- The Ghost of Lady Pelham at Pevensey Castle -

There has been a fortification on the site of Pevensey Castle for over 1,700 years. The Romans built a fort here sometime in the 3rd or 4th century. In 1066, William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey and had a prefabricated wooden castle built inside the ruined stone walls of the old Roman fort. He then moved to Hastings and erected another wooden castle before heading off to take the English crown from Harold II at the Battle of Hastings.

Stone replaced wood sometime in the 1190’s and Pevensey Castle became more defensible. The castle withstood many sieges, the most important of which occurred in 1399 when the castle was besieged by an army in support of Richard II. During the siege, the constable of the castle, John Pelham was away fighting with Henry Bolingbroke so the castle was defended by his wife, Lady Joan Pelham. She wrote to her husband to tell him of the siege and begged for his return. He did return to end the siege and rescue Pevensey Castle and his wife. The ghost of Lady Pelham is said to still haunt the castle...

As Richard Jones tells the story...

"The anguish of the siege lingers at Pevensey Castle still, and many people have seen the misty form of a pale lady gazing anxiously from the upper walls. It is believed, though not proven, that the forlorn phantom is that of Lady Joan Pelham, whose spirit has been trapped by the trauma of those angst-filled days, when she would scan the horizon seeking a distant speck that might signal her husband’s approach and the end of her ordeal."

This ghost story was taken from the book "Haunted Castles of Britain and Ireland" by Richard Jones. We would like to thank Richard for graciously allowing us to use his text on Great-Castles.com for some of the ghost stories presented on this site. You can find other stories by Mr. Jones on his website, Haunted Britain, or you can buy a copy of his fantastic book, which contains 100 castle ghost stories. To order a book directly from Richard himself, click the image of the book to the left.

About the book: Region by region, ghost-seeker Richard Jones reveals, explains and delights in the tales of tortured phantoms eager to restage their dark and turbulent pasts. The cast of characters ranges from ghostly queens that hurl themselves from the ramparts to malevolent monks that wander the corridors. This authoritative and accessible guide to haunted sites is illustrated throughout and includes extracts from original documents.