A meander down Memory Lane and a short ghost story, The Blue Lady (edited)

I hope you’ll forgive me for indulging in a bit of nostalgia this week. (Correction: a lot of nostalgia) But in my column, Ideas Store, in the current issue of Writers’ Forum, I am writing about the house I grew up in and how it inspired my sister and I to make up stories (usually involving ghosts).   There wasn’t room on my page for the story itself so I’m setting it out below and including some more detail about the story behind the story and the farm where I spent most of my childhood.

The house was an old Manor House, parts of which dated back to the 16th century (picture below) and before you run away with the idea that I am one of the landed gentry, let me explain some of the house’s more recent history.  

It was on a 350 acre farm in South Somerset, set in a stunning location which I’m afraid I didn’t appreciate at the time, mostly because it was in the middle of nowhere and at the top of a very steep hill.  I had to push my bike up with an overflowing school satchel cutting in to my shoulders after a long school day which started with a 2 mile bike ride, a 10 mile bus ride and a 15 minute walk – and ended the other way around in the evening.  (At least in the mornings the bike ride was downhill)  But the bus journey gave me chance to catch up on my homework – and check out the boys from the Grammar School.  (I went to an all girls school)

The farm and manor house was bought by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) back in the 1950s.  The farm had the most up to date machinery money could buy (my dad was the farm mechanic and looked after it all) and the idea was to run a model farm to show the farmers how brilliant ICI fertiliser was and how they could improve their  own farms by using it.  It would probably have been cheaper to have taken out a few adverts in the Farmer and Stockbreeder, I would have thought – but what  do I know?

So, the house, which I now see is a grade 2 listed building, was split up into four parts, one being the farm offices and the other three into dwellings for the farm workers.  It was a beautiful house, with high ceilings, tall mullioned windows  and acres of space.  I am one of six children and we had moved from a very cramped cottage.  I can still remember the joy of moving into that house and have vivid memories of my younger brothers riding a sit-on wooden train that Dad had made for them that first Christmas round and round the huge kitchen/living room.  

I loved Henley (in spite of it being in the middle of nowhere) and was desperately sad when my parents finally moved out, even though by then I’d long since left home.  My parents were still living there when I got married and we had our wedding reception in the farm’s Conference Room.  And, as you can see below, one of our wedding pictures was photo-bombed by  the ICI roundel!

There were six other families on the farm, many with young children so although we were several miles from the nearest town  there was always someone to play with.  I was a very bossy little girl and soon had all the other children on the farm press ganged into appearing in my various plays and pageants.  One of these, a pageant written for St George’s Day involved a lot of galloping around singing “For all the saints who from their labours rest” and precious little story.  This event turned into a complete fiasco when one of my younger brothers refused to be an angel any more and quit his post on top of an oil drum in the middle of the performance. It was the inspiration behind one of the first short stories I ever sold.  It was to Woman’s Weekly and called Angels on Oil Drums.

But the short story I want to feature this week is The Blue Lady, which, like many of my stories had its origin at this time of my life.  My sister and I would make up ghost stories, based on the house and its long history, and frighten each other to death. The Blue Lady was our favourite and the only one we can still remember.  What is interesting about that story is that it has now found its way into the local folklore.  

So when many years later I wanted to write a ghost story I remembered our Blue Lady and incorporated her into the story which ended with what I thought was quite a neat twist.  

edited 28th March, 2023

When I originally published this post back in March 2021 I included the story, The Blue Lady, below.

Since that time I have compiled an anthology of some of my favourite short stories, entitled “Selling My Grandmother – Confessions of a Story Teller” which I shall be publishing through Amazon shortly. (Just as soon as I can muster the necessary courage to hit the send button!) The anthology includes this story and, according to Amazon’s rules I am not able to publish a story that has previously been published elsewhere on the internet. So, sadly, I have had to take it down.

But it is available in the anthology which is a collection of 15 heartwarming stories, along with the ‘stories behind the stories’. Over the course of my writing career, I have used my family, friends and neighbours shamelessly and this collection is, indeed, the confessions of a story teller.