Sybil Penn, the Grey Lady of Hampton Court
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
A Hampton Court ghost tradition identifies a Grey Lady with Sybil Penn, a Tudor nurse associated with Edward VI and Elizabeth I. After her tomb at nearby Hampton church was disturbed during nineteenth-century rebuilding, stories circulated of a Grey Lady in the palace and the sound of a spinning wheel behind a wall.
The narrative follows a recurring British ghostlore pattern in which disturbance of a burial place is followed by uncanny events. That pattern is culturally significant without establishing supernatural causation.
Source trail: Historic Royal Palaces, historical haunting material for Hampton Court Palace.
Related Journal record: Haunted London.