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Wymering Manor

Name: Wymering Manor
Address: Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, GB

Wymering Manor is a location reputed to be haunted in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, GB. Its reputation comes from reported apparitions, unexplained phenomena and eyewitness accounts gathered over time.

Where is Wymering Manor?

Location: Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, GB
Type: House / mansion
Coordinates: 50.846, -1.078
Testimonies: 0
Last updated: 2026-08-31

LOCATION

Why is Wymering Manor said to be haunted?

Wymering Manor is an Elizabethan house in a Portsmouth suburb that has been sold two things it is not: medieval, and open. The manor of Wymering is Domesday-old, an estate held by the crown before the Conquest — but the house standing on it was framed from oaks felled in the spring of 1581, a date fixed by tree-ring analysis of seven core samples taken in 2008, and Historic England calls the fabric "some mediaeval masonry but mainly C17". Its most famous feature, the galleried hall with two curved staircases where the ghosts are traditionally placed, is younger still: Georgian joinery of about 1730, salvaged from a demolished Lancashire mansion and reassembled here between 1900 and 1908. The reputation grew during forty-six years as a youth hostel, which closed in 2006. Since 2013 the house has belonged to a volunteer charity, the Wymering Manor Trust, and it remains on the Heritage at Risk Register — empty, propped, and open only for occasional events.

Wymering Manor, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom — Wymering Manor before 2016, when the wooden fence was replaced. Nothing visible here is medieval: dendrochronology dated the roof timbers to a felling in the spring of 1581, and the render, the canted bays and the sashes are later still. Image: Bashereyre at en.wikipedia · Public domain

What is the history of Wymering Manor?

Two different things are called Wymering — a manor and a house — and confusing them is where almost every account of this place goes wrong. The manor is genuinely ancient. The Victoria County History of Hampshire, published in 1908, opens its account flatly: "At the time of the Domesday Survey WYMERING was ancient demesne of the crown. Land in Cosham and Portchester belonged to this manor." Historic England's statutory list entry says the same thing in six words — "A Pre-Conquest manor belonging to the crown". What Domesday records in 1086 is an estate, its hides and its rents. It is not a description of a building, and no building is described. The VCH then follows the lordship through four centuries of inheritance and litigation: the earls of Albemarle in the thirteenth century, a grant by Edward I to John le Botiller in 1281, the Waytes from 1390, and in 1561 the splitting of the manor between the six daughters of William Wayte, after which one of their families — the Brunings — spent a century and a half putting it back together. The house standing today is far younger than that, and its age is known to the season. On Monday 25 February 2008 Dr Martin Bridge, of the Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory, took seven core samples from beams inside the manor for a survey commissioned by Hampshire's Historic Buildings Survey Group and the Friends of Old Wymering. Several cores still carried their outermost rings — the ones that fix the year a tree stopped growing. Bridge's finding was that the timbers were most probably felled in the spring of 1581, which puts construction in 1581 or within a year or two, while the oak was still green enough to work. The house went up in the reign of Elizabeth I, a few years before the Armada, and it was built to impress: close-studded timber framing on at least two storeys, meant to be seen. It was built by the Brunings, who held the manor from 1562 to 1707 and were Roman Catholic in a century when that was dangerous. Historic England's list entry notes that there is "reputed to be a small Priest's hole under the floor of a cupboard". The original plan was a half-H, two projecting wings enclosing an open courtyard on the entrance side. After 1761 the house served as the parish vicarage for over a century. Its most consequential resident arrived in 1859: the Reverend George Nugee, a wealthy High Church clergyman of the Oxford Movement, who lived here until 1872, ran a small college training men for overseas missions, and built a chapel onto the north-east end — the mid-nineteenth-century single-storey extension with the rounded end still described in the listing. Its tower has since been demolished. Nugee also rebuilt the parish church across the lane, employing G. E. Street. According to the manor's trustees, Queen Emma of Hawaii stayed in the house during this period. The building we see was finished by an Edwardian. Thomas Knollys Parr, a descendant of Katherine Parr, lived here from 1900 to 1938 and turned a manor house into a country house. He roofed over the courtyard to make a square plan, raised the entrance hall to full height, and filled it with joinery bought from the wreck of Bold Hall in Lancashire — a Palladian mansion of about 1730 by Giacomo Leoni, demolished in 1900 because coal mines had closed in around it. Two curved staircases, a gallery, turned balusters and newel posts, panelling, doorcases and pilasters all travelled south. The work was complete by 1908, when the VCH recorded "a fine stone chimney-piece from Bold Hall" in the new garden room. After Parr died the army took the house for the Second World War. Local builders bought it in 1946 and sold off garden land for housing; the Airspeed designer Leonard Metcalfe lived here until 1958. It was listed on 10 January 1953. Scheduled for demolition in 1959, it was saved by a local campaign and bought by Portsmouth City Council in 1960, which leased it to the Youth Hostels Association. Wymering Manor was a youth hostel for forty-six years — and that, far more than the Middle Ages, is where its ghosts come from.

