Lancaster Castle: Inside the Hanging Town's Last Door
0:00 / 14:35
Ten people from Pendle walked out of Lancaster Castle in August sixteen-twelve and never came back. Adam, Oz and Frank tell the story of the castle on the hill above the Lune, from Roman fort and Norman keep to Crown property, court, prison and the reputed 'hanging town' of England.
We cover the Pendle witch trials and the Samlesbury women acquitted at the same assizes, the move from Gallows Hill to Hanging Corner, the Drop Room, the branding iron in the dock, and the fact that this was a working prison until twenty-eleven.
Then come the ghost claims: cold spots, footsteps, shadow figures and that feeling of being watched. Oz and Frank argue them out properly. And tomorrow night, Saturday the third of October, Ghost Haunt UK are inside the castle themselves. Follow Ghost Haunt UK on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, where the footage will go up over the next few days.
The Grave Shift is a Ghost Haunt UK production. Hosted by Adam, Oz and Frank.
Full transcript
AdamFor centuries, if you were condemned at the Lancashire assizes, the last door you walked through was very often in one building.
AdamTen people from Pendle walked out of it in sixteen-twelve and never came back. And they weren't the last.
AdamAnd tomorrow night, we're locking ourselves inside it. This is The Grave Shift.
AdamWe're on Apple, Spotify and everywhere else you get your podcasts, so hit follow and you'll never miss a shift.
FrankDid you just say "locking ourselves inside it" like it was our idea?
AdamIt was entirely our idea, Frank. You signed the form.
FrankI signed something. I thought it was for a raffle.
OzIt had "Lancaster Castle, overnight investigation" in bold at the top.
FrankAnd a lot of small print underneath, Oz. I'm not a lawyer.
AdamRight, welcome to episode six. I'm Adam, apparently the only one who reads.
OzI'm Oz. I read. I just read instruction manuals.
FrankAnd I'm Frank, and I read the room. The room's currently terrified.
AdamSo Ghost Haunt UK, that's us, our own team, are in Lancaster Castle tomorrow night. Saturday the third of October.
OzAnd before anyone asks, nobody's sleeping. There is no sleeping rota.
FrankI'd put myself down for the Crown Court anyway. Lovely wooden benches. Proper lumbar support.
OzYou're not sleeping in a courtroom, Frank.
FrankWouldn't be my first night near a dock. Long story. Morecambe. Crazy golf.
Adam...We're not doing the crazy golf thing.
FrankWe're not. It's sub judice. Probably.
OzIt isn't. I checked. There's no record of any crazy golf incident.
FrankExactly. That's how good my solicitor was.
AdamOkay. Let's get into it, because this place has more history than one episode can hold, and I've tried.
AdamSo, Lancaster Castle sits on top of a hill right above the River Lune. And it wasn't the first thing built up there.
AdamThe Romans had a fort on that hill. The "caster" bit in Lancaster comes from the Roman camp.
OzSo the first people to use that hill for keeping folk in line were Romans.
FrankWell, soldiers. Bit different. Nobody was getting hanged by a centurion... were they?
AdamNot that we've got a record of. Let's stick to what's documented.
AdamThen the Normans arrive, and the castle itself dates back to the Norman period. The great stone keep is the old heart of it.
OzHow old is old?
AdamNorman. I'm not going to give you an exact year I can't stand behind.
OzGood. Put that on a mug.
FrankHe will as well. He's got a kiln in his garage.
OzI have not got a kiln.
AdamHere's the bit people don't know. The castle is owned by the Crown, as part of the Duchy of Lancaster.
AdamAnd the Duke of Lancaster is the monarch. So right now, the King is the Duke of Lancaster.
FrankSo tomorrow night we're basically stopping at the King's. Is he leaving a key under the mat?
OzHonestly, I'd rather he left a plug socket in the dungeon.
FrankThe King is not running you an extension lead, Oz.
AdamNow, for centuries, this was the place. Court and prison in one building. Tried in the court, held in the cells.
AdamWhich, if you think about it, is efficient in the worst possible way.
FrankLike a cinema with a hospital in the basement.
OzThat's... not what a cinema's like, Frank.
FrankYou've not been to the one I go to.
AdamThe assizes sat here. That's the travelling judges coming round to hear the serious cases from across the county.
AdamAnd serious meant serious. For a long stretch of English history, a lot of crimes carried the death penalty.
AdamOne of its prisoners was George Fox, the founder of the Quakers. Locked up here over his faith.
