Originally The Mill Hotel was the home of the Gradwell Family, devout Roman Catholics, who sent several of their menfolk into the priesthood. Known in those days as Gradwell Farm, it was considered a safe refuge for priests who were forced into hiding during the Reformation. There is a stone cross in the garden commemorating one of the priests, Father Winkley, chaplain to the Gradwell Family, who died in hiding there and who was buried in the orchard, in unconsecrated ground.
The house was haunted up until the middle of the 20th century by the ghost of a young woman, known as “The Sarscowe Lady”, a maid of the Gradwells, who lived at nearby Sarscowe Farm, and who was said to have been deeply in love with Father Winkley, and who had many clandestine meetings with him. At the time of Father Winkley’s death she had contracted the fever and in her delirious state, upon hearing the news of his death, plunged to her own death down a deep well at the back of the house.
In 1958, when the building housed the Royal Umpire Museum, which took it’s name from the Royal Liverpool Umpire Stagecoach, exhibited there amongst other relics of bygone Lancashire, the stone cross placed on Father Winkley’s grave was removed from the orchard and set up in the garden, and from that time, the ghostly visitations seem to have ceased. However, before that time, many strange sounds, including the movement of furniture, were heard in the building and the nearby barn, which was originally a church. There is evidence of a great deal of poltergeist activity and on one occasion a party of visitors to the museum were showered with stones.
A rather unusual occurrence took place on the very day that the stone cross was moved. The apparition of the Sarscowe Lady had previously been seen many times walking in the fields in her white dress, but she was seen that day standing at a bus stop situated at the end of the drive. A bus driver, thinking that he had a potential passenger to pick up, stopped his bus and waited for her to board. It was only when his conductor asked why he had stopped that the driver realised that the girl had completely vanished, The conductor had not seen the girl.