D:18th Century
L:Holinwood, Greater Manchester
S:Keith Poole

In the eighteenth century a certain Miss Beswick lived in the manor house at Birchen Bower, Holinwood, now a part of Greater Manchester. At the time her house was surrounded by woods and fields and her estates included Rose Hill and Cheetwood. Most of the manor house was demolished after her death. She seems to have been a rather eccentric woman and farmed her own land until she became too old to do so.
When Miss Beswick received the news of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 she believed that the Scottish Army, with Prince Charles at it's head, would sweep through England claiming the fortunes of the landowners. Like so many wealthy landowners she hid as many of her own treasures as she could around her estates in locations known only to herself. And although the Jacobite rebellion did not reach her lands she did not disturb her hidden treasures.
Later in her life she was to receive a shock which profoundly affected her, or so it would seem from the provisions she made in her will. She believed that her brother had died, indeed so did the doctor who had certified him dead. But as she looked down into the coffin as the lid was being screwed down, she suddenly saw that he was showing signs of life; the undertaker was stopped and her brother returned to his bed where he lay in a coma for some days until he recovered to live for many years. As Keith Poole relates in his book Britain's Haunted Heritage, Miss Beswick was clearly not very taken by the idea of being buried alive. She drew up a will leaving her estates to her family doctor, Dr White, and his descendants on the condition that after death her body was always to be kept above ground. To add to the strangeness of her will, it was also stipulated that every twenty one years her body should be returned to Birchen Bower for a whole week.
When she died around 1768, Dr White made the arrangements to have her body shrouded in bandages, leaving only the face exposed, then embalmed in tar. The corpse was presented to the Natural History Museum and indeed was on the show in Manchester Museum for a century. As reported in the Manchester Guardian on 22nd July 1868 they apparently decided enough was enough, the commissioners of the Manchester Natural History Society 'deeming the specimen undesirable' and she was at last laid to rest in Harpurhey Cemetery.
According to local villagers, Miss Beswick's wish for her body to be returned to Birchen Bower every 21 years was also carried out; it had been there five times, and had always been placed in the granary of the old farmstead.
After Miss Beswick's death, her ghost was seen by many villagers. While the manor house remained it was divided into separate dwellings and she was seen by people as they were having supper. Her appearance would be preceded by the rustling of her silk dress; she would then be seen in black gliding through the kitchen. In the kitchen the apparition disappeared, always at the same flagstone.
The apparition was seen as late as 1920, at that time next to a stone well near the stone cottage into which she had moved after she had become too infirm to live at the manor itself. A villager going to draw water saw a lady standing there and said she saw an apparition dressed in black silk and wearing the same white cap with frilled edge that she had worn while alive. She was apparently standing in a hostile, even threatening attitude.
There were also reports that on many occasions the barn glowed as if there was a fire inside, light appearing through the cracks in it's structure. It also gave off unearthly noises and few people would go near it. Whenever the barn was searched after such an occurrence there were no signs of charred wood anywhere. The story goes that the barn is the hiding place of the bulk of Miss Beswick's treasure. although one local man, Joe, did find a box of gold wedges which kept him in relative prosperity, it is believed that the bulk of the treasure has never been located.

14-05-05.

Hello rhyknow.


I just read the Embalmed in Tar, Post. Don't know how old it is as there's no date, but all the same what a read. creepy to say the least, it to, would make a good movie.

If you mean when it was posted, I just posted it today

LOL Great story, and WOW!!

I missed this when it was first posted, what a great story. I can understand her not wanting her face covered, so if she was alive she could alert someone and I can understand her not wanting to be buried and kept above ground, but I wonder why she wanted to be returned every 21 years?

Thanks Rhyknow.

Interesting read. One day I would like to travil as many historic sites in the British Isles as my money will allow. (looks like this poor college student will be hitchhiking )

The woman's fear of being buried alive is understandable. In the times before modern medical practices, it wasn't uncommon for people to pronounced dead before they actually were. Coffin builders actually developed a coffin that had a bell on it for the buried individual to ring if the happened to wake up. People were hired to watch the cemetaries and listen for bells just in case. Look here for more information on being buried alive. It was real.

Yes you're right being buried alive was real, I recently watched a programme called the Victorian way of death and it dealt with being buried alive, and it was a real concern.

I just found this.

The stories and alleged incidents of premature burial fueled the public’s imagination and created both scandalous and spine-tingling reading. In 1849, a severe cholera epidemic killed 199 people. An old woman, who was in charge of the cholera wards, stated that as soon as patients died, they were placed into wooden coffins and the lids screwed down. They were then moved outside into a small shed so that they would be out of the way.

“Sometimes”, she coldly told authors William Tebb and Edward Vollum, “they’d come to afterwards and we did hear them kicking in their coffins, but we never unscrewed them, because we knew they had to die”.

Source: http://www.prairieghosts.com/grave_horror.html