Myths and Tales

A rumour which has circulated in Whaley Bridge recently that the vault at Errwood Hall, in which members of the well known Grimshaw family are buried, had been broken into by vandals, was denied this week by Mr Oyarzibel, of the Stockport Corporation Waterworks, who is in charge of the Goyt Reservoir estate on which Errwood Hall stands.

“I wish to state quite emphatically,” he told a “High Peak News” reporter, “that the vault is undisturbed, and unlikely to be entered either by vandalistic hikers or by over-enterprising schoolboys. The vault was bricked up and sealed, at the request of the Grimshaws, and it would be impossible to penetrate it in any way without a great deal of demolition work being done. This would be out of the question, as a member of the waterworks staff patrols the area continually.”

The rumour arose, apparently, because a group of local people who were in the vicinity of the Hall recently noticed that the porch above the vault had had its roof broken in, making a hole, in the words of one of them, “big enough to put a bullock through.” This, it was assumed, opened directly to the vault.

In actual fact the mortuary chapel is situated between the chapel proper and the vault, and between the mortuary chapel and the vault is the stone and cement floor of the chapel, built over a concrete floor, which stands over the oak-raftered ceiling of the vault.

Mr Oyarzibel took the opportunity of denying the stories that the bodies of the Grimshaws in the vault are embalmed in glass-topped coffins, and that the corpses still wear the gold watch chains, and so forth, which they wore when they were alive. The bodies, he says, are not embalmed, but are buried in coffins of shell, lead and oak. And the coffins contain no valuables.

He is in a position to know, for as the last remaining member of the Grimshaw household he saw the coffins laid in the vault and himself helped to seal the vault when the Goyt Valley was acquired by the Stockport Corporation for flooding.

Nevertheless, there has for some time been evidence of unnecessary vandalism and interference at the Hall on the part of hikers and schoolboys. The chapel has been entered, and many windows of the hall have been broken. The graveyard round the chapel, where members of the household were buried, has been trampled on and crosses over the graves have been overturned. The railings round the graveyard have been pulled down.

It is likely that in the near future Stockport Corporation may make new arrangements for preventing this kind of thing from going on.

Macclesfield Courier

30 January 1847.

Burglary.

Information has been received at the County Police Office in this town of a desperate burglary, in which one of the burglars was killed, and to have taken place on Wednesday night at Errwood House, near Buxton, the seat of Samuel Grimshaw Esq. The family are absent at Southport, and the house is left in charge of servants.

On Wednesday night, it is said, a gang of burglars broke in and seriously ill treated the servants, but while they were engaged in ransacking the house, the gamekeeper came up, and fired amongst them, killing one of the party on the spot; the rest made their escape.

Macclesfield Courier.

6 February 1847.

Alleged burglary at Errwood Hall.

On the authority of the Superintendent of the County Police in this town, we gave currency last week to a rumour which prevailed of a man having been shot in an attempted burglary at Errwood Hall.

We have since ascertained from the same source that there was not one word of truth in the rumo