Amberley Castle
Amberley, West Sussex
Paranormal Tip: Book rooms near herstmonceux room for the best chance of supernatural encounters!
Amberley Castle's ghost lore centres on a servant named Emily and on disturbances linked to the building's defensive past. Across the research sources, Emily is described as a young woman in service at the castle who entered a relationship with the resident bishop, became pregnant, and ran to the battlements after he rejected her. Her death by a fall from the castle walls forms the emotional core of the haunting tradition. Witnesses describe a female apparition moving through corridors, crying, laughing sharply, or appearing bloodied after the fall. The Herstmonceux Room is repeatedly named as the chamber most closely linked to her presence, partly because it gives access to the battlements. Guests there report waking suddenly with the sense that someone is in the room, finding pressure on the bed, or seeing a woman standing over them before the figure disappears. Several accounts describe people leaving the room in the middle of the night and refusing to re-enter until daylight. Emily is not presented as a distant background story. She is treated in the source material as the castle's principal resident spirit, tied to grief, rejection and a violent death at a precise point in the building. The second cluster of activity is more martial. Guests and writers record the sound of hurried footsteps racing towards the battlements, as if men are moving to defend the walls. Some accounts add raised voices or arguments in empty corridors. These disturbances fit the castle's documented military episodes, especially the fortification campaign of 1377 and the Civil War damage of 1643. Together the stories place the haunting in two overlapping registers, personal tragedy inside the rooms and remembered conflict along the defensive circuit. That dual structure gives Amberley a stronger haunted identity than a single-room ghost story. The castle feels occupied by both one unresolved personal crisis and a wider memory of watchmen, retainers or soldiers still responding to danger along the walls.
The best-known haunting at Amberley Castle is Emily. The sources agree on the broad sequence. Emily worked at the castle while it was still a bishop's residence. She entered a secret relationship with the bishop, became pregnant, and approached him expecting protection. Instead he rejected her and the child. She then ran up the spiral stair and threw herself from the battlements. That narrative appears in Spooky Isles, Celtic Castles, Haunted Rooms and SpiritShack, with small differences in tone but the same core details, including the battlements, the pregnancy and the bishop's refusal. Modern sightings attach a physical form to that story. Emily is described as a female apparition in the corridors and near the battlements, often accompanied by crying, sudden laughter or the impression of shock after impact. Several reports place her in the Herstmonceux Room, where she is described as sitting on the bed, disturbing sleepers, or standing over guests who wake in panic. The room's connection to the battlements keeps the geography of the haunting tightly aligned with the story attached to her death. The haunting gains force from repetition. The same room name, the same route to the wall and the same emotional trigger recur across sources, which is why Emily has become the castle's defining ghost rather than one more stray figure in a large old building. Witnesses also report a broader atmosphere in the castle after dark. Empty corridors carry raised voices, while footsteps run towards the wall-walk as if defenders have been summoned to a breach. That pattern appears in both Celtic Castles and SpiritShack, where the sounds are understood as soldiers or castle men moving to defend the place. No individual names are attached to those figures, but the imagery suits a fortified residence that had to prepare for attack and that later suffered real damage in the Civil War. The contrast between Emily and the battlement disturbances gives Amberley Castle a layered haunting profile. One thread is emotional and domestic, fixed on betrayal, a private room and a single death. The other thread is communal and defensive, expressed through movement, noise and the sense of a building bracing for conflict. Neither requires invented scenery. The existing walls, tower stairs, gatehouse and surviving defensive circuit already provide the setting that witnesses describe. Even the castle's surviving plan supports the haunting tradition. Guests can still trace how quickly someone moved from chamber to stair, from stair to wall, and from the gatehouse approaches to the upper defensive route. That architectural clarity is a large part of why Amberley's haunting stories continue to feel specific rather than generic.
Amberley Castle's central ghost story follows Emily, a servant whose death on the battlements still shapes reports from the Herstmonceux Room and the castle corridors.
Amberley Castle's second major haunting consists of running footsteps and raised voices moving towards the walls, as if defenders are still answering an alarm.