Timeline: the documented record of Wymering Manor

1086 The Domesday Survey records Wymering as ancient demesne of the crown, with land in Cosham and Portchester attached. It is an entry about an estate and its rents; no building is described.
1561 William Wayte dies and the manor is divided among his six daughters and coheirs. One of them, Eleanor, had married Richard Bruning; the Brunings would spend the next century and a half reassembling the whole.
Spring 1581 The oaks used to frame the present house are felled. The date comes from tree-ring analysis of seven core samples, not from a document, and it places the building in the reign of Elizabeth I — five centuries after the manor first appears in the record.
1761 The house begins more than a century of service as the parish vicarage, a use it keeps until 1873.
1859 The Reverend George Nugee moves in and stays until 1872, running a small college training men for overseas missions and building a chapel onto the north-east end of the house. Its tower has since been demolished. This High Church community, not any medieval monastery, is the documented religious use of the building.
1900–1908 Thomas Knollys Parr roofs over the courtyard, raises the entrance hall to full height and fits it with two curved staircases, a gallery, balusters and panelling of about 1730 salvaged from Bold Hall in Lancashire, demolished that same year. The work is finished by 1908, when the Victoria County History records the Bold Hall chimney-piece in the new garden room.
10 January 1953 The house is added to the statutory list. It is now Grade II*, list entry 1245180; the current text is dated 30 October 2003 and describes the fabric as "some mediaeval masonry but mainly C17".
1960 Saved from a 1959 demolition scheme by a local campaign, the manor is bought by Portsmouth City Council and leased to the Youth Hostels Association. It will be a hostel for forty-six years.
2006 The youth hostel closes after a timber support fails and the house falls empty. The same year Most Haunted Live! films its "Panic in Portsmouth" run here, alongside Southsea Castle and the Royal Marines Museum; sources disagree over the exact night, giving 5 May and 24 June 2006.
25 February 2008 Dr Martin Bridge of the Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory takes seven core samples from the beams, in a survey paid for jointly by Hampshire's Historic Buildings Survey Group and the Friends of Old Wymering. The result moves the house from "early seventeenth century" to 1581.
21 September 2010 The manor fails to sell at auction at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London, stopping short of a £375,000 reserve. This, and not a television broadcast, is what happened at Wymering Manor in 2010.
7 January 2013 The Wymering Manor Trust is incorporated as company 08349936, later registered charity 1151919. Portsmouth City Council transfers the house to it free of charge with a £30,000 start-up grant.
13 January 2014 A survey finds death watch beetle in the old oak frame on top of known structural problems. Trustee Andy Mason calls it "worse than we were expecting"; full restoration is costed at about £2.5 million.
2024 Wymering Manor is still on Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register, where it was first placed in 2011. The 2024 edition is the most recent published when this entry was written.

Is there a rational explanation for Wymering Manor?

Start with the date on the front of the story. "First recorded in 1042, when it was owned by King Edward the Confessor" is a sentence about a lordship dressed up as a sentence about a house, and 1042 is not a date from any document: it is the year Edward became king. Domesday's formula is that a manor was held "in the time of King Edward", and somewhere that turned into a record with a year on it. The building underneath the claim was, on the evidence of its own timbers, felled and framed in 1581 — five centuries later. Historic England's own summary of the fabric is blunt: "Some mediaeval masonry but mainly C17, extended early C19 and c1900." "The oldest building in Portsmouth" fails on a straight comparison. Portsmouth Cathedral, about four miles south in the old town, is a Grade I listed chapel founded about 1180 for Jean de Gisors, with a choir of c.1180–90 and transepts of c.1190–1220 still standing. The Royal Garrison Church on Grand Parade was founded as the Domus Dei by Bishop Peter des Roches about 1212. Both are four centuries older than Wymering's oak. It is worth noting who does not make the claim: the Friends of Old Wymering, the local group that paid for the tree-ring dating, call the house "one of the oldest houses in Portsmouth and the oldest in Old Wymering Conservation Area" — carefully, and correctly. The staircase is the sharpest problem, because it is where the ghosts are put. Wymering's best-known apparitions are staged on the stairs and the galleried hall: a figure at the top of the flight, a group heard on the steps. That hall did not exist until Thomas Knollys Parr roofed over the courtyard after 1900, and the Friends of Old Wymering make the point themselves — the two staircases "must have been fitted at the same time as they would not have been needed before". Historic England dates their balusters and newel posts to about 1730 and identifies them as salvage from Bold Hall in Lancashire. The most haunted feature of the house is Georgian joinery from another county, reassembled in Portsmouth in the first decade of the twentieth century. The monks and nuns have an origin too, and it is Victorian rather than medieval. There was no monastery at Wymering Manor. There was the Reverend George Nugee, who between 1859 and 1872 ran a High Church missionary college in the house, built a chapel onto it and was examined by his diocese over ritual practice. Men in habits at Wymering are documented; they are 1860s Anglicans. As for the named ghosts — "Reckless Roddy", Sir Roderick of Portchester — the printed trail is remarkably thin. Searched inside the Internet Archive's full-text book corpus in August 2026, "Reckless Roddy" and "Sir Roderick of Portchester" each return zero results, twice. The control run in the same corpus and the same session: "Borley Rectory" returns 678 books. Of the forty-seven volumes that do mention Wymering Manor by name, the great majority are Youth Hostels Association handbooks and budget travel guides published between 1986 and 2006. That is the shape of the evidence: a house famous among ghost hunters and effectively absent from the ghost literature, whose reputation grew during forty-six years as a hostel where young strangers slept in an unheated Elizabethan building with twisting stairs. The earliest dated account naming Sir Roderick that this review could read in full is a BBC News report of 15 February 2013. One last correction, of our own error. The claim that Most Haunted broadcast live from the manor in 2010 does not survive checking. When the BBC covered the manor on 21 September 2010, the news was an auction: the house failed to reach its £375,000 reserve at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London, and the report mentions the programme only in the past tense, as something that had already happened. The Most Haunted Live! run at Wymering was the "Panic in Portsmouth" strand of 2006, alongside Southsea Castle and the Royal Marines Museum; secondary sources disagree on the night, giving 5 May and 24 June 2006. The year 2010 belongs to the auction, not to the television.

