S01-E06 - Haden Hill Park, Hall & House
Haunted UK Podcast: History, Hauntings and the Unexplained
Steven Holloway
4.5 • 652 Ratings
🗓️ 13 August 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
A quiet park in the Black Country.
Two old houses standing within landscaped grounds.
And beneath the trees, staircases, servants’ corridors, pools, and locked rooms, stories that seem to reach back through centuries of family history.
In this early Haunted UK Podcast episode, Steve explores the haunted reputation of Haden Hill Park, Haden Hill Hall, and Haden Hill House — a 55-acre historic estate in the West Midlands shaped by the Haden family, Victorian ambition, local legend, inheritance, tragedy, and time.
The episode traces the history of the estate from its early family roots to the creation of the parkland by George Alfred Haden Best, before moving into the darker stories attached to the site. Among them is the tragic legend of Eleanor and the Haden son, whose forbidden love is said to have ended in the tunnels beneath the hall, and the sorrowful account of Anne Eliza Haden, allegedly confined inside the house and later seen as a pale figure at the window.
The hauntings continue inside Haden Hill House, where former tenants reported flickering televisions, shadowy figures, strange tapping, dragging sounds beneath a bed, phantom furniture moving in the café below, and the sound of a requiem mass echoing through December nights. Staff and visitors have also reported apparitions on the servants’ staircase, locked doors that refuse to open, sudden drops in temperature, unseen arguments, and figures that vanish where no living person could have gone.
Beyond the houses, the parkland itself carries its own folklore — from misty figures seen near the paths and pools, to the Blue Lady said to appear by the lower pool, and the strange account of two long-dead family members apparently encountered during an evening walk.
Atmospheric, local, and historically grounded, this episode explores how familiar public spaces can become haunted landscapes, where family secrets, local memory, and witness testimony continue to gather around the old paths of Haden Hill.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'd made my usual trip with my dog, in through the bottom gate off Hayseach Road, around the lower pool, up the hill to Hayden Hill House and Hall. |
| 0:19.0 | It was around 7.15pm, and just as I made my way back |
| 0:22.8 | down to the bottom gate, I noticed that there was nobody else around. The atmosphere had turned |
| 0:28.2 | very strange, very odd. Then my dog barked. She was staring in the direction of the path opposite, |
| 0:35.7 | and that's when I saw it, a white, misty figure |
| 0:38.5 | that was moving along the path towards the pool. I was stunned. It had completely faded away |
| 0:44.9 | by the time it had got to the trees. It took me a long time to go back into that park. Anonymous, |
| 0:51.4 | local resident Welcome to Pink Flamingo's haunted |
| 1:03.3 | UK podcast |
| 1:04.9 | Music The This is episode 6 of Pink Flamingo's Haunted UK podcast, and our destination this time is Hayden Hill Park and its two houses, Hayden Hill Hall and Hayden Hill House. |
| 2:11.1 | Wherever you live, if you do a little research and some hunting around, you'll probably end up finding a haunted house or building or even a haunted park or woodland. |
| 2:18.9 | When my family and I decided to move to the Hell Zone area four years ago, we had no idea that just a few minutes walk from our new home would be not only a haunted park, but also a haunted house, possibly too. |
| 2:28.3 | Hayden Hill Park contains landscape gardens, pools, woodland and beautiful walks which weave |
| 2:34.0 | their way around the whole 55-acre |
| 2:36.0 | site. The park is also home to two large houses, the 17th century Tudor-style Hayden Hill Hall |
| 2:43.0 | and the Victorian Hayden Hill House. Bordering the park is Congreys Nature Reserve, which is also home to Congreys Hall. |
| 2:53.1 | The parkland was built over the course of hundreds of years by the Hayden family, who can be traced as far back as the 13th century. |
| 3:01.3 | They had been farmers for many years, but they seemed to prosper greatly in the 17th and 18th centuries, |
| 3:09.4 | due to a string of shrewd land investments as well as marriages which injected a substantial amount of wealth into the family name. |
| 3:15.8 | The main family house which watched over the land was what is now known as Hayden Hill Hall. |
| 3:22.1 | This Tudor-style farmhouse was remodeled and extended a number of times, |
| 3:26.2 | but what you see today was mainly from the 17th century. In 1877, the entire estate was passed down |
... |
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