Ghostbuster Brian says Ida is just a myth (From Warrington Guardian)

Ghostbuster Brian says Ida is just a myth

A LOCAL historian has labelled one of Vale Royal's oldest and most popular legends as foolish fiction.

Two Winsford residents recently claimed to have captured the ghost of Ida Goodman in a photograph of Vale Royal Abbey which was published in the Guardian on January 6.

But Brian Curzon, of Cherry Crescent, Winsford, claims his research shows the legend of the ghostly nun has no foundation in history and that she actually never existed.

The grounds of Vale Royal Abbey contain a stone monument which is known locally as the nun's grave which is widely believed to be the resting place of Ida, who travelled from her Chester convent to the Cistercian Abbey to attend to the abbot who was sick.

The legend would have us believe that Ida and the Abbot fell in love and that she was given permission to be buried next to him in front of the high altar at the Abbey.

But Mr Curzon recently wrote an account of the story for Cheshire History, the journal of the Cheshire Local History Committee which is jointly published with University College Chester, and has other ideas.

Mr Curzon said: "Ida was from the start a fictional character in the novel written by John Henry Cooke, the first Town Clerk of Winsford in 1912.

"Cooke had seen the word Nunsgreave on the 1841 Ordnance Survey Map of Vale Royal and as he could not explain it he turned it round to make Nun's Grave.

"In fact the name is a version of Nun's Grove which was the name used before the abbey was even built because the land belonged to the nuns of Chester. It neither applies to a single nun or a grave.

"And the monument known as the grave is a folly made up of bits and pieces found on the site after 1813. It originally stood in front of the Abbey and only moved to the present position just over 100 years ago.

Mr Curzon added: "There is no doubt people do feel strange sensations in old places - I have myself. Imagination and an expectation that something might happen is very suggestive.

"Visions were recorded at Vale Royal Abbey as early as the 13th Century but whatever people see or think they see, it can't be Ida as she never existed."

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