This episode Mike & Will false-start their way through the unfinished M.R. James manuscript ‘Merfield Hall’ (or should that be ‘Merfield House’?).
Big thanks to our reader this episode Debbie Wedge.
Show notes:
- ‘Merfield Hall’ manuscript (Ghosts & Scholars)
What exists of the manuscript(s) for this story can be read online at the Ghosts & Scholars website. - Potton, Bedfordshire (Wikipedia)
Potton, mentioned in this story, is a real town in North East Bedfordshire. - Fishing temple at Southill Park, Bedfordshire (bedfordshire.gov.uk)
Could the fishing temple at Southill Park, Bedfordshire be an inspiration for the one mentioned in this story? - Charles Cotton’s fishing temple (derbyshireuk.net)
The most famous of all fishing temples, that made famous by Izaak Walton, author or ‘The Compleat Angler’. - James Essex (Wikipedia)
Architect of the gothic revival James Essex gets a mention in this story as having designed part of the titular house/hall. - The Roxburghe Club (Roxburgheclub.org.uk)
William Stedman in the story is said to have been a member of this most exclusive of clubs.
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Tags: Bedfordshire, fishing temple, Ghost Stories, M.R. James, Manuascript, Merfield Hall, Merfield House, Unfinished
Loved hearing a reference to The Woman In Black in this podcast. When you’re done with M.R. James stuff you should do a podcast on one of his idols – J. Sheridan Le Fanu (plenty of stories there) and maybe other ghost story writers of that time, including some of his Cambridge colleagues. Yes?.
You say that Wiggins and Chatteris don’t feature later in the manuscript, and it’s a mystery why Wiggins is telling Chatteris about the house, and that ‘maybe’ Chatteris inherits the house.
Doesn’t the manuscript opening say that Steadman left the house to Chatteris: “you [Chatteris] requested me [Wiggins] to go through them and extract what I could relative to his experiences in that house, of which he left you [Chatteris] the heir”?
Could the attesting by the butler and housekeeper simply be confirming that the document is in his handwriting?
Regarding the possibility that someone else wrote this story. I recently discovered the novel “A College Mystery” by A.P. Baker (1873 – 1919) includes a thank you to “…the Provost of Eaton for reading through the manuscript of this little book and for kindly comment…” at the time the Provost was of course M.R. James, it could be that one of the versions of Merfield Hall was written by Baker.