Sazz26 once said she’d made an ‘interpretation’ of it in the present tense:
BrymRune once suggested spookily minded Simmers have a convention at it:
Neither had exactly done their homework that well.
Borley Rectory ceased to exist in April 1944, subject to a compulsory demolition order after… ah, but that’s another story.
Dry your tears however, for thanks to Fergus’ Mind over at Mod The Sims, you can download what he claims to be a replica for your game – World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, Supernatural and University Life are required.
We decided it was time to do some investigating:
At first glance we weren’t hopeful. The windows were completely wrong – the two top right windows could have been replaced by the base game Were Windows for starters – and the glass cover on the front was instead done as a mini roof. We think LunaSims may have something this can be replicated with (and probably has the correct windows as well knowing her – is there anything she hasn’t made?).
Also the cost for Borley Rectory furnished is §320 257 – not §310 428 as Fergus’ Mind claimed.
But we decided to give it the once over and see how it measured up anyway.
First of all, the acid test – how much does it resemble the architecture of the original?
Full marks to Fergus’ Mind here, for it is a perfect match both up and downstairs (take our word for it the top floor’s also perfect).
He even managed to sneak in the back garden greenhouse attached to the side of the rectory and the covered passage leading to the storage areas, although he’s designated those with a different purpose in mind.
The celler is the only part he’s taken some artistic liberties with, but more about that later. Let’s take a look inside.
‘Hold your horses, Mares!’
Oh plumbob, what do you want, Lauryl?
‘You can’t simply do shots around the plot and pass that up as a review. This isn’t any old house, or any old build. This is Borley Rectory, dammit – a great piece of 20th century English history. Show it some respect – and have some sympathy for your audience!’
What the quacking duck are you on about?
‘You’ve got to show them why Borley Rectory mattered. It only existed for eighty two years, yet it remains one of the most written about and debated buildings to this day. A rambling old neo-Gothic red brick rectory, in a tiny hamlet. It was more than merely a haunted house – it was the haunted house, and it has more plot twists and intrigue in its history than stately homes and castles hundreds of years older. It was more than a house, it’s a legend in its own right.’
Okay, okay, Ms Fandork, we get the picture. We’ll tell the story, and you wander around exploring it so we can get some screenshots in to let Simmers see what it looks like. Deal?
‘***Ulp!*** Go in… in there? Borley Rectory? The most haunted house in England?’
Pull yourself together, you cowardy custard. It’s only a copy, remember? Anyway, it wasn’t anywhere near the most haunted – but that’s getting ahead of ourselves. You get exploring – we’ll get telling.
Borley Rectory was once upon a time regarded as Britain’s most haunted house, and remains the model upon which all stereotypical ‘haunted houses’ – both in fact, hoax and fiction – have been built around ever since.
The new rectory – whose grounds included a splendid orchard – was built in 1862 to house the vicar of the parish of Borley (which consisted of the hamlet of Borley where it was built and nearby Borley Green – corresponding to what had been the old estate lands of Borley Hall, the seat of the Waldergrave noble family). It was built on the site of a previous rectory which had been destroyed by fire in 1841, but it had to be extended within a year of the Bull family moving in to accommodate their fourteen children (!).
‘So that’s why it has so many bedrooms! I thought it was being leased out as student accommodation.’
It would certainly make for a good addition to a University Life type campus as a hall of residence, but let’s get back to the story.
There was a local legend of a 14th century Benedictine monk attempting to elope with a nun from their local respective monastic communities (both under the patronage of the Waldergraves). The legend said they were captured by Waldergrave’s men – their punishment being the monk was beheaded and the nun bricked up alive in the convent walls. However this is one of the first hurdles of the stories surrounding Borley there’s a trip upon: that story is lifted straight from Walter Scott’s 1808 epic poem Marmion, which like all of Scott’s works was very popular in Victorian times when Borley Rectory was built.
‘How apt! That was the poem which introduced the phrase Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive! ‘
Show off! The new vicar – Henry Bull – and his family however claimed a nun appeared to glide along the same stretch of the garden frequently (disappearing when approached) to the extent it became known as the Nun’s Walk. His children in turn were to claim to see the same. They built a gazebo so they could watch her on the other side of the grounds.
We found the gazebo appears to have routing issues. Lauryl got stuck the moment she was inside, and we had to use reset to get her out. We think it could be the position of the bench inside on the north east wall, so move or remove this if you download it.
This could have been an optical illusion caused by clouds of midges from the thick trees surrounding Borley Rectory following the course of an underground stream which passed through the property (strange as it may sound, midges will do this) and which provided the water for the property’s well.
