Victoria Smurfitt, who plays Maud O’Hara in Rivals said there are spooks at Chavenage House in Gloucestershire, and you can feel their presence on set
Rivals has been filmed in locations across the UK, including a small Cotswolds town(Image: Disney)
Rivals star Victoria Smurfitt has said things go bump in the night in the bonkbuster – because of ghosts. She said there are spooks at Chavenage House in Gloucestershire and you can feel their presence on set.
Victoria stars as Maud O’Hara in the hit series, and the 500-year-old Elizabethan Manor doubles as The Priory, the home her character shares with husband Declan, played by fellow Irish actor Aidan Turner.
She revealed: “It’s extraordinary. It has one of the most haunted rooms in England and you feel it when you go in.
“We use the room underneath for Declan’s office and sometimes communications won’t work there.”
The 2,000-acre Cotswold estate was inherited by James Lowsley-Williams, having been in his family for six generations, and its rich history includes a claim that executed King Charles I haunts the grounds.
It is said to be linked to previous owner Nathaniel Stephens, who was a Knight of the Shire in Parliament and Lord of the Manor during the Civil War (1641-45).
On their website it states he “raised a regiment of horse of which he was Colonel and fought on the side of Parliament against Charles I” and when the King was imprisoned Oliver Cromwell wanted him “executed in order to stop any form of Royalist uprisings” which Stephens reluctantly agreed to.
It adds: “Shortly after his daughter Abigail returned from having passed the New Year elsewhere, she, in a fit of horror and anger, laid a curse on her father for bringing the name Stephens into such disrepute.
“The story goes that the Colonel was soon taken terminally ill and never rose from his bed again.
“When the Lord of the Manor died and all were assembled for his funeral, a hearse drew up at the door of the manor house driven by a headless man.
“The Colonel was seen to rise from his coffin and enter the hearse after a profound reverence to the headless personage, who as he drove away assumed the shape of the martyr King, Charles I – this being regarded as retribution for the Colonel’s disloyalty to the King.
“Thereafter until the line became extinct, whenever the head of the family died, the same ghost of the King appeared to carry him off.”
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