C&T Publications Eye On Fine Art Photography - October 2014 | Page 36

One location that stands out among the many that we investigated is an old manor house called The Grange, located in the small
village of Hurworth-on-Tees in county Durham, just a few miles away from North Yorkshire. We investigated this location many
times over a period of about four years. It became known as our official home-away-from-home and unofficial headquarters.
Because of our respect for the property and serious in-depth research into its history we were given exclusive rights to investigate
at any time we wished. I merely had to phone the caretaker, let him know when we wanted to do an over-night, and we were given
the green light, handed the keys on arrival, and left alone to conduct our investigation. No other team was allowed in without our
express permission. Even the BBC program Inside Out wanted in to see this location due to its exclusivity and we agreed to allow
them to film us over a period of 24 hours, with the resulting footage airing on television in October of 2006. We loved the old place
and I still miss it .
“So,” you might ask, “What made The Grange so special?”
The Grange has a wonderfully rich and diverse history. The land it sits on was inhabited at least by Saxon times, where the small
village had its beginnings. Then the Romans came in and built a fort in the area, which encompassed this property. A Roman burial
sarcophagus was dug up here during construction of The Grange. During the reign of William the Conqueror this area was harried,
destroyed, burnt to the ground. During the Middle Ages it became the property of Ivo Tailleboys, an ancestor of this author, and
then later passing into the hands of Neasham Abbey. In the year 1665 the Great Plague ravaged this village and other nearby small
towns. By the time the plague was done the population of Hurworth would drop from 750 to a mere 75. The nearby village green
still retains visual evidence of this tragedy in the form of three large depressions in the ground, where over 1500 plague victims
from Hurworth, Birkby, South Cowton and other nearby villages were buried in mass graves.
In 1872 Alfred Backhouse, a banker and member of a highly respected Quaker family, purchased Hurworth Farm. In 1875 he began
construction of The Grange, which was being built as a wedding present for his favorite nephew, James Backhouse. James and his
wife, Elizabeth Barclay, member of another banking family, raised eleven children in this house, which was by all accounts a very
happy and well educated household. When James died his son Edward Backhouse inherited the family estate, where Edward and
his wife, Lucy Mounsey, lived when they weren't traveling the world or living in London. Edward was a bit of a daredevil and one of
his favorite activities was climbing the Alps near Zermatt, Switzerland. Edward was such a frequent visitor to the area that he
became fluent in the language that was spoken in this little pocket of the world, a blend of Swiss and German, called Walliser
German. In 1922 Edward was killed while hiking the Leiterspitze, where he slipped and plunged to his death. What is interesting
about this is that three of our male team members captured the voice of a fourth man on a digital sound recorder while they were
conducting an investigation in the basement. There should not have been a fourth voice as they were the only three in this location.
Even stranger, the voice is speaking in another language that various experts from all over the world all verified was actually a
combination of Swiss and German from the area of Zermatt, which today is no longer spoken. They all also stated that the voice is
saying either “I am here,” “I was here,” or “I am one here.” Edward is buried in the St. Peter's English Churchyard in Zermatt. We
remain convinced that we captured the voice of Edward trying to communicate.
The house soon passed into other hands, becoming the residence for a very brief time of Violet Rogerson, the widow of a military
man. Then it became the home of Claude Spielman, a Jewish industrialist. During the time that Claude and his family resided at The
Grange it would see, during WWII, the army camping out on the lawns while officers set up temporary quarters in the house itself,
as well as in the stable and barn. This home also became a refugee shelter for many of the Jews escaping from Europe, and because
of Mr. Spielman they soon became employed and part of the community.
When the house next appeared on the market in the 1960's it was purchased by the St. John of God Hospitaliers, and was utilized
as a training seminary for young men wishing to enter the priesthood. I have actually been contacted by a former seminary student
who gave me some inside information about how the seminary worked, including the fact that the secret stai rcase was used as a
place for the boys to store their personal frying pans, which they would collect from a stair-step in the morning as they descended
from the top floor to the bottom. There were also allusions by a number of people to a scandal involving a priest and one of the
boys, but I have not been able to substantiate this.
During our years of conducting investigations at this location in all kinds of weather, we managed to collect quite a few convincing
EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), as well as a few photos and video footage that we can find no non-paranormal explanations for.
For the most part we found the haunting activity to be benign, and even friendly, but there were a few occasions where we
encountered something that was somewhat sinister, bordering on what some might describe as demonic. This sort of negative
encounter generally only occurred when a guest was brought in that the non-living tenants took a dislike to.
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