LOCKED ROOM MYSTERY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3279, 26 July 1911, Page 7

LOCKED ROOM MYSTERY.

NEVER OPENED EVEN WHEN MANSION WAS LET TO TENANT,

The death of “Squire” Thomas Green, of the Old Hall, Poulton-Lan-celyn, Cheshire, whose family have been in possession of the estate since a period prior to the Norman Conquest, recalls an eerie tradition of the old mansion.

There is in Poulton Old Hall a mysterious locked room which has never been opened except by a representative of the Green family.

The hall and its lands have sometimes been let, but the Green family have always retained possession of this mysterious room, which is supposed to contain several relics and other family treasures.

It .is said that the last tenant, a prominent Mersey shipowner, would have given them an increased rent for it if Tie could have had access to • this room or could have cleared away the mysterious contents, but the owners refused to give up possession, and so the tenant left.

This tradition is not unlike a similar story which attaches to Glamis Castle, the old home of. the Earls of Strathmore. In this rambling old pile there is supposed to be a secret chamber,' access to which, the story goes, is known only to the Earl of Strathmore, the heir-apparent, and the factor. That mysterious chamber is supposed to have been, centuries ago, the repository of a grim family scandal, the nature of which could only be whispered even in those wild days.