The Boy Ghost of Bowood

TALK: Nine year old William Granville Petty, son of the earl of Shelburne, sadly unexpectedly died at Bowood House near Calne in Wiltshire in January 1778 following a short illness.

Historical research is used to uncover a series of extraordinary happenings that can only be described as “supernatural”. It poses unsettling questions within an apparent “Age of Reason” and “Enlightenment”.

The boy William had apparently run out to meet his doctor after he had died. Dr Christopher Allsup witnessed the visitation and swore to his dying day it was real. He related it in his death bed confession to the Reverend Joseph Townsend, rector of St John the Baptist Pewsey. Allsup later had the White Horse cut on Cherhill Down: no-one knows why.

William had apparently foreseen his funeral procession in a dream which he related to his tutor, Dr Joseph Priestley. Priestley was tutor to William and his brother John, companion to the earl of Shelburne and had discovered oxygen in his laboratory at Bowood 3½ years previously.

The story of the visitation and the uncanny dream was published in the reputable journal, “The Kaleidoscope: or, Literary and Scientific Mirror”. It re-appeared in the autobiography of the anti-slavery campaigner, Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, who heard the story from her mother who knew Joseph Priestley’s wife Mary.

SPEAKER: Nick Baxter MA lectures widely on local history subjects and leads guided walks. For the past three years he has tutored on Discovering Marlborough’s History for Marlborough College Summer School.