Henry Bull was to die of syphilis in 1892 after a long illness, which can bring on hallucinations in its later stages, making some of his claims about supernatural phenomenom suspect. Locals however had also complained about unexplained footsteps within the house and outside the rectory, and occasionally having to dive for cover to avoid a phantom coach driven hell for leather by a headless horseman when passing the Rectory at night.
The footsteps could easily have been the creaks and groans of any new building ‘settling’ into its foundations – the coach was harder to explain.
After Bull’s death the reports grew less, and the new vicar – Bull’s son – took over, adding to the property parts such as the greenhouse you can see above.
But upon the arrival of the third vicar in 1928 – Reverend Guy Eric Smith and his wife – servant bells began ringing despite being long disconnected, lights appeared in windows and the unexplained footsteps returned. In addition, Mrs Smith believed she saw the horse drawn carriage passing by – same as the locals had long claimed – and long since horse drawn vehicles had passed out of use even in rural Essex.
In exasperation – and in a move they were soon to regret – the couple contacted the Daily Mirror newspaper in June 1928 (bang on time for the start of the so-called ‘silly season’ when British newspapers will print all manner of rubbish because Parliament is on holiday and it is harder to find current affairs stories) asking them to contact the Society for Psychical Research on their behalf.
The Mirror instead send Harry Price – at that time Britain’s most famous psychic phenomena researcher – and shortly after the Daily Mirror began printing Price’s sensational accounts of unparalleled activity: stones were thrown and other objects too – even a vase. ‘Spirit messages’ were tapped out from behind a mirror.
However, the long running Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was suspicious of Price, a former member that had left to start his own National Laboratory For Psychical Research. He’d previously been a showbiz magician whose knowledge of the tricks of the trade in ‘the Magic Circle’ had helped the SPR debunk a number of hoaxers, but now they wondered had this all been merely the groundwork towards becoming a hoaxer himself using his past credentials as protective cover. Sure enough, as soon as Harry Price left Borley Rectory, the outbreak of chaos ceased.
As well as indoor harvestibles – including a Death Flower bush – there is an alchemy centre and a Gem Cutter. There is a gem spawner site on the back lawn, so this is useful.
But the damage was done, and besieged by journalists daily, the Smiths left Borley on 14 July 1929 – the Church of England finding itself lumbered with a parish no one in the entire Anglican communion wanted to touch with a ten foot barge pole.
It took them over a year to find someone who would, but this was destined only to make matters worse. The Reverend Lionel Algernon Foyster – a first cousin of the Bulls – and his wife Marianne moved into the rectory with their adopted daughter Adelaide and a lodger Frank Peerless (aka Frank Lawless), on 16 October 1930.
Almost from the start the bell-ringing and thrown objects started again, but now matters took a more sinister turn. Windows were broken, writing appeared on walls asking ‘Marianne please get help’, and their daughter was assaulted and locked in a room they had no key to by an invisible assailant. Marianne Foyster claimed to have been reported thrown from her bed while trying to sleep off a headache. Two futile exorcisms saw the Rev Foyster pelted with stones. Price once again reappeared on the scenes and became convinced that Marianne was acting as a focus for the phenomena.
What wasn’t known at the time was other psychic investigators besides Price had visited and were investigating matters, and all were became convinced that the main cause of the phenomena was Foyster’s attractive and sexually frustrated young wife (she was twenty one years his junior) trying to get her fuddy duddy hubby to quit this boring parish in the sticks for a more exciting placement in London or its suburbs. Unfortunately the laws of libel in those days meant without damning corroborated proof, they could say nothing – even after a Daily Mail journalist caught Price out with a pocket full of stones seconds after being stuck by one.
Marianne Foyster later claimed after Lionel’s death that she felt that some of the phenomena were caused by her husband in concert with one of the psychic researchers (his motive being trying to frighten her into less ‘worldliness’), but other events were genuine paranormal phenomena.
A BBC programme scheduled to be broadcast in September 1956 was cancelled when Marianne Foyster threatened to sue because it suggested she’d been behind much of the goings-on. They also were about to reveal a new twist – the Foysters’ previous address had been in Sackville, Nova Scotia, five miles from the location of the so-called ‘Great Amherst Mystery’ where a girl called Esther Cox was the focus of violent poltergeist activity identical in actions to that which later occured at Borley – including attempted arson. They were also related.
Fergus wasn’t too impressed, but he’s done the rooms in Borley Rectory pretty much justice without going over the top. It really does feel like going into a home trapped in time.
