Lil
speaker
737 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Lil’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
The landlord, feeling that there was nothing left to lose at this point, managed to creep up on the excise man and attack him from behind, felling him dead in one swift blow. But now they had to cover up their terrible crime, and they did so by interring the officer's body underneath the huge heavy slabs of the inn's fireplace.
Somewhere, they reckoned, nobody would think to look, especially if they always kept the fire burning. And so the landlord and the smugglers made a pact to carry the terrible deed to their own graves and to never, ever let the fire in the fireplace of the Saltersgate Inn go out.
But they believed that if they did, the ghost of the excise officer would rise up from his untimely grave and take revenge for his murder, cursing the inn and bringing ill fortune to the villages all around. Legend tells that they and generations of landlords that came after did exactly that, and that the fire in the Saltersgate Inn burned for over 200 years, keeping the vengeful ghost at bay.
But despite their work to keep that particular ghost contained, rumours of other hauntings within the inn have emerged over the years. In recent decades, staff have reported seeing objects inexplicably fly through the air, including one employee in the 1970s, who saw a bowl float right past her.
Doors were found to lock and unlock themselves when the building was empty except for a single perplexed member of staff and pub regulars told of seeing apparitions walk through the walls. Maybe the strangest sighting, though, came from a local who was surprised one day to see, out of the inn's window, a child alone on the moors.
The fact that they were all alone was a bit concerning in itself, but there was also something not quite right about the scene. The girl was wearing odd clothes, an old-fashioned crinoline dress, and she was crying. Concern at her distress overcame the witness and they started outside towards the obviously upset child, but as they reached the gate... The figure simply disappeared.
Years later, the witness happened to mention it to a landlady of the inn, and astonishingly she revealed that she had seen the exact same thing out on the moors some twenty years earlier. So, haunted the inn may be, but none of these ghosts seem like the vengeful spirit of a murdered exciseman.
So, did the landlords of the Salters Gate successfully keep the angry spirit from returning with their 200-year fire? Well, although we have reports from staff as recently as 2001 that the landlords of the inn were still maintaining the tradition of the fire, in 2007 the inn fell on hard times and went out of business. Standing closed and empty for over a year, the legendary fire finally gone out.
The inn was bought by a local builder in 2008 who intended to refit and reopen the place, but from that point on, the building was beset by problem after problem. The recession hit and the new owner could no longer fund the project, so the inn stood empty. The protective fire reduced to nothing but cold ash.
It was sold again, this time with planning permission for a hotel and restaurant expansion, but this project too was doomed to financial ruin, and so the inn stood empty, by now looking very much worse for wear, whitewash peeling from the walls and the windows where the warning lantern may once have shone boarded shut.
The final attempt to save the inn was a purchase in 2016, but even this failed. And very sadly, in 2018, the shell of the by now derelict inn was demolished. The ghost of the murdered excise officer may not have come back to haunt the inn in the spectral form the smugglers expected, but the Salters Gate did seem to have a pall of ill fortune cast over it.
ever since the premises closed and the fire went out. But there's actually more to this story, because go back a little further in history and we find that the much-hated exciseman wasn't the first evil to be reputedly trapped in the fireplace of the inn.
We return to the corner of Victoria Square and Brunswick Street, where on one side of the slightly offset crossroads sits Dr Ripley's mysteriously truncated house, and on the other, where Victoria Square passes Spring Hill, sits Bagdale Hall.
At first glance, the building seems strangely out of place, looking much like a country estate that had somehow lost its way and ended up in the centre of a town. I suppose that's simply because in urban areas we're used to the march of time and progress eventually flattening places like these.
But somehow, Bagdale Hall has managed to survive since being built in either 1516 or 1530, depending on whether you choose to believe the hall's website or the blue commemorative plaque attached to the front of the building.
Apparently, the appearance of the hall has changed significantly over the years, particularly after extensive renovations in 1882, but you still get a sense of its Tudor roots, from the great rounded and worn sandstone blocks of its walls, the stone dormer windows in a steeply pitched roof with an impressive array of chimneys and the massive joists protruding from the end walls.
The day we visit is a gloomy one, and the leaded glass of the windows seem to absorb the darkness of the overcast skies to make it look as though it's pitch dark inside. The tiny diamond-shaped panes scatter the lights from the headlamps of passing cars, making the windows along the side of the building spark and glitter momentarily.
and in a lower front window, the warm yellow shapes of some lamps manage to glow through the darkness. But otherwise, the odd reflections of the mullion windows avert any clear glimpses into the interior, instead casting odd shapes and shadows within the glass.
If the hall looks impressive from the front, then it looks even more the classic country pile upon rounding the corner of Spring Hill, where it becomes evident that one wing of the T-shaped building sprawls off halfway up the street.
In fact, this was only a fraction of the property's original extent, as at the time of building it was surrounded by acres of green fields at least half a mile upriver that formed the hall's estate. and much of the town grew up around the building over the preceding centuries.
Showing 501–520 of 737 · page 26 of 37
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