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The Beresford Apparition
47 Plays15 days ago
Episode fifteen of Pieces of History takes us deep into the eerie world of 17th-century Ireland, where ghost stories, political intrigue, and family legacies intertwine.
In this episode, we uncover the mysterious Beresford Apparition - a chilling spectral visitation involving Lady Beresford and Lord Tyrone that has haunted local memory for centuries. What was the story behind this famous ghostly encounter? How did it reflect the turbulent politics and social tensions of the era? And what role did prophecy and superstition play in shaping public perception?
More than just a tale of hauntings, this episode explores the fragile boundaries between history and folklore, power and prophecy — and how stories from the past continue to captivate and mystify us today.
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Transcript
00:00:13
Speaker
Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear received a little thereof. In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made my bones to shake.
00:00:28
Speaker
Then a spirit passed before my face, the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof, and image was before mine eyes.
Introduction to the Beresford Apparition
00:00:39
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pieces of History.
00:00:42
Speaker
I'm Colin McGrath and in each episode I delve into some renowned and lesser known events throughout history. In this episode we're slipping beyond the Vale to explore one of Ireland's most enduring ghost stories, the Beresford Apparition.
00:00:55
Speaker
A tale rooted in County Down's haunted soil, where folk memory holds that the dead rarely stay silent. It's a story of a pact made in youth, of death foretold and of a spectral visitor with a message that would ripple through drawing rooms, parishes and philosophical debates for generations.
00:01:14
Speaker
This wasn't some fireside fancy. This was a phenomenon that disturbed bishops, confounded enlightenment thinkers and left behind written testimony etched with both belief and doubt.
00:01:25
Speaker
So draw close, keep the light on and prepare to walk the thin line between fact and folklore.
Gill Hall and the MacGill Family Legacy
00:01:32
Speaker
But before we step into the drawing room where destiny kept its appointment, let's take a moment to understand the backdrop, the land where it all unfolded, Ireland, but more precisely, County Down.
00:01:43
Speaker
Down is the tapestry of rolling drumlins, mist-laced valleys and coastal vistas along the Irish Sea. Ancient stone crosses and monastic ruins whisper of early Christianity, while local lore teem with banshees, fairy rings and the restless dead.
00:01:59
Speaker
It's a place where the boundary between the mundane and the supernatural felt thinner than in most parts of the island. Our focus is Gill Hall, near the village of Jemore, a grand late 17th century estate that stood as a monument to wealth, ambition and Protestant ascendancy.
00:02:15
Speaker
Built around 1660, Gill Hall was one of the earliest examples of classical architecture in Ulster, its symmetry and restraint and marked departure from the fortified towers of earlier times.
00:02:26
Speaker
But beyond this elegant facade, they have family whose influence stretched from land and politics to legend. The estate belonged to the MacGill family, one of the region's prominent landowning dynasties.
00:02:37
Speaker
Their fortune was rooted in the upheaval of Ireland's 17th century, a time when land changed hands through rebellion, confiscation and colonialisation. Like many Protestant families who rose during and after the Ulster Plantation and Cromwellian settlement, the MacGill's were English in origin and fiercely loyal to the crown.
Pacts and Promises: John Power & Nicola Sophia Hamilton
00:02:55
Speaker
Their holdings were vast and they became known for their involvement in both local government and national affairs. The most notable figure tied to Gill Hall was Sir John McGill, later created a Baronet McGill of Gill Hall in 1680.
00:03:09
Speaker
He was a soldier, a member of parliament and a trusted man of the Protestant elite in Ireland, an establishment cemented after the defeat of Catholic King James II by William of Orange. Sir John married Elizabeth Hawkins, heiress to further estates, and through their line the family would eventually connect with the Hill family, themselves political titans and future Marquis of Downshire.
00:03:32
Speaker
But despite their worldly power, the Magills and the Great House would soon be remembered for something far stranger than law or lineage. Gill Hall, imposing an orderly in its design, was said to be anything but calm within.
