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‘I wish I’d known about the Cardinal spider before I wrote my story,’ says my 13-year-old daughter, Eleanor.
Eleanor loves indie music, Hitchcock films and history. A budding Lucy Worsley, she looks at the arachnid specimen in the box being handed around. The cardinal spider is the largest of its kind, native to the UK. It got its name because Cardinal Wolsey, who built Hampton Court Palace, hated the eight-legged beasties, which would lurk in corners and fall on heads unexpectedly. Eleanor reckons it would have been perfect in her English homework murder mystery (Jane Seymour, by the head cook, with the stew).
We’re standing in the kitchens at Hampton Court Palace on a winter night with a small gathering of under-10s, parents and a couple of grandparents, on a Family Ghost Tour. Some of our fellow visitors are also Tudor trainspotters, others are tourists who have visited the Palace on a day trip and are extending that with this brilliant evening tour, many of the kids are just up for a few thrills and the excuse to squeal loudly in the darkness. Everyone laps up the spider stories and peers into the dark rafters tentatively.
Throughout the winter months each year – when the nights get dark earlier – those with a ghoulish curiosity or simply with a wish to explore one of the world’s most famous royal residences without the crowds can join Hampton Court Palace ghost tours. These are suitable for over-15s, but for a handful of tours each season, families with children aged eight and over can get a piece of the apparition action.
The tour begins as the huge gates clank shut behind us and we stand in the darkness in Base Court. From here, we move from rooms to courtyards to cellars and colonnades, hearing stories of spectral visions that have been spotted around the Palace for centuries. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the atmosphere is hair-raising, and each story offers us another lesser-known episode in history.
Lit only with a few lanterns, we look up at the dim, orangey glow in distant windows and wonder what we’d do if we suddenly saw a face appear there. The younger ones in our crowd are fascinated. This isn’t a runaround for kids, but the stories and pace keep us gripped on a tour that lasts about 75 to 90 minutes.
Having done the adult tour too, I’m impressed how much of this tour is different but also pulls only a few of its punches. And Eleanor seems delighted to hear that the ghost of Jane Seymour herself is reported often to float down the staircase from the room in which she died. Perhaps Henry VIII’s third wife didn’t die from childbirth complications after all. Eleanor seems pretty sure she’s off to get revenge on that cook…