The Roman Soldiers of Treasurer’s House
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
One of York’s best-known modern ghost traditions concerns Harry Martindale, an apprentice heating engineer working in the cellar of Treasurer’s House in the 1950s. He later described hearing a sound and seeing a group of figures dressed as Roman soldiers pass through the cellar and towards a wall.
A memorable element of the account is that the figures seemed to walk below the modern floor level. York genuinely contains Roman archaeology beneath later buildings, but that archaeological context does not establish a supernatural explanation for the reported experience.
Source trail: National Trust, “The ghost stories of Treasurer’s House”; National Trust property history for Treasurer’s House.
Related Journal record: Ghosts of York.