00:03:45
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Strange sounds echoed throughout its corridors. Servants whispered of unexplained events, of a presence felt but not seen. The house gained a reputation, not just as a symbol of Protestant power, but as a place touched by the supernatural.
00:04:00
Speaker
It begins, as so many ghost stories do, with a promise. The year was 1670 and in the wooded, wind-light hills of Ulster, two children, John Power, later to become 2nd Earl of Tyrone, and Nicola Sophia Hamilton, daughter of a royalist soldier, were bound by more than affection.
00:04:19
Speaker
Orphans raised under the same roof. They found in one another not just companionship, but a shared obsession with the unknowable. What happens after we die? Does this whole persist?
00:04:30
Speaker
Could it return? Nicola Sophia came from the well-connected Hamilton family, steeped in tradition and loyal to the Stuart cause. Her father, Sir Hugh Hamilton, a Scottish baronet and royalist soldier, had fought for King Charles I during the English Civil War, a time of convulsion that left deep scars and even deeper questions about faith, loyalty and mortality.
00:04:53
Speaker
Her upbringing was disciplined, shaped by religious conviction and a keen awareness that life and favour were both fleeting. John Power, by contrast, came from an old Anglo-Irish family with Catholic roots, but in a land where faith was more than belief, where he determine land, title and survival, he had converted to Protestantism, less from spiritual revelation than from political necessity.
00:05:17
Speaker
It was a common path among his peers, a compromise in exchange for inheritance and social standing. Their early education was unorthodox. As recorded in the Other World or Glimpses of the Supernatural in 1875 by Reverend Frederick George Lee, the poor were first raised in a household where deism, belief in a non-interventionalist creator, shaped their understanding of the divine.
00:05:43
Speaker
Lord Tyrone and Miss Hamilton were born in Ireland and were left orphans in their infancy to the care of the same person, by whom they were both educated in the principles of deism. Their guardian dying when there were each of them about 14 years of age, they fell into very different hands.
Lady Beresford's Ghostly Encounter
00:05:59
Speaker
Though they were later placed with more devout guardians who tried to stay them back to revealed religion, Neither was wholly convinced. The persons on whom the care of them now devolved used every means to eradicate the erroneous principles they had imbibed and to persuade them to embrace revealed religion but in vain.
00:06:19
Speaker
Their arguments were strong enough to stagger their former faith. Though separated from each other, their friendship was unalterable and they continued to regard each other with a sincere and fraternal affection.
00:06:30
Speaker
It was in that formative period, caught between belief and doubt, that they made a vow, a solemn, youthful oath, should one of them die first, they would, if permitted, return to reveal the true nature of the afterlife.
00:06:44
Speaker
Time carried them forward. John Power would inherit his family title and become Lord Tyrone. Nicola Sophia Hamilton married Sir Tristan Beresford, a wealthy and respected landowner in County Derry.
00:06:57
Speaker
She became Lady Beresford, mistress of Curramore House, a grand estate where tapestries hung heavy on the walls and ancestral portraits watched in solemn silence. A place of order, status and worldly peace.
00:07:10
Speaker
The oaths of youth, one might think, had long been forgotten. One morning in the autumn of 1693, Lady Nicholas Sophia Beresford entered the breakfast room. She was pale, withdrawn and visibly shaken.
00:07:23
Speaker
But it wasn't only her face that caused alarm, it was the sudden appearance of a black ribbon tied tightly around her wrist. Sir Tristram Beresford, her husband, asked if she had injured herself.
00:07:34
Speaker
Have you sprained it? he inquired gently. She looked at him and said firmly, Let me conjure you, Sir Tristram, never to inquire the cause of my wearing of this ribbon. You will never see me with without it.
