St Mary's Binsted, Matt & Emma, Is it still Haunted

Binsted Ghosts
When Emma Tristram first put a note in the West Sussex Gazette asking for memories of Binsted, in 2000, Eric Phillips of Felpham sent her the following account.

Whilst driving on the track that runs NE towards Arundel Road, near Goose Green and Meadow Lodge, in about 1980, we were passing over the bridge when I observed a strange character smoking a clay pipe sitting on the low stone bridge wall (the containing walls are now gone because of heavy traffic coming from Arundel and Wishart’s farm). His clothes struck me as very strange and old, perhaps over a hundred years. As I passed I looked straight at him and I pulled the car up only 20 feet on to have another look, but lo and behold when I got out in approx. five seconds there was no-one there at all and there was nowhere this person could have gone in such a short time and it has been on my mind ever since.

I returned to the spot recently and found the low wall had gone and the area looked overgrown after the passage of twenty years. I spoke to a young lady who was passing through and lived nearby and I recounted my experience and she seemed rather concerned and mentioned that I could have talked to an older man about it but he had passed on. My wife who was with me in the first instance as we went over the bridge told me she saw nothing on her side of the car, but I saw what I saw and this account now I have put it on paper has in a small way given me some sort of relief.

Ernest Wishart used to say that the Madonna Pond was haunted by a coach and horses which had ridden into it and never come out. The ruins of Binsted House were said to be haunted by a man in a top hat. Bill Pethers remembers an incident from about 1943 or 4 when he was a small child:

‘Mother used to go up to the old house and try to keep the place clean. It was a time warp, you would walk through the door and you were back in the 1800s, and nothing had been touched. It was a labour of love, because the old place was falling down, that’s the reason why it was abandoned. There was a huge circular box hedge in the centre of the old front garden, not very high, with a gravel path, so you could drive in the main gate in your horse and carriage and drive round and back out again. One day, I think I was outside playing, and she suddenly rushed out and scooped me up and ran all the way down the road. There was something in there she had to get away from. It was a funny old house, very still, very quiet, and you could be there on a summer’s day and feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up. But I must admit I have never seen a ghost in my life.’

When asked who he thought Binsted House was haunted by, Bill Pethers replied ‘all my ancestors’! But he has his suspicions that the ghost Mr Phillips saw might have been the real form of his father, Henry Pethers.