Lyndhurst Park Hotel

The Lyndhurst Park Hotel in 2014

The rear of Glasshayes from Lyndhurst High Street

The Lyndhurst Park Hotel was a three star hotel operating from the Glasshayes mansion house in Lyndhurst, New Forest. It was opened in 1970 when the former Grand Hotel was bought as an ongoing concern by Forestdale Hotels Ltd and renamed, receiving multiple extensions throughout the 1970s and 1980s which developed it into a 60-bed hotel. In 2014 the hotel was purchased by the St James Hotel group, and later that year it was closed and bought by developers PegasusLife, who plan to demolish the property in order to build retirement flats on the land, despite local opposition. Prior to closure it employed 13 full-time staff and 8 casual workers.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Ghost sightings

According to local tradition, the building is haunted by the ghost of Richard Fitzgeorge de Stacpoole, 1st Duc de Stacpoole, who lived and died at the mansion in the 19th century (before its conversion to a hotel). Sightings have been reported by builders working on extensions to the site, both at the beginning of the 20th century and in the 1970s, apparently berating and sometimes attacking them for disturbing his property. There have been reported instances of guests and staff of the hotel feeling uneasy when waking around the courtyard of the building and surrounding woods, which has been assumed to be linked to the ghost of Richard Fitzgeorge de Stacpoole, 1st Duc de Stacpoole. Supposedly, every year on the night of his death (July 7) strange music can be heard in certain rooms, and folklore has it that this is from a grand ball that the Duc holds annually for the dead.^[6]

See also

• Glasshayes
• Lyndhurst, Hampshire

References

Coordinates: 50°52′19″N 1°34′19″W / 50.87202°N 1.57206°W / 50.87202; -1.57206