With some of our School’s buildings dating back to the 12th century, it’s hardly surprising that over the years tales of the supernatural have been associated with some of them.
‘Through these clamorous cloisters
Silent forms have strayed;
Dark-cowled Benedictines
Haunt the pillared shade.’
These lines from ‘Fair and Grey and Ancient’, one of the Songs of Sherborne School written in 1881 by James Rhoades (housemaster of Abbeylands 1880-92), refer to the area that is now the library undercroft.
Dating from the 12th century, the undercroft was originally used by the monks as the cellars for storage. It is therefore not surprising that over the years people have claimed to have felt the presence of phantom monks in this area, although Arthur Scott who was School Custos from 1910 to 1938 said that in all his nightly patrols of the School ‘he never met anyone there worse than himself.’
Sightings of a phantom monk in the Upper Library date back to the 19th century and feature in Courtney M. Block’s new book, Inside the World’s Haunted Libraries (Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited: New York, 2026).
In the 1870s, George Hamley Bent (Abbey House 1874-77) was working alone one night in the Upper Library when he saw the ghost of a Benedictine monk in the south-east corner of the library next to the bricked-up doorway that originally led to the Abbot’s private chapel. Accompanying stories of the library ghost are tales of poltergeist activities with random books being thrown off the bookshelves. At the turn of the 20th century Alec Trelawny-Ross (School House 1899-1905) witnessed a schoolfriend turn white as a sheet in the Upper Library when a book was mysteriously thrown at him and, in more recent times, a cleaner working in the library reported that when she turned her back a book suddenly came crashing down right behind her. The library ghost may also be the same phantom monk seen descending from the back of the library and crossing the Fifth Form Green to the English block.
The Courts have also been associated with ghostly apparitions. A woman claimed that the Courts ‘bristled’ with the presence of phantom monks and that she was afraid to cross them alone at night, while someone else working late at night in the BSR swears to have heard the singing of monks and at another time the sound of a coach and horses galloping across the Courts.
The graveled area between the private side of School House and the Abbey was the site of the monks’ graveyard, which may account for ghostly activities in this area. At 8 am on a Sunday morning in the 1960s a woman heading from School House to Church Lane under the arch which joins the OSR to the Abbey saw ‘this thing come across the grass’. She described it as wearing a brown habit with a ‘long pointed hood’, being rather small, ‘hunched up’ and in a ‘terrible hurry’ and that it disappeared through the blocked up doorway into the Abbey vestry. The date of this apparition apparently coincided with archaeological excavations taking place during which some bones had been disturbed.
Although a much newer building, the School Sanatorium (built in 1887) has over the years been associated with a number of strange goings on. Stories of a ghostly presence in one of the wards resulted in two attempts to exorcise the building – once in the late 1940s and again in more recent times.
A number of the School boarding houses have also experienced spooky goings on. From 1865 to 1999 The Green boarding house occupied the former Angel Inn on Greenhill. The story of the ghost of a pot-boy murdered at the Angel Inn in the 18th century who walked the passages on the first Friday of every month apparently assured that the boarding house was unusually quiet on those nights! Perhaps the ghost of the murdered pot-boy followed the residents of The Green when in 1999 they moved across the road to the former Greenhill House, where house staff have reported hearing footsteps in the tiled hallway at times when the house was locked and no one else was there.
At School House there are tales of the ghost of an old maid who is said to remove silver items from ladies’ bedrooms. A former housemaster also reported that when making his way around the House during the holidays he would sense something near the Tutor’s flat and several times caught sight of what he thought was a figure running around the corner just in front of him.
I hope you have enjoyed this tour of spooky places associated with Sherborne School. If you have any ghostly stories the School Archivist would love to hear from you!
If, however, you are feeling a little scared, you might like to recite this prayer:
‘From ghoulies and ghosties
and long leggedy beasties,
and things that go bump in the night.
Good Lord, deliver us!’
Rachel Hassall
School Archivist
30 October 2026