Despite dying in Saharanpur, India in 1827, the ghost of John Thurlow Reade reportedly appeared to his mother near his childhood home, Ipsden House.

John was the oldest of 11 siblings, and was academically gifted, having been made head boy of Rugby school during his time there. Although he was in line to inherit his father's fortune, he instead chose to join the East India Company so that he might send money home to allow his siblings to receive the same education that he had enjoyed. John shipped out to India in 1817, and for the next decade rose steadily through the ranks of the Company, communicating with his family back home by letter.

Mail from India came highly infrequently, and the arrival of news from India was a rare treat for John's mother, so much so that when letter was expected, Mrs Reade was in the habit of walking out to meet the postman on his rounds so that she might receive the letter all the sooner.

One day she set out the Wallingford road with the intention of meeting the postman, and it was here that she witnessed the ghost of her son walking towards her, apparently in so much distress that it convinced her that her son must be dead.

Mrs Reade was so convinced by the meaning of her vision, that she went as far as arranging a memorial service for her son with the local vicar. Mrs Reade's great fear was that, having died in India, her son would not have been given a proper Christian burial.

Mrs Reade's fears were confirmed some weeks later when a letter from India finally arrived with the sad news that John had died of dysentery, and been buried by his servants in the jungle.

John's death weighed heavily on the whole Reade family, with his youngest brother Charles writing 'The house is like a great mirror cracked across since the news of John’s death arrived'.

John's younger brother Edward followed him into service in India, and when he retired to England in 1860 he had a monument erected in John's memory on the edge of a field to the west of the house, with an inscription 'Alas! My poor brother.'

An article on the Henley Standard website claims that the monument was actually constructed to 'lay the ghost' of John Thurlow Reade, although there is nothing given to substantiate this claim, beyond the assertion that he would have been distressed not to have been given a Christian burial. If John's ghost walked after his death, it also seems strange that his family would have waited 33 years to attempt to lay his ghost in this manner.

An article in a 1903 issue of Folklore - A Quarterly Review includes a similar local legend, the telling of which is attributed to 'old Mrs. Kislingbury, of Ipsden, 8th August, 1897.'

The events, which Mrs Kislingbury says happened 80 years previously, concern an unnamed son of the Reade family who fell in love with a girl from the local village. However, his parents disapproved of the match and forbade the lovers from marrying. On realising his love was not to be, the son joined the army and was killed in battle a few years later, and the girl died of a broken heart.

Mrs. Kislingbury claims that the son's ghost returned to haunt his former home, and was seen walking about the house with his head carried under his arm! His ghost was later laid 'in Lane End Pond, just at the end of the village on the Wallingford Road.'

Although no name is given for the son, the story reads like a variation on the John Thurlow Reade legend. 'Lane End Pond' can be found next to the Reade memorial, marked on old maps as 'Layend Pond'.

I suspect that the facts about the sad death of John Thurlow Reade may have been embellished through many years of retelling to add the details about the broken-hearted lovers, and walking ghost.

This story is quite similar with another well-known Oxfordshire legend, that of Hampton Pye of Faringdon. Pye was another son of an wealthy family who disapproved of his desire to wed a local barmaid. Pye too joined the army, where he had his head blown off by a cannon ball and later returned to haunt his family as a headless ghost.

Ipsden House is also notable for the small stone circle that stands within the grounds. Although at first glance it may appear ancient, it was actually also constructed in 1827. I've not been able to find out whether it too is a monument to the late John Thurlow Reade, or whether the date of it's creation is just a coincidence. A stone circle seems a strange choice, given the firm protestant faith of Mrs Reade, but folly's of this kind are not uncommon. Another example can be found 10 miles west at Stonor Park.

The monument and stone circle are not the only unusual building projects associated with the Reade family. Another of John's brothers, Edward Anderton Reade, was also a civil servant in India, and it was a conversation Edward had with the Maharajah of Benares, Ishree Pershad Naryan Singh, that inspired the latter to fund a very unusual project in the village of Stoke Row, Oxfordshire.

Edward had told the Maharajah of the trials and tribulations faced by the people of his home village of Stoke Row on account of the difficulty of finding clean drinking water. The Maharajah remembered this, and years later funded the construction of an elaborate well at Stoke Row. Known as the Maharajah's Well, this ornate well has a golden elephant above the well mechanism. The well was opened in 1863 and remained in use until the Second World War.