer ghosts
The house’s page includes a more recent case. The old north wing was pulled down in the 1800s and rebuilt in 1920. Where it joins the Elizabethan building, a room saw what the house calls significant activity in the late 1990s. Doors slammed and locked. Lights switched off. Drawers fell out of chests. Bed covers were pulled off people as they slept. The house says “professional assistance” was called and the activity has not returned.
Newer reports on the house’s page include a soldier seen in the gardens, perhaps linked to troops billeted there before D-Day. There is a woman’s voice that says “hello”, which the house says three staff working alone have heard since the furniture sale. A bride in an old-fashioned dress has been seen in the gardens on a day when no wedding or photo shoot was booked.
What we removed
Earlier versions of this page carried italic quotes from a staff member, a visitor, a medium and a night guard, and a joint sighting of the grey lady with the ape. It gave sighting rates of five to ten a year, EMF and audio findings and a witness count of 100. It described a weeping woman at the fishponds. We found none of these in any source, and they have been cut.
How to read the case
Athelhampton is a real Tudor house with a well-recorded line of owners. Its ghost stories, though, come almost entirely from the house itself, from popular ghost guides and from a television show. None of the stories has a named, dated witness in a source we could find. The ape legend fits the Martyn crest so neatly that it may have grown out of it. The grey lady and the duellists change rooms between tellings. The late 1990s poltergeist is the most specific account, but the house does not say who saw it or who was called in.
Skeptics would point to an old timber house full of hidden stairs and panelling, which creaks, knocks and scratches. Mice, birds and settling wood can all make noise behind panels. A house that sells ghost evenings and hosted a ghost show also has every reason to keep the stories alive. Believers would point to the long run of reports and the variety of people who have made them.
We class the haunting as unverified.
Visiting
Athelhampton House and Gardens is near Puddletown, east of Dorchester. The house and gardens are open to the public for much of the year. Check the house’s own website for times.
Sources
- Athelhampton House, “The Ghosts of Athelhampton” - the house’s own account of the ape, grey lady, hooded priest, poltergeist, duellists, cooper and newer reports
- Wikipedia, Athelhampton - Domesday entry, the Martyns, later owners, the gardens, the 1992 fire and listing
- Wikipedia, William Martyn (Lord Mayor) - Lord Mayor in 1492, the pet monkey and the Martyn crest
- Steve Higgins, “Most Haunted At 20: Revisiting Athelhampton House”, Higgypop, 24 May 2022 - the first Most Haunted episode and how the stories have shifted
- The Paranormal Database, Dorset (entry #1049, Scratching Monkey, Athelhampton House) - folklore catalogue entry