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Well, I saw it published on BBC Teletex the other day, I did a bit of surfing yesterday and couldn't find out much more.

Whats the full story then. My son is on a teacher training course at Clifton and reckoned he was going to have a sniff around, he could turn into a gibbering idiot by all accounts.

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Excuse me for being cynical and stating the ble***ng obvious, but, me thinks Mr non mortgage paying Anwar Rachid, is just looking for an excuse to get rid of something he can't afford the upkeep on!!

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Ayup all,

Clifton hall has always been haunted, nothing sinister though, if you look at the front of the building you will notice a window has been bricked up or filled in, this is supposed to be the haunted room, don't know how true that part is, It might be worth asking for some info from past pupils who attended there in the 60s/70s when it was a girls school. Clifton hall grammar

Rog

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Don`t know how old Clifton Hall is.

During the Georgian period there was a tax on windows, which is where the phrase 'daylight robbery' originates. Windows were bricked up to avoid the tax, even in affluent homes, although in such cases these were usually servant’s rooms. Houses from this period with bricked up windows can still be seen today.

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Now as to the Ghost of Clifton Hall, presumably he/she has lived there for some time,so Mr. Rachid should have known about his guest.

I am no lawyer(thank God!) but it seems a poor excuse to get out of a financial problem.Maybe he has to save face with his Asian Brethren.

I do not know what his financial situation is(income etc) but if one buys a house for say 10 pounds and due to the downturn it is only worth say 5 pounds and he had no equity in the place(similar to the American situation) the easiest thing to do is just to walk away and leave the bank with the 5 pounds debt.

If the bank/loaning company did not take his other assets as security,then all he has to do with his Asian mates is to be scared out of wits.(via the Ghost) to save face.

Caveat Emptor,mates.

Under the doctrine of caveat emptor, the buyer could not recover from the seller for defects on the property that rendered the property unfit for ordinary purposes. The only exception was if the seller actively concealed latent defects. The modern trend in the US, however, is one of the Implied Warranty of Fitness that applies only to the sale of new residential housing by a builder-seller and the rule of Caveat Emptor applies to all other sale situations (i.e. homeowner to buyer).

So if they hid the Ghost in the cellar and did not tell Rachid,he may have a case. !secret!!secret!

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The hall, which dates back to the Norman Conquest, has 17 bedrooms, ten reception rooms, ten bathrooms, a gym and a cinema.

Charles I stayed briefly in 1632. According to legend, a woman dressed in white jumped from a window to her death, while tunnels in the grounds were said to have been used by Satanists.

The family moved out of the house in August last year and Mr Rashid found he could not sell it.

He then stopped paying the mortgage in January 2008 'as a last resort' so that the bank would eventually repossess, which happened on Thursday.

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I did manage to find out more about the story on the net, yes, it does sound a little suspicious.

Seems a bit odd why someone with such a small family wanted to live in such a large house, but at least money has been spent on the fabric of the building to preserve it, for whatever reason, and from whatever source, sounds a good method of saving some of our endangered country mansions to me.

If you surf around the net there is quite a bit of info and old photos on the hall itself, well worth looking up. Many years ago I used to hang out with some of the girls from the old grammar school, I'm sure they told me about some ghostly experiences, but it's too long ago to remember what they were.

I've never been a great believer in ghost stories, but then again, I've had a few unexplained experiences.

My first house was a lovely Victorian terraced cottage in Witham, Essex. I never had a problem with it, but my then missus, who was also a cynic about ghost stories, kept waking up in the night and seeing a Victorian woman and a little girl standing in the corner of the bedroom. I never saw anything, but it freaked her out and so we put the house on the market. Meanwhile, my next door neighbour, a young, party going typical youth, who took the mickey out of my missus over her experiences, woke up one night to find a black sheet attempting to strangle him, he was so distressed that he knocked on our door at 2:00am and we had to put him up in the spare bedroom.

He sold up as well.

My next house was a 17th century cottage, asking for trouble. We never had any wierd experiences in there, but my old man always felt uncomfortable when he came to stay, he was a bit that way inclined, he reckoned all sorts of things were banging about at night, but it never bothered me.

Asking for even more trouble, we then moved to a pair of semi derelict cottages in Finchingfield that had once formed part of an old watermill. The most run down cottage was full of someones sad life when we moved in, he turned out to have been an old estate worker who had died in the house and remained undiscovered for a while. I must admit it was a bit wierd in there, but once it was gutted and redesigned, I never had any strange experiences, apart from seeing the Northern Lights one night, eat your heart out Joanna Lumley.

My last house, an old police station, was perfectly all right until my father died. As I said, he was that way inclined, on the immediate aftermath of his death, we had some very wierd and unexplained happenings, they were very odd, but we weren't frightened by them, the last lingerings of one of the great and good in the ether I reckon.

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Excuse me for being cynical and stating the ble***ng obvious, but, me thinks Mr non mortgage paying Anwar Rachid, is just looking for an excuse to get rid of something he can't afford the upkeep on!!

Hmmm, looking at the rest of the properties he owns, I honestly dont think a lack of finance is his problem.

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Just reading between the lines (And knowing the way the Asian community is regarding "Face" ) I still think I'm probably right

(You been away Craig ???)

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Two nights ago, the Clifton Hall ghost story was on our local news, in far flung Northern Arizona! Actually it was the Phoenix news channel, which has a 'Bizzare News' section, and it was in this.

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  • 2 years later...
  • 1 year later...

I was at Clifton Hall from 1960 to 1965 when Miss Heron was headmistress. The top floor was out of bounds because the floors/ceilings were in such bad repair, they were dangerous.

The bricked-up windows are, as far as I know, nothing to do with window tax, but are there in the centre part of the Hall becuase the Octagonal banqueting room is the full height of the three stories of the building and it had no windows in any of the eight sides, just the most amazing plaster work on the walls and ceilings, along with full size classical marble statues of Greek gods and goddesses. It is the most amazing room in which we had our school dinners, which always seemed to smell of overcooked cabbage.

There are always rumours of ghosts in any old building and I suppose the larger and older the building is, the more likelihood of people dying in it, some tragically, no doubt. In the years I was there, there were no reportings of ghosts. I expect any self-respecting ghost would probably keep out of the way of 300 schoolgirls!

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I knew quite a few of the girls who were there the same time as yourself, Diane Fitton, Christine Bridge to name but two. As Lads we would often climb up to the old summer house from Holme Pit, there werte always stories of ghosts the lady in white being the most popular.

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Yes that would be it, I didn't know it had been a hunting lodge we always called it the summer house. Also up the bank in the private part of the grove was a place we called Lady Bay Orchard which was always a favourite place for scrumping apples, was that anything to do with the hall.

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  • 1 month later...

I havn't seen or spoken to Diane since my mid teens, what little I do know of her is not for me to make public. Try the social Websites like Facebook or Frieds Reunited if they are not there then you have to respect their privacy.

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  • 8 years later...

Only the South Wing for £2.7m though.  Who’d want to spend that much for a semi?!!
 

I think that Chek Whyte (made-up name), originating from Ilkeston, bought it a few years ago.  He bought lots of other Halls over a few years ...... Colwick, Bunny, Stanford. Surprised he hasn’t put in a bid for Wollaton, giving the City Council a bit more dosh to mess with.     Don’t know anything about him and wouldn’t comment on here if I did!  

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