However, after Marianne Foyster’s death came out a written confession that she’d faked much of the phenomena to cover up shagging the lodger – which came as no surprise to those involved with the SPR, as she’d attempted to ‘hit on’ several of their researchers, no doubt in the hope of getting them ‘on side’, and there was rumours she’d had more success with Price – who in his forties saw this probably as a bonus to how he was intending to profit from Borley anyway.
The Foysters left Borley in October 1935 as a result of Lionel’s ill health. The property lay abandoned until the Church of England allowed Price in May 1937 to take out a year-long rental agreement.
Price advertised in The Times on 25 May 1937 for “observers” to watch over the property and report any phenomena that occurred. The calibre of most of Price’s observers were dubious: many were students from London or Cambridge for whom spending a long weekend at an alleged haunted house made for jolly japes (and a great place for either a study retreat or a riotious house party if assured it would only be trusted friends on duty at the time).
Nevertheless, some phenomena was recorded, largely similar to that of the Bulls.
Speaking of phenomena, it appears Lauryl that the Borley Rectory you’re in is haunted too! Look!
Spooky shadow footsteps walking through the building!
‘It’s me, you bumnuggets!’
Lauryl? Oi, stop messing about with the magic tricks!
‘Don’t blame me – I’m not Harry Price! That Fergus’ Mind has made a pig’s breakfast of the routing down to the celler by that stairwell you can see to my right, that’s why this is happening.’
Oh yeah?
‘If you go down the stairs, the moment you turn to the left, you vanish and become those footprints walking along corridors invisibly, although if you were routed to go smash up the rock piles, they start being smashed with no one there.’
Somehow we don’t think that was intended. Twice the game reset Lauryl automatically because she was unroutable (three cheers for NRaas again!).
Fergus has taken some artistic licence to the celler – and it’s this one deviation from reality that’s come back to haunt him. It appears that the tomb section of Borley Rectory is more than a touch bugged. The only way we could get Lauryl down and back up again safely to smash those rocks was by using the MakeObject On cheat. If she walked up the stairs, she would appear to be okay, but again the game soon stated she wasn’t routing and had to reset her again.
Let’s get back to the Borley Rectory story for a bit, eh?
In March 1938 there came a new plot twist. Helen Glanville (the daughter of S. J. Glanville, one of Price’s chief acolytes) made contact with two spirits connected with Borley Rectory in her home in Streatham, London: the first of which was a young French nun called Marie Lairre, who claimed to have left her religious order to marry a member of the Waldegrave family at Borley Hall, only to be murdered and her body either buried in the cellar of the former rectory which burned down or thrown into a disused well. The wall writings were now alleged to be her pleas for help. The implication from this was Marie Lairre had targetted Marianne Foyster because she saw a kindred spirit (excuse the pun) in someone who also thought themselves ‘trapped’ at Borley (although others by now knew that wall writings asking for help dovetailed with events during the Great Amherst Mystery…).
The second spirit called itself Sunex Amures and claimed (falsely) that it would set fire to the rectory at nine o’clock that night 27 March 1938 and that the bones of a murdered person would be revealed.
After this hit the news (perhaps suspecting the worst), the Church of England refused to let Price and his followers have an extension on the lease when it came up for renewal that May. Again however the property lay abandoned because no vicar would touch it. Finally the Church of England caved in and sold it outright to the respectible sounding Captain W H Gregson, whose father had been a vicar in Rusland.
However William Hart Gregson was no chip off the old block. In 1923 he’d escaped jail for fraudulent entries into the Land Registry on a technicality, and in Maldon (where the original TV version of The Woman In Black was filmed) he was prosecuted as a slum landlord and forced to make four of his properties ‘fit for human habitation.’
Ironically, when he later took over Borley he had become heavily involved in Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and National Socialists: whose major focus for recruitment campaigns in London’s East End at that time were organising ‘rent strikes’ and promoting prosecutions against… slum landlords!
It also turned out Gregson was an associate of Harry Price, and no sooner had he taken the keys than Price was invited back and plans were made by Gregson for turning Borley into a tourist attraction running coach tours from London and the environs during weekends, Bank Holidays, the summer season and especially Halloween.
However on 27 February 1939, there was a disastrous fire caused by a fallen oil lamp on a stairwell packed with books. After investigating the cause of the blaze the insurance company concluded that the fire had been started deliberately – the property having been insured the month before to four times its real value after his coach tour plans had fallen through. Furthermore, the high piles of books placed on the staircase ensured the fire shot upstairs within minutes of starting, rendering the situation hopeless within minutes so far away from the nearest fire station over in Long Melford.
