Borley Rectory

Borley Rectory
The east face of the rectory in 1892
General information
Type	Rectory
Architectural style	Gothic Revival
Address	Borley, Essex, England
Coordinates	52°03′17″N 0°41′39″E / 52.0546°N 0.6942°E / 52.0546; 0.6942
Completed	1862 (1862)
Demolished	1944 (1944)

Borley Rectory was a Victorian house that gained fame as "the most haunted house in England" after being described as such by Harry Price. Built in 1862 to house the rector of the parish of Borley and his family, it was badly damaged by fire in 1939 and demolished in 1944.

The large Gothic-style rectory in the village of Borley had been alleged to be haunted ever since it was built. These reports multiplied suddenly in 1929, after the Daily Mirror published an account of a visit by paranormal researcher Harry Price, who wrote two books supporting claims of paranormal activity.

The uncritical acceptance of Price's reports prompted a formal study by the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), which rejected most of the sightings as either imagined or fabricated and cast doubt on Price's credibility. His claims are now generally discredited by ghost historians. Neither the SPR's report nor the more recent biography of Price has quelled public interest in the stories, and new books and television documentaries continue to satisfy public fascination with the rectory.

A short programme commissioned by the BBC about the alleged manifestations, scheduled to be broadcast in September 1956, was cancelled owing to concerns about a possible legal action by Marianne Foyster, widow of the last rector to live in the house.

Borley Rectory was constructed on Hall Road near Borley Church by the Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull in 1862; he moved in a year after being named rector of the parish. The house replaced an earlier rectory on the site that had been destroyed by fire in 1841. It was eventually enlarged by the addition of a wing to house Bull's family of fourteen children.

The nearby church, the nave of which may date from the 12th century, serves a scattered rural community of three hamlets that make up the parish. There are several substantial farmhouses and the fragmentary remains of Borley Hall, once the seat of the Waldegrave family. Ghost hunters quote the legend of a Benedictine monastery supposedly built in this area in about 1362, according to which a monk from the monastery conducted a relationship with a nun from a nearby convent. After their affair was discovered, the monk was executed and the nun bricked up alive in the convent walls. It was confirmed in 1938 that this legend had no historical basis and seemed to have been fabricated by the rector's children to romanticise their Gothic-style red-brick rectory. The story of the walling-up of the nun may have come from Rider Haggard's novel Montezuma's Daughter (1893) or Walter Scott's epic poem "Marmion" (1808).