The naval lieutenant settled down for a weekend of shooting at a county manor house. But, all at once, thoughts of sport disappeared and he left in haste. NIGEL HEINS recounts the tale of the robed ghost in 'Bloody Mary's Room'.

THE young naval lieutenant had arrived at the Herefordshire manor for a weekend's shooting. He was raring to start the sport.

And there was a bonus. No other room at Hellens, Much Marcle, was available so he was given the historic one named 'Bloody Mary's'. This had, in a bygone time, been prepared for a visit by Queen Mary that never materialised.

The young man turned up after tea on a Friday night and warmed himself in front of a bright wood fire burning in the grate.

The stage was set for a wonderful weekend and yet the following morning he hurried down to the post office and telephoned his parents. Two hours later a telegram arrived at Hellens requesting urgently his return to London - and, full of apologies, off he went!

Many years later the mystery of the sailor's sudden departure from rural retreat to the city was explained.

His parents were motoring through Herefordshire and called at Hellens for tea. They referred to their son's fleeting visit and politely requested to view his room.

They then revealed how he had apparently been disturbed several times by what he believed to be "some dotty old member" of the family who had escaped from his keeper, entered the room and started running backwards and forwards from the north window to the door.

The troubled fellow wore "a long, dark dressing gown with a hood".

Hellens host Malcolm Munthe was not surprised. He knew the story of the monk that had been murdered in that room during the Civil War and had long been convinced of the existence of a cowled ghost in a priest's robe.

In his fine book on the history of the manor, Hellens, Munthe gives a graphic account of how he believed the tragic monk met his fate.

He believed a dovecote - known as "the monk's sleeping place" - had ceased to be a safe haven so the old fellow moved his belongings, books, confessions, reliquaries with a palliasse of straw to a hiding place contrived in the roof by the north gable. Alas, nowhere was safe.

Munthe paints a picture of the day the Roundheads came upon Cavalier-friendly Hellens.

"While the Roundhead main party rode on towards Ross, a few stragglers, after lingering at the inn by the church gates and drinking their full, will have chased the flying servants and discovered behind the screen of trees at the top of the drive a low, lumbering, red brick and stone house whose many windows were heavily barred.

"They accosted the front entrance; some trigger-happy loon will have fired off a bullet into the door lock and burst it. They lurched into the unguarded house.

"To the left, the old hall-empty; to the right, the dark stone passage into the heart of the house, and the new 'grand staircase' hall; close by the door, behind a curtain, the Audley Tower spiral stairs.

"The monk, breathless and old, with only a few minutes' start of his enemy, probably entered the house from one of the side doors, hastened up the new staircase, intent on reaching 'Bloody Mary's Room' - the upper flight of the turret stairs beyond and his fireplace escape, at the top of the house.

"That he made the first flight is obvious; if he entered the Queen's room by the east door he will have been unable to see the opposite west door on account of the great, heavily - curtained four-post bed that obstructs the view. There, he stopped; the far door was violently opened by some wild-eyed youth waving a sword, whose slogan was 'down with everything.'

"The monk turned to retrace his steps - but the other door, too, was opening; heated-shouting men rushed in; the old man stumbled, the youths caught him between their pikes.

"He was done for before they had finished roaring at him. He sank on to the wide old floorboards like a heap of meat. Death is a companion youth never bargains for; terrified they took to their heels, to their steaming nags and spurred away to Ross. 'Not a word of this.' "

Munthe reveals how he and Lady Biddulph from Ledbury one day embarked on a sance.

The best result was an incoherent statement that the ghost did haunt that room - and others.

The 'message,' however, did disclose its dislike at being 'consulted.'

After that, attempts to contact the cowled ghost of Hellens were never tried again.