Hollin Hey

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Hollin Hey

I grew up in an old manor farm on the edge of the moors outside Bolton, Lancashire. Later research into the property found that it was originally built in 1640, and it still had many of its original features. Hollin Hey sat on top of the hill, bordered by fields, with the rugged moors beyond. It was beautiful and isolated, and I loved it, but despite it being so far from any other living soul, I never felt alone there.

When we moved in, I got to choose which bedroom I wanted. This in itself was so satisfying, having spent the last eight years sharing a room with my little brother in our small town house. I wanted a room as far from my brother as possible, so wandered right to the end of the corridor and picked the room at the end. It was huge! A massive open space, with two cosy alcoves either side of the chimney breast, a high vaulted ceiling that made the room feel even bigger, and a low window that looked out over the garden.

Immediately, I felt a sense of belonging and knew this had to be my room. Over the next week, we unpacked furniture and boxes. I directed my dad to place my bed in one of the cosy alcoves, and an old rocking chair and my treasured bookcase and book collection in the other. I created my reading nook so I could sit on the chair, gently rocking, and gazing out over the garden, and the town below. At the time, I collected china dolls and now I had the space to display them. I spent hours arranging them on the chests of drawers along the far wall. This was my precious space and I was free to decorate it however I wanted without worrying about a little brother trashing my treasured possessions.

As it went dark, I loved to sit on the wide window ledge and watch the world beyond our isolated home. Far below, the lights spread as far as I could see but up on our hill, we were blanketed in complete darkness. The tree in the middle of the garden, a mere silhouette, swayed gently in the breeze. My fanciful childish nature saw it as a woman, her arms reaching up, seemingly in despair. She seemed sad, somehow. My tree lady stared up into my window, reaching out to me. By day, my tree lady also swayed gracefully in the breeze, but in the light, she was just a tree that grew beside the pond.

Being in an old house meant getting used to old house noises. Floorboards creaked, the piping in the wall clunked, the latches on the heavy wooden doors would occasionally rattle and the sounds of gentle footsteps would carry through to my room at the end of the corridor. You might think this would be scary for a child, but I found the noises of the house strangely comforting. I soon memorised every creaky floorboard between my room and the bathroom, and could dart down the corridor in silence, avoiding the noisy boards. During the day, the creaks of the floorboards signified my family, moving from room to room, and more importantly, coming down the corridor to my bedroom. I always knew where everyone was in the house. At night, when everyone was sleeping, the creaks of the floorboards took on a different feeling. It wasn’t scary, bizarrely I was more curious than terrified by the creaks of approaching footsteps. I would wait for the door to open, expecting my mum checking on me in the night, but it never did. The footsteps came down the corridor and stopped. Occasionally, I would dart across the room and fling open the door, thinking I would encounter my naughty little brother, but there was nothing, just the dark empty corridor and the faint glow of the bathroom nightlight at the end.

Looking back, it seems strange that younger me wasn’t scared, but I found the noises comforting. I had my own private space and I never felt alone. I can’t remember exactly when it started, but after a while, the noises came into my room too. I would half wake in the night, thinking I heard a child’s laughter, but as soon as I listened purposely, it stopped. This happened on a number of occasions and I rationalised it was my own imagination. I was an avid reader, loving supernatural books, so maybe I was dreaming up a ghost for my room. This seemed a logical explanation.

I got used to the nighttime laughter. It was a high-pitched giggle, more like that of a young toddler than an older child. Nothing to be scared of. I even started saying goodnight to my ghost child as I went back to sleep. Then things started to move. I didn’t notice at first as I rushed around to get ready for school in the morning, but later that day, I noticed my china dolls were in different positions and one was on the rocking chair, as if dropped in haste. Enraged, I charged into my brother’s room to tell him off for messing with my things, but he wasn’t there. Mum explained that he’d gone to a friend’s for tea straight from school – it couldn’t have been him.

The rearranging of the china dolls became a regular occurrence. Every day I put them back in place and noted their positions. Most mornings they were in different positions. Was I sleepwalking and moving them myself, I mused, or was my ghost child playing with the old dolls?

The next development involved my rocking chair. It had belonged to my great grandmother. My mum had told me the story of how she’d nursed my nana in the chair, then later, my nana had sat in it to nurse my mum, and my mum used to nurse me sat rocking in the chair. I loved the story behind it and it’s connection to the women of our family. By day, I pulled the rocking chair out slightly so it wouldn’t tap on the wall as I gently rocked, reading my books. Before bedtime, I pushed it back into the alcove, out of the way. One night, I was awoken by a faint tap tap tap from the other side of the chimney breast. It sounded like someone was rocking the chair against the wall. I listened but it stopped. Each night I had the same occurrence, something was rocking in my chair, but if I got up to look, it was still.

These strange happenings only seem strange now, looking back, but as a child they were a normal part of my life. I never spoke to anyone about it, it was my special secret. Years later, as a teenager, my parents took my brother on holiday and I volunteered to stay home and look after the menagerie of pets we’d acquired. Of course, like any normal teenager, it was an opportunity to have friends stay over. I made up the spare bed and the sofabed in my room and my friends came over.

The next day, each one of my friends moaned about how they hadn’t slept well because of the tree tapping on the window. Perplexed, I opened the curtains to show them how far away the tree was and how it couldn’t possibly be tapping on the glass. From that point onwards, I had the tapping of tree branches on the window to add to the mixture of nightly noises.

Several years later, I left to go to university, but came back in the holidays. I loved the freedom of being a student but missed my old room. It was strange sleeping in a modern build university dorm and I found the silence there unsettling. On one of my visits back home, we had a visitor. My mum opened the door to an old couple who seemed to be in their 80s. The man apologised for the intrusion and explained that he’d once lived in our house, sixty years or so ago, and he wanted to show his new wife the house he grew up in.

Mum invited them in to look round, and over a coffee, the man told tales of Hollin Hey from his time there. He spoke of the feeling of being back home and how he felt welcomed by the house. It was a strange turn of phrase, but I understood it. He explained that he’d never felt alone despite being so isolated. With some encouragement from me and Mum, his tales delved further into the past and his stories chilled me.

Many years ago, back when Hollin Hey was run as a manor farm, the servants lived in what was now my bedroom. They had a tin bath and would bathe the children in there. Water would be boiled on the range in the kitchen and carefully carried upstairs to fill the bath, then they’d return for a bucket of cold water to cool it to a suitable temperature. On one of these occasions, the toddler had wandered in and fallen in the bath of boiling water. By the time she was found, it was sadly too late. For years, her mother mourned her loss, standing out by the pond, where my tree lady now stood. The man described how she would stand there, reaching up as if to save her child.

Coffees finished, Mum asked if they wanted to look around the house. The man gratefully accepted, and as they approached my room, I noted with a smile that he avoided every creaky floorboard. “This was my room,” he explained to me. As he walked in, he went straight to the window and exclaimed, “what a shame they chopped down that laburnum tree. It drove me mad tapping on the window on windy nights, but it was such a beautiful tree.”

A few years later, after my brother and I had moved out, my parents sold Hollin Hey and moved to a smaller place. Many years later, I saw online that it had been fully renovated and modernised, and was being sold for a ridiculous sum. I often wonder if the whispers of the past still linger on there, whether the child still plays in my room, her mother still mourns at the pond, and the laburnum tree still taps on the window.

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