What happened
The ruins of Berry Pomeroy lie hidden in a wooded valley near Totnes in Devon. The Pomeroy family held the manor for over 400 years before building the castle in the later fifteenth century. In December 1547 it was bought by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, brother of Queen Jane Seymour, and his descendants built a grand Elizabethan mansion inside the walls – never finished, because the money ran out. By about 1700 the castle was an abandoned shell, and in 1697 John Prince described it as a ruin. Legends filled the void. The White Lady is Margaret Pomeroy, whose jealous sister Eleanor, in love with the same man, is said to have imprisoned her in the dungeon beneath St Margaret’s Tower and starved her to death; her figure is said to rise from the tower and beckon passers-by. The Blue Lady is the daughter of one of the castle’s lords, who supposedly smothered a child fathered by her own father; she appears wringing her hands, and to see her foretells a death. The eighteenth-century physician Sir Walter Farquhar is said to have seen her when called to the steward’s sick wife – who died soon afterwards. A Gothic novel, “The Castle of Berry Pomeroy,” published in 1806, added to the castle’s fame.
Witnesses
Tradition of the Totnes area; an anecdote attributed to the physician Sir Walter Farquhar; modern visitors and English Heritage guides.
Explanations and hypotheses
No documents confirm that Margaret and Eleanor Pomeroy played such roles, or the crime attributed to the Blue Lady; these are typical white-lady tales attached to a romantic ruin. English Heritage, which cares for the castle, notes with some reserve that it is promoted as “the most haunted castle in Devon,” and reminds visitors that its real history is one of Seymour ambition, overreaching building and abandonment. The Gothic novel of 1806 shows that the ruin was already firing imaginations as a setting for horror.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
More: Wikipedia (pl) Wikipedia (en)