A spooky stay

The first tourists to stay in Cornwall's Godolphin House were the grand Tudor pile's only guests ? only living ones anywayWe grew used to finding strangers transfixed on our doorstep each morning at Godolphin. Or staring yearningly at our courtyard through the granite arch. Even, on one memorable day, standing in the middle of our hall and refusing to leave. "Are you in charge?" an enraged woman demanded, giving up on me and turning on my 16-year-old son.We were none of us "in charge"; we'd merely rented this amazing Tudor house from the National Trust for a weekend. But it was hard to persuade any of the strangers to go away: they sensed the falter in our explanation, the guilt in my note on the 500-year-old oak front door saying that although the beautiful gardens were open, the house was closed to the public. Godolphin had got them, as it had us, and they were determined to stay.Margaret Blagge, a friend of 17th-century diarist John Evelyn, would have understood. She married the estate owner, Sidney Godolphin, in London in 1675, and the ancestral home in the West Country gripped her imagination. She would never see it alive, though: within three years she died in childbirth, leaving instructions that her body be transported to Godolphin.In the early 20th century the artist Sidney Elmer Schofield first glimpsed the house through a gap in a hedge while on a family holiday: when he heard years later that it might be for sale, he drove 300 miles from Suffolk to buy it, and devoted the rest of his life to restoring it.The 600-acre estate has belonged to the National Trust since 2000, but the development manager Malcolm Smitheram predates that. He came 20 years ago as caretaker for the Schofield family, and says he still often feels the presence of Sidney's wife Mary (who died in 2008) sitting in the chimney arch, her mastiff Gideon's head on her knee, even though the old fireplace has been replaced by a mammoth new cooking range ? a magnificent sham, with a digital control panel that could drive a jet fighter hidden behind a dear little enamelled door.The gardens are open to the public from March to the end of October, and visitors can tour the house in the first week of each month. But in the intervening weeks the house is now available to let (the trust calls it a "holiday cottage"). This summer, we were the first family since the Schofields to stay there. We toasted all the dead artists, poets, politicians, soldiers, horse-breeders and chancers who have lived here when we laid our first meal on the immense dining table.When I first saw Godolphin, in torrential rain last winter, it was a skeleton. Taking over the house after Mary's death, the trust made plans for greater public access. But to its horror, it discovered the structure was failing: Tudor joists sagging, chunks of plaster falling from Jacobean ceilings. Stripping it back to its bones, the trust found that although the granite will stand for ever, timbers were so decayed that they ended inches short of the walls. The restoration, retaining every salvageable inch of timber, plaster and stone, is astonishing: work finished two hours before we arrived.The house sleeps 12 sumptuously: the teenage cousins had a four-poster bed each, and could retire to separate drawing rooms. Our only complaint was that the new heating system, threaded invisibly through the building and powered by a boiler in the 15th-century cellars, worked too well: we visited in summer, when the weather was golden, adding to the atmosphere of a place slightly at an angle to real life.Tin and copper mining and a judicious bit of shipwreck salvaging made the Godolphins rich. By the mid-17th century their home had grown to 100 rooms around grand courtyards, with light flooding through stone mullioned windows into chambers fine enough to entertain passing royalty, and a pillared loggia in the height of Palladian fashion.The dining room got its carved ceiling and linenfold panelling after a Portuguese ship sank nearby in 1526. William Godolphin and his aristocratic neighbours rode down to the shore to investigate rumours of looting, and removed for safekeeping gold bullion and other treasure. The King of Portugal protested: Godolphin and his friends, also the local magistrates, held a formal inquiry in Helston and found they had acted perfectly properly.In the 19th century, half the buildings were knocked down and the rest became a farm, hens pecking around the great hall, potatoes set for chitting on the deep windowsills of the King's Chamber.Godolphin is within half an hour's drive of attractions including Land's End (don't bother), the Eden Project, St Ives (do have a lunch of locally sourced food at Porthminster Beach Cafe, 01736 795352, porthminstercafe.co.uk) and Helston's local history museum ? but we found it difficult to force ourselves to go anywhere.Local people were avidly curious to know more of the reincarnation of a house about which they had heard so many stories. "Have you heard anything?" "Have you seen anything?"Well ... yes, actually. The cynical teenagers heard nothing, but my mother was woken by the sound of a military band in the small hours; my brother ? smoking under the stars ? heard voices in the locked inner courtyard speaking a language he realised he could not understand. I heard footsteps crunching on gravel and the outer gate and hall door open, and ran down to greet a welcome guest just in time for dinner to find ... nobody there, and both doors locked.Sounds carry strangely in such an old and oddly shaped house. Floorboards creak. Godolphin's only attestable ghost is Margaret Blagge, who John Evelyn called "that blessed Saint now in heaven", after she died of puerperal fever far away in London. Only her body came ? in a procession with outriders wearing armorial crests, one of which hangs in the dining room, despite her saying, in her touching last letter: "I believe if I were carried by sea, the expense would not be very great." The coffin lay in state in the room where my sister-in-law slept ? she was startled over our weekend by a door suddenly opening. Many people claim to have seen Margaret walking in the garden.We scattered back to Dublin, London and Barcelona haunted by the house. If newly dead Margaret came and could never bear to leave, the Kennedys completely understand.? Three nights' self-catering at Godolphin House costs from �769. Contact 0844 800 2070, nationaltrustcottages.co.ukCornwallSelf-cateringFamily holidaysThe National TrustHalloweenMaev Kennedyguardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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