SPECTRALWhat happened here
The house was built from the 1620s for Sir Roger Townshend. In the early 18th century it was the home of Charles, 2nd Viscount Townshend — the statesman remembered as “Turnip Townshend” for promoting crop rotation — and of his second wife, Dorothy Walpole, sister of Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister.
Dorothy died at Raynham in 1726, of smallpox according to the records. Rumour said otherwise: that her husband had learned of an earlier affair and kept her shut in her rooms until she died.
The legends
Dorothy is said to be the Brown Lady, a figure in a brown brocade dress seen on the main staircase. In the 1830s the novelist Captain Frederick Marryat, a guest, is said to have met her in a corridor, lamp in hand and grinning at him, and to have fired his pistol at her; the bullet was found lodged in a door behind where she had stood.
In September 1936 the photographers Captain Hubert Provand and Indre Shira were taking pictures of the house for Country Life. Shira said he saw a vaporous figure coming down the staircase, and the photograph they published shows a veiled, glowing shape on the stairs.
Fact or legend?
The photograph is real, but sceptics have argued since 1936 that it is a double exposure or a trick of the light, and no one has settled the question. The story of Dorothy's confinement comes from gossip, not records, and the Marryat tale was written down by his daughter decades later.
Visiting
Raynham Hall is a private family home and is rarely open to the public; occasional group visits have been arranged by appointment. The famous photograph is widely reproduced.
