About two miles from Brindle is a stately home called Hoghton Tower which was built in 1565, although the family can trace its ancestry back to the Norman conquest. In March 2002, the owner, Sir Bernard de Hoghton, made an appeal for more tour guides, since many of the present ones were almost as old as the building itself, but sadly not lasting quite so well. I had considered doing something like this many years ago, but didn’t take it up, so this was an ideal opportunity.
After receiving a private tour of the house from Sir Bernard, I first went along at Easter to find out what the role would entail. After walking round the house a few times with experienced guides, I took my first solo tours in the summer season which started in July. I thoroughly enjoyed the job, and soon learned that if you say something with authority, most people believe it. Another good tip is to start every sentence with ‘allegedly’, which effectively prevents anyone challenging the guide about any historical facts. I enjoyed giving the historical house tours which lasted an hour, although I soon had sufficient material to talk for twice as long. There is so much history in the house, that I began to tailor the talks depending upon who was in the party, giving more information about the family, the building, the furniture, the gossip or even the ghosts as desired. There was a wonderful atmosphere at the house, a bit amateurish, with everyone helping where they could. Even Sir Bernard used to delight in directing traffic on the car park occasionally, and then casually letting it slip who he was if he got a stroppy customer!
The house was only open for historical house tours between July and September (plus bank holidays), and the regular Sunday afternoon tours were friendly, relaxed affairs. In the winter, however, a few evenings were set aside to entertain people by telling ghost stories about the house. Many such tales had been collected over the years, from well-documented stories, to family legends, and even the experiences of the guides and staff who worked in the house. These stories were stored in a ‘ghost file’ held in the office. The guide impressively brandished this folder as he introduced the tours, but it is slightly disappointing when you actually get to read it. The nature of the house is such that I quickly had my own unusual and spooky tale to add to the official ghost file.
I was asked to act as a torch bearer (which is a much grander title than the job deserved) during the winter of 2002/2003. I loved the atmosphere at the ghost tours, and thoroughly enjoyed helping out, but even then, I was understandably nervous when I took a call from Lady de Hoghton at about 3pm one afternoon asking whether I could deliver a ghost tour that same evening. Although I had attended a few tours previously, I had only been assisting, but due to sickness, I was being asked to stand in and deliver the talk.
You may think that giving a ghost tour is no different to delivering a historical house tour, but it was very different. The guides were instructed to relate the chilling tales with a certain gravitas – not my usual flippant style – and so I dressed up like an undertaker, complete with long, dark coat and sombre expression. A house tour cost £3 in those days, and lasted about an hour. For the ghost tours, the Tower were charging £25 per head (including a meal), and about 60 people were simultaneously shown round in two parties of 30. The tours started together, but took different routes around the house and cellars such that the public never saw or heard the other party until the end, when (in theory) both groups entered the banqueting hall through opposite doors at the same time to hear the final stories.
On the evening of my first solo tour, Lady de Hoghton hurriedly instructed me about what to say, and the expected duration of the journey. My difficulty was that once I had delivered my script, I had insufficient background information to ad lib, and consequently, my party turned up at the banqueting hall considerably sooner than the other group. My nervousness was compounded by the fact that I could glimpse Lady de Hoghton at various locations listening in, yet offering no assistance. It must have been acceptable, however, because not long afterwards, four of us were trained up to be able to deliver a professional tour so that if anyone was unable to attend in future, there would always be a stand-in.
I delivered 20 or 30 house tours per year for ten years, taking an average of perhaps 12 people per time, which means that approximately 3000 people have heard my talk. In addition, the house used to run ten or twelve ghost tours per year, and I delivered virtually all of them from 2005 until 2012, so maybe another 2500 people have heard me relate these mysterious tales.
The Tower also usefully provided summer jobs for both children who worked in the tea room. It was beneficial for them to deal with the general public, who are, let’s be honest, a pretty strange bunch, and also allowed them to earn a few quid and to appreciate the value of money. The tea room manager was very generous, often paying a flat amount per session rather than per hour.
