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General
Little Gaddesden is most famous for John of Gaddesden, a leading physician and contemporary of Chaucer in mediaeval England and the first Englishman to write a textbook on medicine.
The Manor House has a strangely shaped chimney box which is known as Jarman’s Coffin.
The name derives from an Old English personal name and the word denu and means ‘Gaete(n)'s valley’.
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Ashridge Manor House
The ghost of William Jarman, a churchwarden in the eighteenth century, haunts the Elizabethan Manor house and the nearby village pond. His ghost has never been seen in the manor house but his presence is felt and oil lamps, candles and electric lights would dim or go out. At one time the occurrences became so annoying that an exorcism was arranged but it did not go quite as planned. Seven parsons were assembled each holding a lit candle but as soon the exorcism started six of the candles were snuffed out. Try as he may the ghost could not extinguish the last candle and the exorcism was completed. For a while things remained quiet but in the late 1960s he appeared to have returned when a standard lamp owned by Miss Erhart, a resident in the house, was suddenly turned off at the switch.
William lived in the house and fell in love with the daughter of the Earl of Bridgewater who lived nearby at Ashridge Park. Unfortunately for William his advances were rejected and in his desolation he hanged himself from a nearby oak tree. Now his ghost is seen loitering around the village pond almost as if he is waiting for someone who does not turn up (his love perhaps?). He is also seen riding a spectral horse past the manor house as the clock strikes midnight. The horse is variously described as headless and even as being coloured blue. The frenzied ride continues towards Bluepit Pond opposite to the manor scattering the deer as he goes. People have also said that he waters two white horses at the pond and the tracks of his carriage have been seen in freshly fallen snow going from the stables to the front door of the manor.
In 1963 a Ministry of Housing enquiry said that the haunting may be affected by the intended construction of a new house nearby. In 1696 John Aubrey recorded in his ‘Miscellanies’ that there was a monastery at Ashridge where an old manuscript ‘Johannes de Rupesscissa’ was discovered. The manuscript contained details of spells and rituals that could be used to smoke out evil spirits from a haunted house using special fumes.
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