The Green Lady of Thorpe Hall

Thorpe Hall near Louth was the home of Sir John Bolle, knighted by Elizabeth after the expedition to Cadiz in 1596. Tradition said that a beautiful and wealthy Spanish lady taken prisoner there fell in love with him and begged to follow him to England as his page, but he had a wife at home and left her, and she retired to a nunnery. She sent his wife jewels, treasure and her own portrait dressed in green, and so became known round Thorpe Hall as the Green Lady. The hall was said to be haunted by her, and she sat nightly in a certain tree near the house; in the time of Sir John’s son a knife and fork were always laid for her at table, and Chambers’s informant remembered people in Louth who believed she walked the grounds at midnight.