OzSo not just thieves and murderers. People who worshipped the wrong way.
FrankThat's the bit that gets me. You didn't have to do anything. You just had to be the wrong sort of person.
AdamWhich brings us, unavoidably, to August sixteen-twelve.
FrankHere we go. Pendle.
AdamAnd we've done their story before, so I'll keep this to what happened inside these walls.
AdamA group of people from round Pendle Hill were accused of witchcraft and brought to Lancaster for the summer assizes.
AdamBefore they ever got to court, they were held in the castle. And the woman known as Old Demdike died in there before her trial.
OzSo one of the accused never even got a verdict.
AdamNever. She died in custody, waiting.
AdamThe trial was written up by the clerk of the court, Thomas Potts. He published his account the following year.
OzWhich is the only reason we know so much. And also the reason I don't trust a word of it.
FrankCourse you don't. Man writes a book, Oz doesn't believe the book.
OzIt's the court's side, Frank. Written by the court. Under a king who'd written his own book about witches.
AdamThat's fair, actually. James the First wrote Daemonologie. The King's views on witches were no secret.
AdamAnd the star witness against her own family was Jennet Device. A child. About nine years old.
FrankNine.
AdamShe gave evidence in court against her mother, her brother and her sister.
OzYou wouldn't let a nine-year-old pick the tea. They let her send her family to the gallows.
AdamTen people were found guilty and hanged. Most likely taken out of town to the gallows on the moor.
AdamTen people. From one set of trials. In one week in August.
FrankCan we just... sit with that for a second.
AdamYeah.
AdamBut here's the strange bit. At the very same assizes, three women from Samlesbury were also accused of witchcraft.
AdamAnd they were acquitted. The case collapsed when the girl accusing them saw her story fall apart in court.
AdamThe judge concluded she'd been coached, and the women walked out free.
OzSo the same court, the same week, looked at one accusation and said "nonsense".
FrankAnd looked at the other and said "hang them". That's what keeps me up at night.
OzThat proves my point, Frank. It wasn't about witches. It was about who you were and who was telling the story.
FrankI'll give you that one. Write it down, Adam. I agreed with Oz about sixteen-twelve.
AdamNoted. Right. After Pendle, and over the centuries that followed, Lancaster earned itself a nickname.
AdamThe hanging town. Reputedly, more people were sentenced to death here than at any other assize court in England outside London.
Oz"Reputedly." I heard that.
AdamYou were meant to. I'm not standing on a number I can't prove.
FrankReputedly is just a fact wearing a hard hat.
OzIt's a fact holding a "please don't sue us" sign.
FrankSo what would they have done me for? Hypothetically.
OzIs this the crazy golf?
FrankThey used to hang people for stealing sheep. I only bent a windmill.
AdamWe are not litigating the windmill.
AdamFor a long time, executions happened up on the moor, at a place called Gallows Hill, outside the town.
AdamThen, in the early eighteen-hundreds, they moved them. Right up to the castle walls. A spot people called Hanging Corner.
OzWhy move it? Logistics?
AdamI won't claim to know every reason. But it put the gallows right where the whole town could see.
AdamAnd the town came. Public hangings at Hanging Corner drew big crowds.
FrankPeople made a day of it, didn't they?
AdamThat was common at public executions across England. I won't invent faces in that crowd, but crowds, yes. Big ones.
OzSo the castle walls were basically the terraces.
FrankWith a final whistle nobody comes back from.
AdamWhich brings us to the room I'm most nervous about. The Drop Room.
AdamIt's on the tour. As it's told there, it's tied to the condemned and their final moments before execution. That's the weight of it.
FrankMaybe one of the last rooms some of those people ever stood in.
OzWhich is where my main camera's going. Static, wide angle, running all night. Nobody touches it.
FrankNot even me?
OzEspecially you.
AdamThen there's the Crown Court, which is properly grand, and the dungeons, which are properly not.
AdamThe tour shows you an old branding iron in the dock. Convicts could be branded on the hand. The story goes it was M, for malefactor.
FrankSo they didn't just sentence you. They signed you.
OzAnd then the cells. Stone, damp, barely any light. Grim before anyone even died in them.
AdamBut here's what flipped it for me when I was reading up. You'd assume all this is ancient history.
AdamIt isn't. This was a working prison until twenty-eleven. HMP Lancaster Castle.
FrankTwenty-eleven? I had a phone with a camera on it in twenty-eleven.