00:07:46
Speaker
If it concerned you as a husband to know, i would not for a moment conceal it, but of this entreat you to forgive me the refusal. Taken aback, he agreed, but as breakfast continued, she grew restless, repeatedly asking if the post had arrived.
00:08:00
Speaker
When told it had not, she finally admitted, i expect to hear that Lord Tyrone is dead, he died last Tuesday at four o'clock. Her husband was stunned. There had been no news of John Power, Lord Tyrone, not even a whisper.
00:08:15
Speaker
Some idle dream has surely alarmed you, he said. Just then, a servant entered with a letter, its wax seal as black as ink. Sir Tristram opened it slowly. The message confirmed everything.
00:08:27
Speaker
Lord Tyrone had died in Dublin at precisely 4am on Tuesday, the exact hour Lady Beresford had claimed. She composed herself, then shared something unexpected.
00:08:38
Speaker
She was with child. I can assure you, beyond the possibility of a doubt, she told her husband, that I shall in some months present you with a son. But the deeper truth would not be revealed for years.
00:08:51
Speaker
Eventually, in a letter to her daughter Susanna, Liddy Beresford confessed what had happened that night. Not in a dream, but in full waking consciousness. She had been staying at Gill Hall, her sister's estate near Dromor and County Down, when she awoke in the still hours before dawn to find Lord Tyrone standing at the foot of her bed.
00:09:09
Speaker
He appeared not as a spectre, but exactly as he had been in life, calm, deliberate and somehow more real than ever before. He had come, he said, to fulfil the vow they made as children, a promise that if one of them died first, they would return to reveal the truth about the soul and the afterlife.
00:09:26
Speaker
Now standing in her bedroom at Gell Hall, Lord Throne told her, There is indeed a world beyond, your faith is true and your soul shall find mercy. Then she gave three revelations about the apparition.
00:09:38
Speaker
One, that life after death was real. Two, that her unborn son would rise to a position of great honour. And three, that she herself would die at the age of 47. Her husband was stunned, overwhelmed, and he begged for proof.
00:09:53
Speaker
Without a word, he reached out and grasped her wrist. Instantly, the skin shriveled. From that moment on, Lady Burrsford wore the black ribbon to hide the mark, never removing it, not even in sleep.
Prophecies and Death
00:10:06
Speaker
Sir Tristram Beresford died just a few years after the birth of their only son. His passing left Lady Beresford a widow, not yet forty, with two daughters, an infant son and a haunted memory that would not fade.
00:10:18
Speaker
In years that followed, she grew increasingly reclusive. She kept to her estate, visited no family save that of a local clergyman, and seemed determined to distance herself from society entirely.
00:10:29
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And then, unexpectedly, she married again. Her second husband was a clergyman's son. Once just a youth when she had first come to know him, the match raised eyebrows.
00:10:41
Speaker
He was significantly younger and in every sense beneath her station. Theirs was a marriage of ill-advised and soon, unmistakably, ill-fated. Quote, Lady Beresford was treated by her young husband with contempt and cruelty, utterly destitute of every principle of virtue and humanity.
00:10:59
Speaker
End quote. Despite his neglect, they had two daughters together, but their relationship soon deteriorated beyond repair. Humiliated and emotionally battered, Liddy Beresford separated from him.
00:11:11
Speaker
She seemed for a time, finally free of the pain that followed her since that faithful night in childhood. But years later, he returned, repentant or at least appearing so. He pleaded for her forgiveness, he promised reform.
00:11:24
Speaker
Against her better judgment, she relented and allowed him back into her home, her life and her bed. In time she bore him another child, a son. By then she was entering her mid-forties, and as that age approached, so too did the shadow of her youth, the prophecy, the spectral visitation, the impossible words spoken by Lord Tyrone, that she would die at forty-seven.
00:11:46
Speaker
She had lived under the weight that promise for decades. Friends noted her growing somberness. She marked each passing year with increasing intensity, her affairs meticulously in order. Her birthday became a day not of joy but of dread.
