Lumley Castle

The castle you see is largely the work of Sir Ralph Lumley, who came home from the Scottish wars, having helped defend Berwick in 1388 and been captured at the Battle of Otterburn, and set about turning his family's manor house into a fortress. In 1389 Bishop Skirlaw of Durham granted him licence to crenellate, and Richard II confirmed it in 1392. The result was a quadrangular castle with four corner towers around a courtyard, still recognisably the building that greets you today. Ralph's wife, the only one recorded, was Eleanor Neville; there is no Lily in the family pedigree, which matters for the ghost story.

The Lumleys held the castle for centuries and eventually became Earls of Scarbrough. In 1721 the architect and playwright Sir John Vanbrugh spent a week here "to provide Lord Lumley with a General Design" for the courts, gardens and offices, and although no documents prove it the Georgian remodelling is attributed to him, most obviously the library that is now the Black Knight Restaurant. The first Earl of Scarbrough was the last of the family with strong ties to the North East; the earls kept the castle but rarely lived in it, and for a spell in the twentieth century it housed students of Durham University.

Since 1976 Lumley has been a hotel, Grade I listed and still owned by the Earl of Scarbrough, with more than seventy bedrooms split between the castle proper and the converted stables and mews around the courtyard. Its long-running Elizabethan banquets in the Barons' Hall, and its position beside the Riverside cricket ground, have kept a steady stream of guests, wedding parties and visiting sports teams passing through its corridors, which is where most of the modern ghost stories come from.

Lumley's most-repeated modern story concerns cricket. In 2000 the West Indies were put up at the castle before a match at the Riverside, and captain Jimmy Adams later said that he and two other players were so unnerved by what they saw and heard in the building that they checked out early and paid for another hotel themselves. Five years later the Australians stayed here during the 2005 Ashes tour and Shane Watson reportedly asked to be moved after a night in a small room reached through the old dungeon, sitting up in fast bowler Brett Lee's room until other accommodation was found. Watson himself was candid afterwards: "I didn't see anything, but it was a very spooky sort of place and it definitely freaked me out." He blamed team-mates winding him up at dinner and a coach driver who helpfully explained which rooms were the most haunted, and said he did not sleep properly for four nights.

The guest accounts collected by the hotel and by ghost-hunt operators cover the usual ground and some unusual corners: a bright red, tennis-ball-sized light drifting across a bedroom and hovering over a sleeping partner; candles reportedly flying out of candelabras and striking wedding guests; a shower turning itself on at two in the morning; and the persistent feeling of being watched on the stairs. Several guests who described themselves as sceptics are said to have left their rooms in the night anyway.

The sceptical reading is straightforward and the hotel does not hide from it: Lily has no historical footprint, the castle is an atmospheric old building full of creaks and draughts, and a good story told at dinner has a way of following guests to bed. That the stories keep coming is at least a testament to Lumley's atmosphere, which is precisely why people book it.

Lumley Castle is a working hotel, so the way to see it is to book a room, a meal or an event; it is not a museum with day-opening hours. It stands just east of Chester-le-Street in County Durham, a few minutes from the A1(M), about eight miles from Durham city and fifteen from Newcastle, with Chester-le-Street railway station and the Riverside cricket ground within walking distance. Rooms range from courtyard bedrooms in the converted stabling and mews, decorated on a medieval theme, to castle rooms with four-poster beds and deep-set windows; ghost-seekers usually ask for the castle. There is ample free parking, though as a Grade I medieval building the castle has many stairs and uneven levels, so check accessibility with the hotel before booking.

The Elizabethan banquets in the Barons' Hall, with five courses, mead and costumed lords and ladies, run through the year and get a Halloween makeover in October. For the ghosts themselves, the hotel hosts "Night with the Spirits" events on selected dates, in which a paranormal team leads guests into parts of the castle not normally open, and there is a Lily of Lumley escape room for those who prefer their scares scripted. Durham city, with its cathedral, castle and riverside walks, makes an easy day out from the hotel.