Can you visit Wymering Manor?

Wymering Manor is not a visitor attraction and you cannot turn up and go in. This matters more here than at most sites on this atlas, because the house has spent two decades closed and much of what is written about it online is still in the present tense. The building stands on Old Wymering Lane, Cosham, Portsmouth PO6, opposite the parish church of St Peter and St Paul, in a pocket of old village now surrounded by post-war suburb. It is Grade II* listed — list entry 1245180, first listed on 10 January 1953, with the current text dated 30 October 2003 and a minor amendment on 28 September 2023 that finally dropped "(Youth Hostel)" from the name. It has been empty since the hostel closed in 2006, after a timber support failed. Portsmouth City Council could not sell it — the auction of 21 September 2010 stopped short of a £375,000 reserve, and a second attempt also failed — and in January 2013 it handed the house, with a £30,000 start-up grant, to a volunteer charity. The Wymering Manor Trust was incorporated on 7 January 2013 as company 08349936 and is registered charity 1151919; Companies House still shows it active in August 2026, with accounts filed to 31 March 2025 and a registered office at Larch House, Forest Road, Denmead, Waterlooville PO7 6XP. So the answer to "who owns it now?" is: a charity of volunteers, and it has done since 2013. The condition is the reason for the closure. A survey reported in January 2014 found death watch beetle in the old oak frame on top of existing structural problems; trustee Andy Mason said it was "worse than we were expecting". Ceilings in several rooms are held up with props and scaffolding, and full restoration was costed then at about £2.5 million. A £50,000 Big Lottery grant went on reglazing and asbestos removal in the Victorian parts. The manor was placed on the Heritage at Risk Register in 2011 and it is still on it in the 2024 register, the most recent published edition. Access, as of August 2026, is by event only. The Trust opens the house for Heritage Open Days, occasional theatre in the rooms, quizzes and organised paranormal evenings run by third-party companies, and it says openly that ghost hunting is part of how it intends to make the building pay for itself. Dates appear on the Trust's own site and nowhere reliably else; there are no regular opening hours, no ticket office and no standing admission price. Check before travelling and expect hard hats and uneven floors rather than a country-house tour. Getting there is easy enough: old Wymering lies about half a mile west of Cosham, whose railway station is the nearest, and the site sits under Portsdown Hill on the north edge of the city. The parish church of St Peter and St Paul opposite, rebuilt during Nugee's incumbency, and its churchyard are worth the detour on their own, and unlike the manor they are not behind a locked door.

Sources consulted

Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-14 · How we verify our content

Wymering Manor

Where is Wymering Manor?

Why is Wymering Manor said to be haunted?

What is the history of Wymering Manor?

Timeline: the documented record of Wymering Manor

Is there a rational explanation for Wymering Manor?

Can you visit Wymering Manor?

Sources consulted

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Wymering Manor

Where is Wymering Manor?

Why is Wymering Manor said to be haunted?

What is the history of Wymering Manor?

Timeline: the documented record of Wymering Manor

Is there a rational explanation for Wymering Manor?

Can you visit Wymering Manor?

Sources consulted

💬 Field testimonies (0)

Add your testimony

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