00:12:01
Speaker
Then came the day she believed to be her 47th birthday. And when the sun rose the next morning, she was still alive, she rejoiced. God has spurred me, she said. She ordered a celebratory dinner, wore a fine gown and invited friends, including her dear companion, Lady Betty Cobb.
00:12:18
Speaker
For the first time in years she seemed free of fear, but the prophecy had not yet finished with her. Just days later she fell ill, a fever set in, a physician was called.
00:12:30
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During his visit he asked her age. Forty-six, she replied confidently, for she believed her mother had altered the parish records long ago to make her seem younger to suitors and that she had only just turned forty-seven.
00:12:44
Speaker
and then this is where the records differ, because either her long-time maid or the clergyman who christened her stepped forward. One version tells us that the maid, who had served her since childhood, spoke quietly but firmly.
00:12:57
Speaker
Another insists it was the clergyman who had visited her childhood parish, finally resolving a long-standing debate with her late mother. You are mistaken, he said. You are 47 today.
00:13:09
Speaker
Lady Beresford went pale. The room fell silent. You have signed my death warrant, she exclaimed. I have then but a few hours to live. I must therefore entreat you to leave me immediately, as I have something of importance to settle before I die." She died that very night.
00:13:26
Speaker
But the story did not die with her. In the decades that followed, the tale of Lady Beresford's ghostly visitation passed from memory into myth, then into the annals of recorded history. The Beresford Apparition, as it came to be known, became one of the most enduring and widely discussed ghost stories in Britain and Ireland.
00:13:45
Speaker
Gill Hall, once a proud emblem of the Protestant descendancy, became part of the legend's geography. Its halls, grand and silent, were forever linked to a night in which the boundary between life and death had supposedly been crossed.
00:13:59
Speaker
The story was printed in pamphlets, debated in parlours and eventually chronicled in the annual register, giving it the gloss of historical credibility. It was repeated not just for its supernatural intrigue, but for its particular dignity, a ghost story couched in manners, in prophecy and in a black ribbon that refused to loosen its grip on the past.
00:14:20
Speaker
Lady Beresford's great-grandson, the Marquis of Waterford, publicly swore to the truth of the tale. According to family papers, some allegedly written by Lady Beresford herself, the account had not been exaggerated, but faithfully preserved.
00:14:34
Speaker
One such letter reads, He appeared to me clothed as in life, and spoke with the voice of certainty. When he touched my wrist, I felt neither pain nor warmth, but a kind of falling away, as though the flesh withdrew from the bone.
00:14:49
Speaker
thank Even skeptics hardened by Enlightenment rationalism found story difficult to dismiss outright. Dr. Samuel Hibbert, physician and author of sketches of the philosophy of apparitions, included the account not to validate it, but to concede its power.
00:15:05
Speaker
It was, he admitted, a peculiar specimen of persistent ghost lore. What is it about this story that continues to haunt us? Perhaps it is the solemn beauty of a promise kept.
00:15:18
Speaker
Perhaps it is the uncanny richness of its details. A spectral visitor, a prophecy fulfilled by the quiet ticking of time, a woman bound by a ribbon that concealed both belief and scar.
00:15:29
Speaker
In an age where reason was king, debated in salons and codified in courts, this tale resisted simple classification. It belonged neither wholly to folklore nor to religion, neither to hysteria nor to faith.
00:15:42
Speaker
For some, was evidence of divine order, for others, a deeply human parable about grief, memory and the need for certainty in the face of death. To this day, the image of the black ribbon endures in Irish ghost lore, poised delicately between tragedy and mystery, a private mark, a public riddle.
00:16:01
Speaker
And so Lady Beresford, noblewoman, mother and reluctant witness to the beyond, was laid to rest. It is said the ribbon was buried with her.
From Myth to History
00:16:10
Speaker
Yet the tale did not end in the grave.
