The Ghost of Sir Edmund Warneford of Warneford Place

Edmund Warneford of Warneford Place, Sevenhampton was a supporter of the Parliamentarian cause. Taken prisoner during the siege of Cirencester he suffered many hardships in the hands of Royalists and died at home at the early age of forty-three in 1649.

His second son, Edmund born in 1642, inherited the estate on the death of his brother, John, in 1662. At the Restoration he declared himself for the King and shortly afterwards was knighted. He married Bridget Paul, daughter of the Bishop of Oxford in 1681, and appears to have been of a rather more flamboyant character than his ancestors.

Sir Edmund was passionately devoted to the hunt, and this was to prove his undoing as he broke his neck whilst rashly continuing to chase after a deer, at night, which had managed to evade him throughout the day.

His ghost was said to haunt the Long Avenue at Warneford, close to where his exhausted horse fell under him in 1700. At the midnight hour he was said to be seen, mounted on Fury his grey, galloping up the avenue from the Chapel of St James, jumping the gates into the grounds of Warneford Place whilst cheering on his hounds. This so disturbed the villagers that the clergy were asked to rid them of this problem. This done, he is said to have disappeared into a pond, where he stays until the pond runs dry.