The house has a connection with Shakespeare (there is an oral tradition that he lived at the Tower for a couple of years in his mid teens) and soon after I started working there, the BBC ran a four-week documentary on Shakespeare, presented by the historian Michael Wood. Hoghton Tower received good publicity in this documentary, and on the strength of this, the Tower decided to put on a Shakespeare season for 2½ weeks in summer 2003. The play was performed in the grounds by a professional theatre company and was very well received. I was in demand as a steward on any afternoon or evening that I could manage. Laurence also helped the visiting public, offering to carry items such as picnic hampers or garden chairs from the car park. He was delighted to earn himself a few pounds through this piece of commerce. A similar event was organised the following year, but that was the last one. The performances were stopped, I think, because of spiralling costs and falling returns.
In 2009, one of the guides asked me to take over an activity that he had done for several years which was to present a slide show about Hoghton Tower. He was finding it difficult to continue, and so he gave me his slides and contact details. The following year, my name could be found in the Lancashire Women’s Institute handbook which lists all the speakers that the WI members could hire. For a couple of years I accepted several bookings to talk to WI meetings across Lancashire, a task I didn’t really enjoy, but carried out willingly. I re-worked the original presentation that I’d been given, substituting my own photographs and using a digital projector instead of 35mm slides. The problem with these talks was that several people in the audience would often nod off during the evening. I initially thought that it was due to my speech being so boring, but the organisers assured me that the talks were fine, and so I concluded that sitting in a warm, dark room at the end of the day meant that some old ladies would enjoy a bit of shut-eye. At least they didn’t snore.
When I started volunteering at Hoghton Tower, the whole outfit was very amateurish, and the guides were just ordinary people helping out at a stately home. Even the ghost tours, although expensive, had a feeling of am-dram about them, which I think added to the charm. However, there were many changes in the later years, several of which I didn’t agree with. When Sir Bernard (who turned 65 in 2010) handed over more of the administration of the house to his daughter and son-in-law, many significant changes were introduced over a short period of time. I felt that the house was trying to emulate Chatsworth or other big tourist attraction, which may have been an admirable aspiration, but would require a significant investment to justify charging a higher entrance fee. In the end, the house was not prepared to invest in any improvements, but went ahead and raised ticket prices anyway.
Several events occurred during 2012 which ended my happy relationship with Hoghton Tower. At the start of the 2012 season, the guides were told that they could no longer sell tickets from a warm room, but instead were relocated to a shed by the entrance. As one of the senior guides, I was asked for my opinion beforehand, and I actually agreed with the proposal in principal, and offered my thoughts about buying a cabin and kitting it out as a ticket office. My advice (to buy a decent building which was heated and insulated) went unheeded, however, and the guides ended up working out of a second-hand 6’x4’ garden shed with a hatch cut out of the side. The hatch was incorrectly positioned, so if the guide stood up, he or she needed to stoop to peer out of the hatch. Conversely, if the guide chose to sit down, the bottom of the hatch was too high to see outside. The hut did have an electric heater, but it proved quite ineffective in an uninsulated wooden shed. The house had moved with the times and had provided guides with a handheld credit card reader but unfortunately this couldn’t be used in the hut since the signal was blocked by the thick courtyard walls, and had to be taken outside for it to work. Not pleasant on a rainy day. There were numerous other niggles that needed to be addressed, the greatest of which were the feelings of the guides who dealt with the public, and more often, the complaints. The guides, many of whom had been working at the house for decades, were simply told of the changes to be implemented and then left alone to work out the processes and deal with any outcomes. After my concerns were pointedly ignored, it was with regret that I handed in my resignation in August 2012. At present, I remain good friends with Sir Bernard, whom, I suspect has never been informed of the real reasons for me leaving.
