The oldest parts of the building date back to the 13th century so it would be frankly unusual if it hadn't picked up at least one or two ghosts along the way. However, the ghost believed to haunt Le Manoir is actually of far more recent origin.

The building didn't receive its current (rather pretentious) title until the arrival of Raymond Blanc in 1984. Before this it was simply known as either Milton House or the Great House.

Milton House's last private owner was Hon. David Bewick-Copley (1929-1982), who inherited the title of Lord Cromwell from his father in 1966. It is Lord Cromwell's ghost who is believed to at one time haunt Le Manoir.

According to Edward Gill in Curiosities of Oxfordshire (1995), the supernatural activity began at Milton house not long after Lord Cromwell died in a riding accident in 1982. The house passed into the hands of his wife, and Lady Cromwell made the no-doubt difficult decision to put the house up for sale.

It was after the sale of the house had been finalised that Lady Cromwell started to notice strange happening around the house. In the master bedroom, Lady Cromwell would find the curtains opened and the bed turned down by unseen hands. She also found strange marks in the bath and shower that she couldn't account for.

Lady Cromwell started to believe that these weird occurrences were caused by her late husband's ghost, who she believed was furious because the building that had been his family's home for many centuries was being sold.

The solution that Lady Cromwell found for this was to call in a priest to lay her husbands unhappy ghost! Gill doesn't describe how this was accomplished, but it apparently did the trick as I've not found any further reports of ghostly activity at Le Manoir.