Queen Camilla was “pinned down” by a ghost as she raised her young family in a “haunted house”, her son has claimed
Tom Parker-Bowles is the eldest child of Camilla and her ex-husband Andrew Parker-Bowles, a retired Army officer. The former couple raised children Tom and Laura at Bolehyde Manor, a 17th-century house in Allington, Wiltshire.
It is there Tom says children would “run past” haunted rooms, fearing the historic house was home to a spectre. The 49-year-old food writer however admits he never actually saw one of the ghosts.
Speaking on Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast, he said: “My mother says she woke up one night, in the middle of the night, and there was a presence sort of pinning her down in her bed. This was many, many years ago, but she’s made of pretty strong stuff so probably told the ghost where to go.
Tom says parts of the historic property were so haunted that even the family dog refused to enter some of the rooms. And even in summer, the house had a “cold” feeling about it.
He continued: “There were lots of people who were very rational people, who in the middle of the night would jump in their car and drive back to London because something had got in their bed, and it was a spirit.
“We would hear stories of banquets going on downstairs that people would hear, but there was nothing there, there were rooms the dogs wouldn’t go into, it was quite a big old manor house, and rooms that we ran past.
“As a child you would build up a fear of these rooms. It was always cold, even in the middle of summer.
It was an old house, it was a Tudor manor, there’s folklore and tales and there’s you know lots of mad monks and grey ladies. We never actually saw a ghost but we felt them.”
The manor house is said to have got its name from 14th-century landowner Thomas de Bolehyde, who is believed to have embezzled the funds from monks. Royal biographer Penny Junor previously told Page Six that Camilla “would become aware of its presence when she was watching television and the ghost would sit beside her and change the channels.
She added: “She never saw it, but she could feel it next to her and she would laugh about how she and the ghost always wanted to watch different programs.”
A Grade-II listed manor house, Bolehyde boasts four reception rooms, eight bedrooms, a swimming pool, a moat, and 80 acres of land. Camilla and her ex-husband sold the property to move to Middlewick House in nearby Corsham.
Following her 1994 divorce, Camilla bought Ray Mill House, also in Wiltshire, for £850,000. The home has a swimming pool, a river and its very own stables.
