Chingle Hall is a small, moated Grade II listed manor house in the township of Whittingham, near the village of Goosnargh and the town of Preston. It was built around 1260 by Adam de Singleton and originally known as Singleton Hall; local legend holds that some of its timbers came from Viking longboats, since Goosnargh had once been a Viking settlement, though that claim isn’t independently verified. The studded oak front door and the small bridge that replaced the original wooden drawbridge in the 16th century both survive today, spanning a moat that has partly dried up.

The hall stayed with the Singleton family until the last of the line, Eleanor Singleton, died in 1585, after which it passed to the Wall family by marriage. The devoutly Catholic household added a private chapel and two priest holes in the 16th century, when celebrating Mass was illegal in England — one hidden in the floor to conceal the accoutrements of Mass, another built into a chimneybreast to hide a priest. One of these hides stayed undiscovered until 1970, when owner Mrs Howarth saw smoke rising from the chapel ceiling and called the fire brigade, who traced it to a log smouldering from the inside out within the previously unknown chimney cavity. Ownership later passed through the Farrington, Longton and Howarth families before the house stood empty and was vandalised; it was restored from 1986 by Sandra and John Coppleston-Bruce, and the Kirkham family have owned it since February 1995.

The hall’s best-known connection is to Blessed John Wall, a Franciscan priest some accounts say was born there in 1620 (though the claim is disputed, and he was probably not a member of the Preston Wall family). Wall was arrested in 1678 during the Catholic persecutions of the period, offered his life if he renounced his faith, and refused; he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Redhill, Worcester, in August 1679. His quartered body was buried at St Oswald’s churchyard, but legend holds that his head was later recovered and, in the 18th century, brought back to Chingle Hall by a group of nuns and buried somewhere on the grounds — with the folklore claim that his ghost will only rest once the skull is found. He was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970.

That history earned Chingle Hall a reputation, repeated for decades, as “England’s most haunted house” — a claim promoted by occult writer Dennis Wheatley and endorsed after his own visit by veteran ghost researcher Peter Underwood, with guided tours highlighting both the priest holes and the paranormal activity running through the 1970s. Up to sixteen ghosts have been attributed to the hall over the years, most famously a hooded, cowled monk figure — usually brown, sometimes reported as black — seen crossing the great hall toward the stairs, popularly identified with John Wall. Other named or recurring figures include Lady Eleanor de Singleton, reportedly kept in the Priest’s Room until her death in her late teens (her presence associated with a lavender smell and, oddly, the scent of a dog said to have been her companion); a Cavalier; a chimney sweep; a young girl; and an entity nicknamed “The Dizzy Man.” One long-time owner told of a second, black-cowled figure that unsettled her dogs on evenings the brown monk did not appear.

American paranormal-reality series Ghost Hunters filmed a first-season episode, “Phantoms of Chingle Hall,” and the hall was also the subject of a UK television episode of Strange but True?. Independent UK investigators have logged decades of first-hand reports: unexplained footsteps and knocking, a loose kitchen flagstone said to make a distinct sound whenever something stands on it, objects rearranged overnight, doors and latches opening on their own, cold spots contrary to a lit fire, phantom animal sounds, a persistent sense of being watched, and the lavender scent tied to Eleanor’s room. Evidence throughout is anecdotal — owner and visitor testimony spanning half a century, two televised investigations, and folklore around the John Wall relic legend — and readers weighing how much stock to put in it may find our guide to how ghost hunting evidence gets evaluated useful context.

Ghost stories aside, Chingle Hall earns its place in this database on the history alone: a rare, still-occupied 13th-century moated manor with intact priest holes from the age of Catholic persecution and a genuine martyred-saint connection — though, unlike most entries in this database, there’s currently no way for the public to visit and judge its atmosphere for themselves.