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Smithills Hall, Bolton
The hall - one of the oldest in Lancashire - has a footprint in its flagstones said to have been created when a protestant martyr was interrogated at the hall. The footprint is said to become bloody on the anniversary of his martyrdom.
George Marsh was a protestant martyr who was burned at the stake in 1555 during Bloody Mary's reign. Captured during those predominantly Catholic times, he was brought to the hall by its owner, a magistrate called Mr Barton. During his interrogation it is reputed that he stamped his foot on the floor and prayed that a mark should be left there to show the injustice of his accusers. The depression in the flag miraculously appeared, and after his death his spectre was said to wander the hall. Another tradition suggests that some young men from the Barton family threw the flag with the footprint into the local stream. This act caused such disturbing poltergeist activity that it had to be replaced. A tradition that has echoes with that of the screaming skulls found in other parts of the country.
The footprint can still be seen today, and according to Nathaniel Hawthorn in his book Septimius 1872, the footprint becomes blood wet every year at the time of his interrogation.
There are many similar folktales throughout Britain concerned with bloody footprints, bloodstains and other features left when a religious activist were martyred for their religious (and political) views. These indelible marks originate form both the Catholics and Protestants, depending on the politics of the country at that time.
The following account is from The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain By John Ingram (1897).
Smithills Hall, Halliwell, Lancashire, the seat of Richard Henry Ainsworth, Esq., is one of those lovely and picturesque ancestral abodes for which England is famous. It is replete with the subdued charms which only antiquity can generate, and which no amount of
expenditure, however lavish, can create. The origin of this splendid old mansion is lost in the proverbial " mist of ages " ; historians retrace its story to the time of the so-called Saxon ''Heptarchy," and, as if in confirmation of this remote ancestry, an ancient gateway bears the date of 680. Less mythical records of the place and its various owners are carried back to the early part of the fourteenth century, when the Lord of the Manor of Smithills was a William Radcliffe. Subsequently, an heiress by marriage carried this manor and the estates into the Barton family, and from that family it passed by purchase, in 1801, into the possession of the Ainsworths, by whom it is still held.
In a description of this ancient mansion, recently given in the Bolton Journal, it is said : " Smithills Hall requires to be sought for. It lies far from the road, which curves in its course, thus effectually hiding it from the public gaze. . . . When reached, the full beauty of the building is not at once seen. But passing through an arched gateway the south front is disclosed to view. Emerging by the gateway with the '680' inscribed above it, the visitor finds himself in the antique court-yard, at the head of a beautiful lawn, reached by a flight of steps. Turning from the view before us to admire the architecture and appearance of the old building, one is impressed with the air of calm repose which seems to rest over all. The old Lancashire lath-and-plaster style of building is everywhere apparent.
Black beams placed obliquely on a ground of dazzling whiteness, with ornamentations of quatrefoil standing out in charming relief, present a pleasing picture of the taste of our ancestors in matters architectural. The ivy clusters lovingly over porch and walls, the effect on the ' 680 ' gateway being especially lovely. The old-fashioned domestic chapel forms a wing to the east of the block, and around this, too, clusters the loving parasite, the healthy hue of green blending charmingly with the stained windows, rich in design, and commemorative of the heraldry of past and present of Smithills."
The writer then proceeds to speak of the interior of this fine old place, of its rich wainscottings, its oaken mouldings, and of its other relics of the past, but then recurs, as must all who mention Smithills Hall, to the mysterious footprint, to the far-famed Bloody
Footstep seen on the stone in the passage leading to the chapel. Above this indelible footstep is a plate bearing the inscription, "Footprint of the Reverend George Marsh, of Deane, martyr, who was examined at Smithills, and burnt at Chester, in the reign of Queen
Mary."