The grave hidden under the rock pile is for a Sister Mary Helena – not Marie Lairre. Leaving it on the lawn outside, no ghost rose from it, which was a bit of a let down.
In August 1943 Harry Price conducted a brief dig in the cellars of the ruined house and discovered a human jawbone thought to be of a young woman. He asked for them to be given a Christian burial in Borley Church across the road from the Rectory, in the hope of laying the ghost.
However this was refused, as locals and the Church of England suspected Price had planted the bone there himself during his tenancy to tie in to the Marie Lairre story and give matters a nice rounded ending for his forthcoming book ‘The End Of Borley Rectory’. Instead it was buried in Liston churchyard.
Once again with Borley Rectory however, there was another twist. During the disastrous fire, figures were seen walking through the flames and gathering outside to one side from the human spectators, watching silently as their old haunt burned to the ground for a time before fading away. The nearby Borley Cottage and Coach House found itself being visited by some of the ghostly cats that had appeared in the rectory (there was a large pet cemetery in the grounds).
Finally in April 1944, Borley Rectory was subject to a compulsory demolition order. The reason was not due to any danger the building may have posed to anyone foolish enough to venture into it, but after a mysterious series of lights began appearing at night breaking the blackout restrictions.
At this time, the Luftwaffe was making its final throw of the dice during World War Two with the ‘Steinbock’ raids using its three most modern bombers – the Heinkel 117 ‘Griffon’, the Dornier 217 ‘Flying Pencil’ and the Junkers 188 ‘Racher’. But most of the crews used were highly inexperienced, had only been trained to fly on far less sophisticated machines, and the ‘Griffon’ was already a notorious death trap (its engines would literally blow up without warning).
The result was too many crews – especially in planes that had got lost from their flight – would dump their bombs over the first excuse for a target and head for home, and someone at night in East Anglia so much as showing a hand torch visible from the skies after dark even for a moment risked not merely their own life but that of anyone within a five mile radius if spotted by a passing flight. Some fens were even bombed when marsh gases naturally combusted.
With the very real risk of Borley hamlet being blown off the map by passing bombers who would claim back at base they thought they’d been over the nearby RAF/USAAF Sudbury aerodrome instead (and some suspecting it may have been fifth columnist work by some of Captain Gregson’s blackshirt friends that hadn’t become 18B detainees), the Rectory was completely dismantled. Price died in 1948, and with the threat of libel suits removed, out came a litany of claims that he’d faked phenomena in order to sell books that raged on until the 1978 publication of ‘The Search For Harry Price’ damned him as a serial charletan and a fraudster who abandoned objectivity in the search for fame and an obsession with entering Who’s Who.
This is meant to reveal a ladder leading down into a large tomb area, but you can only access it via Build mode. It too is glitched and inaccessible.
With this, attention turned again to Borley, and the long forgotten (but now completely fed up) locals now reported that the coach may have gone, but the footsteps, knockings, lights – and ghosts – had decanted from the Rectory site to the church across the road, thirty years earlier.
To this day, ghost hunters are not welcome in Borley, and the police have even manned a road block on each side of the only road through Borley on Halloween to ensure the locals – both alive and dead – are left in peace.
So Lauryl, that’s the story of Borley Rectory – a tale of mystery and also the very worst aspects of human nature. But what about this Borley Rectory? Careful with that fire now!
‘Fergus has done a fantastic job – no doubt about that. It’s only the celler that let’s matters down – I would clear that all out and replace it with an ordinary basement.
‘Simmers may find themselves tempted to bash in a few walls to create larger rooms – what would probably have happened in the real Borley Rectory had it survived to this day. There’s lots of small storage type rooms that in today’s world would have been redundant – remember Borley Rectory never had electricity or plumbing, and was obliged to keep large stores of wood and coal.
‘It would be keeping with the property’s history to have plenty of fruit trees – and find space somewhere for a Nectar Machine.
‘Borley Rectory is a wonderful example of a late Victorian to early twentieth century style rambling English rural home, and it could so easily be adapted to use for all manner of community lots too. Get rid of the tomb, and you’ve got a real winner.’
Glad you approve. Back to Lost Island now?
‘Meh, Elysia says she’ll pick me up later, so I’ll just watch some telly while waiting. It’s not as if there’s anything that going to go bump in the night around here…’
‘Good evening, and welcome to the late night horror special. By the way, have you noticed that this television set is not plugged in?’
‘MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARES!’