Ordnance Survey – Great Britain's national mapping agency

Blenheim Palace gets the spooks

02 October 2007

Blenheim Palace has announced its big plans to celebrate Halloween.

Between 20 and 28 October the Oxfordshire palace will be getting into the ghostly spirit with a series of spooky tours for children, as part of its Halloween Horrors programme.

There will also be a creepy undertaker at the palace who will entertain children with ghost stories; Marguerite Osborne will tell haunted tales from around the world and a ghost train will ride around the gardens.

The event focuses on the haunted history of the palace, which is rumoured to be home to the ghost of 19th-century maid Grace Ridley, not to mention several dukes and duchesses.

Blenheim Palace is home to the 11th Duke of Marlborough, lies 13 kilometres from Oxford in Woodstock and was the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill.

The baroque palace is set in 2 100 acres of parkland landscaped by Capability Brown in the 1760s and was named a World Heritage site in 1987.

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