11th to 14th century core, with the site granted in 683, timber lodge built in 1103, stone hall from 1140, and major fortification in 1377
Residence and fortified summer palace for the Bishops of Chichester
Amberley Castle stands on a site with documented ecclesiastical history stretching back to 683, when the land was endowed to the See of Selsey by Cædwalla of Wessex. After the Norman Conquest the bishops moved to Chichester, but the estate remained in episcopal hands. The first recorded structure was a timber-framed hunting lodge built by Bishop Ralph de Luffa in 1103, with a parish church erected across from it. In 1140 Bishop Seffrid I replaced the original building with a stone hall, and around 1200 Bishop Seffrid II added an east wing. Between 1305 and 1337 a larger Great Hall was constructed and the residence became known as the Bishop of Chichester's summer palace. The defining military character came in 1377 when Bishop William Reade secured a licence to crenellate during the Hundred Years' War, prompted by fears of French coastal raids. He built curtain walls reaching approximately 40 feet in height, a twin-tower gatehouse to the south with towers rising to approximately 58 feet, corner towers, gun loops on the northern garderobe tower, a water-gate on the west wall and a Norman postern on the east. The castle remained associated with the bishops until Bishop Robert Sherborne's death in 1536, the last Bishop of Chichester to occupy it. During the English Civil War, a Royalist tenant refused to pay taxes to Parliament. In 1643 Parliament ordered Sir William Waller to attack. The assault destroyed 20 to 30 feet of the curtain walls and levelled the Great Hall. The castle surrendered in 1644. Parliament seized it from the Church and sold it through the Office of Sequestration of Estates to John Butler, a London cloth merchant, who built the Manor House from the ruins of the Great Hall. Ownership was restored to the Bishop of Chichester after the Restoration of 1660. In 1872 the castle was sold to Robert Curzon, 14th Baron Zouche, who used it as a hunting lodge. Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk, purchased it in 1893 and carried out extensive renovations. The castle passed to the Emmet family in 1926, then to Hollis Baker in 1982, who reinstated the 2.5-tonne medieval portcullis. Joy and Martin Cummings converted it to a country house hotel in 1988. Andrew and Christina Brownsword now own the castle, which operates as part of the Relais & Châteaux collection.
Medieval fortified manor with curtain walls of approximately 40 feet enclosing a rhomboid stonework enclosure, twin-tower gatehouse, Norman postern, water-gate, corner towers, and later Tudor and Georgian additions including the Manor House built from the ruins of the Great Hall
Female apparition, crying, sudden laughter, bed disturbance, sense of presence in bedrooms, figure standing over sleepers, disembodied voices, arguments in empty corridors, rapid footsteps, activity on battlements
Herstmonceux Room, the battlements, corridors leading towards the wall-walk, upper staircases and hallways near the castle's historic rooms
Guest and staff reports collected by Spooky Isles, Celtic Castles and SpiritShack describe Emily appearing in or near the Herstmonceux Room, sitting on beds or waking sleepers, while other witnesses hear footsteps and voices rushing towards the battlements. Several accounts describe guests leaving the room before morning after an encounter.
The source set documents repeated guest testimony and coverage by paranormal publications, but it does not provide evidence of a major televised investigation or a named formal research team working on site. Amberley Castle's haunting reputation is sustained through hotel lore, ghost tourism writing and recurring witness reports rather than a single flagship investigation.
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Church Street, Amberley, Arundel, West Sussex BN18 9LT
Phone: +44 1798 831992
Status: Operating
Award-winning restaurant, afternoon tea served daily, croquet lawn, falconry experiences, archery, gourmet dining breaks, seasonal offers, private events and weddings
24-hour reception, on-site parking, direct train service from London Victoria to Amberley Station (approximately 1 hour 20 minutes), approximately 35 miles from Gatwick Airport, 60 miles from Heathrow Airport, assistance dogs accepted throughout, but the medieval layout means some routes involve historic steps and uneven surfaces
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Book Your Paranormal Adventure A practical guide to the haunted landscape around Amberley Castle, linking the castle's own ghost lore with Arundel's prison and castle hauntings, the divided church at St Nicholas, the ruins of Bramber Castle, Parham House and the folklore of Chanctonbury Ring.
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A factual history of Amberley Castle from its Anglo-Saxon land grant and medieval bishop's palace to Civil War damage, aristocratic ownership and modern hotel life.
Read HistoryBook your stay and experience Emily and the other spirits firsthand. Many guests report paranormal encounters during their visits.