AdamSo the cells we'll be sitting in tomorrow night held prisoners in living memory.
OzThat actually changes things for me. Any "atmosphere" in there isn't all centuries old. Some of it's barely more than a decade.
FrankSee! He said atmosphere!
OzIn inverted commas, Frank. I did the fingers.
FrankThis is audio. Nobody can see your fingers.
AdamSince the prison closed, the castle's run public tours. And as we understand it, the court side's still used as a court.
FrankSo we're ghost hunting in a building where someone might get sentenced on Monday. No pressure.
AdamRight. The ghost stories. And to be clear, these are reports and claims, not facts.
AdamThe most common one is cold spots in the cells. People say the temperature just drops in certain places.
OzStone cells, in Lancashire, in October. I'll be shocked if they're warm.
FrankNot cold, Oz. Cold spots. Pockets. You walk into one and out the other side.
OzWhich is why I'm bringing two thermometers and logging every reading with a timestamp.
AdamThen there's footsteps. People claim to hear footsteps in the cell corridors when nobody else is there.
OzOld building, pipes, settling stone, other people in the castle. Footsteps aren't rare. Footsteps with nobody making them are.
AdamAnd in the Drop Room, the claim is a feeling. A sense of being watched.
FrankThat's the one I believe before I've even got there. You know what that room is.
OzThat's exactly my problem. You know what that room is, so of course you feel watched.
AdamThere are also reports of shadow figures. Dark shapes seen moving at the edge of people's vision.
OzThe edge of your vision is where your eyes are worst. That's not me being rude, that's biology.
FrankIt's a bit rude.
AdamAnd then there are the witches' cell stories. People claim a particular part of the castle held the Pendle accused, and say it feels heavy.
AdamThat's tradition. I'm not pointing at one cell and saying "it was definitely this one".
FrankRight, my turn. Oz, you've got an answer for every one of those. But they all come from the same building.
FrankCold spots, footsteps, being watched, shadows. Different people, different years, all pointing at the same rooms.
OzBecause they've been told which rooms. A guide says "this is the Drop Room" and your brain does the rest.
FrankAnd if prison staff or inmates ever reported anything? Nobody would've given them a ghost script.
OzHave you got a name? A documented account?
Frank...Not one I can put on air.
OzThen it's a good point with nothing holding it up. I'll take it seriously the day it's got a name on it.
FrankExplain this, then. Why do you want to go so badly?
OzBecause I want to be the one who finds out. Properly. With data.
FrankThat's a believer's answer in a lab coat.
Oz...That's quite good, actually.
AdamFor me it's this. Whatever's in those walls, the suffering was real. Ten from Pendle. Everyone who came after them at Hanging Corner.
AdamIf a place could hold onto anything, it'd be this one. And if it can't, the history is still the history.
AdamVerdicts. Frank, you first.
FrankI think something's there. Not monsters. People who never got a fair hearing. If anyone's still in those cells, I want to listen.
AdamOz?
OzEvery claim I've heard has an ordinary explanation. But I've not stood in the Drop Room at three in the morning yet. Ask me Sunday.
FrankAsk him Sunday! He's wobbling!
OzI'm not wobbling. I'm calibrating.
AdamI'm in the middle. On history alone, this is the most important building we've ever walked into. Tomorrow we find out if that's all it is.
OzSo, the plan. Static camera in the Drop Room, recorders in the dungeons, thermometers in the cells, and a full written log.
FrankAnd I'm doing a session in the cells. Lights off, just talking to whoever was kept there. Respectfully.
AdamRespectfully's the word. These were real people. We go in with manners.
FrankAnd if anyone in the cells asks what I'm in for...
OzDon't.
Frank...crazy golf.
OzWe're never finding out what happened to that windmill, are we?
FrankNobody will, Oz. Not even the windmill.
AdamRight, the important bit. We'll go through all the video footage from tomorrow night and post it over the next few days on Ghost Haunt UK's Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.
AdamSo follow us on all three. Whatever happens in there, or doesn't, you'll see it.
AdamThis has been The Grave Shift. I'm Adam.
FrankI'm Frank. If you hear whispering on the footage, that's me being respectful.
OzI'm Oz. If you hear footsteps on the footage, check where Frank was first.
AdamTomorrow night the doors close behind us in the hanging town. Let's hope they open again in the morning.
AdamYou can listen to this episode and every other episode of The Grave Shift on all major podcast providers -- link's in the description below.
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