The legend connected with this marvellous relic of the past is thus given in the local journal: Robert Barton, at one time owner of Smithills, was " the famous magistrate before whom George Marsh, the Martyr of Deane, appeared in 1555, to answer for his Protestant faith. Tradition described Mr. Barton as a zealous bigot, and alleges rude treatment on his part towards the martyr. It was after the examination before this worthy that, it is stated, Marsh, descending the stairs leading from the court-room, stamped his foot on the stones, and ' looking up to heaven, appealed to God for the justness of his cause ; and prayed that there might in that place remain a constant memorial of the wickedness and injustice of his enemies,' the print of a man's foot remaining to the present day as such ' constant memorial/ "
A tradition in the place, a resident of Smithills Hall informs us, says the stone bearing the imprint of the mysterious footprint was once removed and cast into a neighbouring wood, but ghostly noises became so troublesome in consequence that the stone had to be
restored to its original position.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the famous American novelist, at one time enjoyed the hospitality of Smithills Hall. The legend of the " Bloody Footstep " made an intense and lasting impression upon his mind, and in three separate instances he founded fictions upon it. He saw the " Bloody Footstep/' as he says himself, with his own eyes, and from the lips of his hostess heard the particulars of its origin. Either from what he heard, or imagined, about this weird symbol of a bygone crime, he gave in his romance of Septimius the following
story as that of the Bloody Footstep :
" On the threshold of one of the doors of Smithills Hall there is a bloody footstep impressed into the door- step, and ruddy as if the bloody foot had just trodden there ; and it is averred that, on a certain night of the year, and at a certain hour of the night, if you go and look at the door-step you will see the mark wet with fresh hlood. Some have pretended to say that this appearance of blood was hut dew; but can dew redden a cambric handkerchief? Will it crimson the fingertips when you touch it ? And that is what the bloody footstep will surely do when the appointed night and hour come round. . . .
" It is needless to tell you all the strange stories that have survived to this day about the old Hall, and how it is believed that the master of it, owing to his ancient science, has still a sort of residence there and control of the place, and how in one of the chambers there is still his antique table, and his chair, and some rude old instruments and machinery, and a book, and everything in readiness, just as if he might still come back to finish some experiment. . . . One of the chief things to which the old lord applied himself was to discover the means of prolonging his own life, so that its duration should be indefinite, if not infinite; and such was his science that he was believed to have attained this magnificent and awful purpose. . . .
" The object of the lord of Smithills Hall was to take a life from the course of Nature, and Nature did not choose to be defrauded ; so that, great as was the power of this scientific man over her, she would not consent that he should escape the necessity of dying at
i his proper time, except upon condition of sacrificing some other life for his ; and this was to be done once for every thirty years that he chose to live, thirty years being the account of a generation of man ; and if in any way, in that time, this lord could be the death of a human being, that satisfied the requisition, and he might live on. . . .
" There was but one human being whom he cared for that was a beautiful kinswoman, an orphan, whom his father had brought up, and dying, left to his care. . . He saw that she, if anyone, was to be the person whom the sacrifice demanded, and that he might kill
twenty others without effect, but if he took the life of this one it would make the charm strong and good. . . . He did slay this pure young girl ; he took her into the wood near the house, an old wood that is standing yet, with some of its magnificent oaks, and there he plunged a dagger into her heart. . . .
" He buried her in the wood, and returned to the house ; and, as it happened, he had set his right foot in her blood, and his shoe was wet in it, and by some miraculous fate it left a track all along the wood-path, and into the house, and on the stone steps of the threshold, and up into his chamber. The servants saw it the next day, and wondered, and whispered, and missed the fair young girl, and looked askance at their lord's right foot, and turned pale, all of them. . . .
" Next, the legend says, that Sir Forrester was struck with horror at what he had done . . . and fled from his old Hall, and was gone full many a day. But all the while he was gone there was the mark of a bloody footstep impressed upon the stone door-step of the Hall.
. . . The legend says that wherever Sir Forrester went, in his wanderings about the world, he left a bloody track behind him. . . . Once he went to the King's Court, and, there being a track up to the very throne, the King frowned upon him, so that he never came there
any more. Nobody could tell how it happened; his foot was not seen to bleed, only there was the bloody track behind him. . . .
"At last this unfortunate lord deemed it best to go back to his own Hall, where, living among faithful old servants born in the family, he could hush the matter up better than elsewhere. ... So home he came, and there he saw the bloody track on the door-step, and dolefully went into the Hall, and up the stairs, an old servant ushering him into his chamber, and half a dozen others following behind, gazing, shuddering, pointing with quivering fingers, looking horror-stricken in one another's pale faces. . . .
u By-and-by he vanished from the old Hall, but not by death ; for, from generation to generation, they say that a bloody track is seen around that house, and sometimes it is traced up into the chambers, so fresh that you see he must have passed a short time before."
" And this is the legend," says Hawthorne, " of the Bloody Footstep, which I myself have seen at the Hall door."
It will be seen, however, how widely different is the story told by the great American romancist from that given by the owner of Smithills Hall, and believed in by the tenants around. Whether the author of Septimius really had any traditional authority for his version, or whether he evolved the whole recital from the depth of his imagination, it would he difficult to say.