A Ghost Story
Recently the Kibworth & District Chronicle was handed a number of archived documents including a rather battered issue of F P Woodford’s book ‘History of Kibworth and Personal Reminiscences’, ‘A Kibworth Notebook: A brief account of the village from 1930 until the mid nineteen fifties’ by Geoff Ringrose along with various newspaper cuttings. One of the cuttings from the Leicester Mercury, dated Friday 4 February 1972, was intriguing being entitled:
‘Derelict ‘haunted’ house with a history saved from demolition.’
It reads as follows:
“An old house in the County is being rescued from decay and the demolition men.
The White House situated in a prominent position on the A6 at Kibworth Harcourt has been standing empty for some years and has gradually taken on that familiar derelict appearance of peeling walls, crumbling plaster and dry rot – not to mention a bush growing out of the chimney.
Now, during weekdays, new life is blossoming as builders work to restore the old structure.
At weekends work goes on by the new owners – Chris and David Taylor and Mildred and Stephen George who are restoring it for their own occupation.
The house which they purchased between them will be divided to form two homes which promises to be of great character.
The first known reference to the White House was over 250 years ago – in 1719, although parts of it are believed to been built before 1700.
Here, Philip Dodderidge later to become well known as leader of the Congregational church studied at the Diseenting Academy housed in the building. The old dormotories are still apparent.
The first Congregational Meeting House of Kibworth was established in the yard at the rear of the building. It was accidentally burnt down in 1759. The house had by this time become the Crown Inn – an interesting old sketch map of Kibworth shows the building in elevation, complete with the hanging bush, the old sign for an inn.
The Crown Inn was next heard of as the venue for a meeting held in 1775 of the Turnpike Trust. The meeting was chaired byJohn Palmer, and convened to instigate complaints about the poor state of the Leicester to Market Harborough Turnpike Road.
In early Victorian times it again became a dwelling house and when Woodford, a local Kibworth historian, was born in 1860 the house had been divided into two households.
In the History of Kibworth Woodford remembers as a boy in 1868 being frightened by stories of the house being haunted by the ghost of Mrs Shilcock. She had been found at the foot of the stairs with a broken neck shortly after the death of her husband – a local butcher.”
