The Brierley Haunted Farmhouse and the Grimethorpe Miners' Court Case

In 1902 Brierley was a rural village near Barnsley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Grimethorpe Colliery had opened inside its parish in 1895. James Laybourne farmed there, a name the papers also spelled Leybourne. Local memory places his house at Violet Farm, at the top of Brierley Hill.

The trouble began in the wash-house. "For a long time," the Barnsley reporting ran, "the dolly tub, etc., have been playing antics, jumping about suddenly." On one washing day the wash-tub was found overturned. It was set back on its bottom. The house was left. A watch was kept. And again the mysterious force overturned the tub. Another account says the clothes were still inside it, and the place had been locked up.

Inside, it grew bolder. Household articles were transferred from one room to another. Light furniture was "'flashed' from one side to another." A three-legged stool "has been known to dance around the kitchen." Cushions leaped into the fireplace with a suddenness, in Mr Laybourne's words, "that you could scarcely see them go." Small articles travelled up the stairs. The disturbances came chiefly in the forenoons, in the kitchen, while mysterious sounds could be heard upstairs.

Later reports added more. A sturdy gamekeeper said he had seen a kitchen chair topple over four times in succession, with no visible external stimulus. The ghost pelted the farmer with articles. It dragged clothes and pillows from the beds and piled them in a heap. On one occasion, it is said, the visitant was visible. Laybourne levelled his gun at it. He refrained from firing.

Rumour did the rest. Large numbers of people visited the farm. Considerable damage was done to property. The inmates were annoyed. Laybourne complained, and the police began to watch the house.

Sunday night. About ten o'clock. Two men were seen to enter the house. They were secured. Two more were found in the kitchen, eating what was left of the farmer's supper. Both prisoners were worse for drink.

At Barnsley West Riding Police Court, four Grimethorpe miners stood charged with being on the enclosed premises of James Laybourne: James Turner, John Scott, Benjamin Thompson and Jas. McQueen. Scott gave his defence. "I don't believe in ghosts … and I went to stay until 12 o'clock, but instead of the ghost it was constable who came." Defendants were fined 40s. each, and costs. Afterwards, a local head of spiritualists volunteered to visit the farm. No record says whether the visit happened.

By 10 April 1903 the story had reached the Ann Arbor Argus-Democrat. "Meanwhile tables and chairs still move about the premises," it reported. The American paper was gently amused. It likened the daily noises to the Wesleys' house, the disturbances at Epworth Rectory, and compared the farmer's belief to that of the believers in the Cock Lane ghost of 1762.

The court never ruled on the haunting. Its business was trespass. No scientist or psychical researcher is recorded at the farm, and no suspect was ever named. The pattern fits the classic poltergeist template: a family home, a kitchen and wash-house, daytime hours, small objects in motion. The usual suggestions in such cases are tricks within the household or pranks by outsiders drawn by the crowds. The Brierley case survives in the Yorkshire Evening Post archive series and on the village's own history pages.