00:16:12
Speaker
It followed her family, most notably through her granddaughter, Lady Betty Cobb. In the late 18th century, Lady Betty took up residence in Bath at 22 Marlborough buildings where the Gentile and the Curious mingled over tea and letters.
00:16:26
Speaker
She carried her grandmother's name before marriage, Lady Beresford, and with it, unintentionally, her grandmother's legend. Especially after Sir Walter Scott helped circulate the tale in literary circles, Lady Betty found herself the subject of frequent confusion.
00:16:42
Speaker
Strangers mistook her for the original Lady Beresford, the one with a withered wrist and a spectral secret. Invitations poured in, seeking confirmation of the ghost's truth. At first she may have indulged the curiosity, but the constant prodding wore thin.
00:16:58
Speaker
Rumour had it that she could have ended the speculation by simply showing her wrists, but she never did. Whether it was an act of defiance, or discretion, or something deeper, Lady Betty chewed silence over spectacle.
00:17:11
Speaker
Even Queen Charlotte's court took interest. A lady in waiting wrote to Lady Betty requesting a full account of the ghostly visitation. Lady Betty's reply was curt and unambiguous.
00:17:23
Speaker
She sent her compliments, but added that the Queen, surely, would not wish to intrude on matters so private, and she had no intention of satisfying impertinent curiosity. That icy refusal spoke volumes.
00:17:35
Speaker
and In an age that prided itself on rational discourse, fascination with the supernatural had not vanished, it had simply changed form. Now it wore lace and it whispered through the corridors of aristocratic homes.
00:17:48
Speaker
Women like Lady Betty walked a fine line, expected to be refined and reasonable, while bearing the weight of stories that defied both. The Burrsford apparition survived not as a fringe superstition, but as an elegant defiance.
00:18:02
Speaker
A ghost story rooted not in fear, but in legacy. A tale from the very heart of the ascendancy, wrapped in silk, silence and just enough truth to endure.
Legacy of the Beresford Apparition
00:18:12
Speaker
Lady Betty was not the last to carry it.
00:18:15
Speaker
Long after her passing, the story lingered, not just in whispers and winks, but in manuscripts and museum files, in yellowed newsprint and family memoirs. It had become more than a memory, it was a trace in the historical record.
00:18:29
Speaker
In 1940, a writer named H.C. Lawler revived the tale in the Belfast Telegraph. His retelling added a curious detail. Quote, End quote.
00:18:42
Speaker
who appeared not merely as a spectre but left a tangible signature on a manupian ah proof of his visit from beyond the grave and Such flourishes were not new. Earlier versions appeared in the Blacker manuscripts, a sweeping collection of Ulster genealogies and legends assembled in the 19th century by Lieutenant Colonel Valentine Blacker.
00:19:03
Speaker
Among its treasures, a quiet note about the winter evening at Burrsford Hall where a ghost's presence left the household forever changed. Even newspapers in the Victorian era give the tale a new life.
00:19:14
Speaker
One article recounted how the ghost had left a faint etching upon a glass, only visible by candlelight. Whether real or imagined, it was believed. By the time it appeared in folklore collections like Bygones and Byways, the story had evolved into something grander.
00:19:30
Speaker
A kind of national inheritance. No longer just a ghost story, but a parable of belief and grief and the traces left by the dead. Because this ghost did not merely pass through walls or speaking riddles, it signed its name, on flesh, on paper, on glass, it left something behind.
00:19:48
Speaker
And in that act, it became more than legend, it became history.
Podcast Subscription Info
00:19:53
Speaker
Thank you for joining me on this journey into the history of the Beresford Apparition. Stay tuned for the next episode, where we'll continue to uncover more hidden corners of history. Make sure to subscribe and rate Pieces of History podcast on Spotify and iTunes, and you can contact me at piecesofhistoryatoutlook.com or on Instagram and Facebook at Pieces of History.
00:20:12
Speaker
Thanks for listening.