Hinton Ampner: Mary Ricketts, Captain Jervis and the noises in the old house

William Henry and Mary Ricketts took the old house at Hinton Ampner in January 1765. Andrew Lang’s later examination places the first disturbances in the early tenancy: footsteps and the sound of doors being opened and closed.

The couple initially treated the problem as something people might be doing. Locks were changed in case keys had passed into local hands. The noises nevertheless continued. Reports from servants of a man in drab clothing and a woman in silk did not immediately persuade Mary that she was living with ghosts.

This practical beginning is a distinctive feature of the account. The residents did not start with an agreed identity for a spirit. They began with a house that seemed to contain movements they could not find the source of.

William went to Jamaica in autumn 1769. Mary remained with the household and became increasingly troubled by sounds from a room adjoining her own bedroom above the kitchen.

She described the noise of walking and silk brushing against a door. Repeated searches found nobody. To control access she secured the inner room from within; anyone reaching it through the ordinary route would have had to pass through her bedroom, whose door was also bolted.

The precautions are recorded because they mattered to her explanation. She was trying to account for who could enter, where they could move, and how an apparent intruder might escape discovery. The story concerns an arrangement of connected domestic rooms, rather than an unspecified sound somewhere in a large mansion.

During summer 1770 she reported footsteps approaching the foot of her bed while she was awake. She searched and found no person. Other sounds included heavy impacts downstairs and something she described as harmony.

By early 1771 an unfamiliar hollow murmur appeared to fill the house. Mary said it could occur on calm nights, so she did not consider wind an adequate explanation.

The sequence then becomes more closely dated. On 27 February a maid was frightened by groans and fluttering near her bed. On 2 April Mary followed walking sounds in the lobby towards a room with no other exit, only to find nobody there. These dates belong to her developing account, not to a modern investigation at the present house.

After midsummer the disturbances extended into daylight. The narrative adds a shrill female voice and two male voices. One particularly alarming episode sounded to Mary like a tremendous weight rushing down onto the lobby floor, followed by repeated shrieks.

She tried changing bedrooms. The change did not end the trouble as she experienced it. Her account combines determination to stay with a gradual deterioration in her ability to rest.

A present-day summary can easily turn all of this into a single dramatic night. The correspondence instead describes a protracted household problem, with its worst phase coming years after the tenancy began. The duration helps explain why the decision to leave carried such weight.

Mary’s brother, Captain John Jervis, had visited without being told about the disturbances and had not noticed them. When she eventually explained her situation, he returned to the problem with Captain Luttrell and a servant.

Jervis kept watch at night, armed, and slept in the daytime. In a letter to William dated 9 August 1771 he acknowledged hearing sounds that diligent searching and reflection had not enabled him to explain.

The record does not say that everyone heard every noise simultaneously. Lang draws attention to occasions when people equally near a sound did not share the experience. That variation belongs in the account alongside Jervis’s support for his sister.

His eventual advice was decisive: Mary should leave. This was a family response to the accumulating experience, not the result of identifying a named ghost.

Mary’s departure was not one uninterrupted flight from the property. Lang reconstructs a series of temporary refuges, an attempted return and further moves. She stayed with her coachman’s mother and with other friends before the family’s circumstances changed again.

The owner’s agent later watched with armed men. A reward of £50, increased by William Ricketts to £100, was offered for catching whoever caused the noises. Lang reports that it went unclaimed.

Correspondence continued into 1772. The coachman, Camis, wrote that they still could not explain the sounds. In July that year Mary prepared the substantial account intended for her children.

Her emphasis on changing servants was deliberate. None of the original staff remained when she left, which she offered as a reason to doubt a continuous conspiracy by the same employees.

The National Trust describes the present Hinton Ampner as a house profoundly shaped by Ralph Dutton, including rebuilding after a twentieth-century fire. Its rooms should not be used as though they were unchanged settings from Mary’s tenancy.

A parish-council recollection by former housekeeper Mary Cross makes the distinction particularly clear: she remembered stories attached to the earlier house, rather than a ghost in the house where she worked.

This file’s marker therefore identifies the estate. The modern location photograph provides context; it is not evidence of a particular apparition and does not establish the old bedroom’s position.

Lang worked from an edited collection of the family correspondence and Mary’s narrative. John H. Ingram also discussed Hinton through earlier publications, including the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Barham family’s retellings.

These are connected routes back to a family history, not a collection of entirely independent investigations. The letters, Mary’s longer statement and the later editors have different roles.

For comparison, Epworth Rectory preserves another household’s responses over time. Cheltenham’s Morton case follows a later family and a different pattern of repeated experiences.

January 1765: the Ricketts family takes the old house.

Autumn 1769: William leaves for Jamaica.

1770–1771: Mary describes increasingly intrusive disturbances.

August 1771: Jervis’s watch and letter; Mary leaves.

July 1772: Mary prepares her narrative for her children.

1897: Lang publishes his examination of the story.

Andrew Lang, The Book of Dreams and Ghosts — Public-domain chapter on Lord St Vincent’s ghost story, reproducing and discussing the family record.

John H. Ingram, The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain, 1897 — Public-domain historical compilation and its identified earlier sources.

National Trust: the house at Hinton Ampner — Present building and the role of Ralph Dutton.

Bramdean and Hinton Ampner Parish Council: Mary Cross’s memories — A later housekeeper distinguishes the old-house tradition from her own workplace.