Norfolk Arms - one of Glossop's Haunted Pubs

Built in 1823, and originally called The Tontine, The Norfolk Arms is now Glossop's town centre pub but was originally a busy coaching inn in the rapidly growing mill town, then called Howardtown.
 
There have been many reports of strange goings on in various parts of the Norfolk over the years, a lot of of which could undoubtedly be put down to the more usual sort of spirit available behind the bar! What used to be the Function Room was often the source of many weird happenings. Much of the uneasiness with which the room was regarded down to the fact that it was rarely used and so was usually closed off, in shadowy darkness and very chilly and still, there is a vast unexplored stretch of cellar underneath the floorboards. The Norfolk at one time provided bed and breakfast and 'Room 5' has gone down in the pub's history as being haunted. Nothing tangible has been reported but various overnight lodgers have reported an ill-feeling in the room.

However there have been sightings of both a little girl and a tall man which are very interesting and as yet are unexplained.
 
Those who have seen the girl describe her as being aged about 9 or 10, and some say that she wore her hair in ringlets. On a number of occasions she was seen running alongside the bar before ducking down out of sight, almost as though she was playing hide and seek with her observer. One time barman and relief manager Pete Stimpson described how he glimpsed her in the very early hours of the morning, long after the pub had emptied. "I saw a little blonde head bobbing along the top of the bar and suddenly she just bobbed down." He carefully checked the bar area and found nothing. She was seen again some time later one Sunday evening by a customer sitting in the Vault. He described what he saw as 'Just an ordinary looking little girl running past the doorway. No-one else seemed to see her, even though there were customers sitting in that side of the pub.' During recent extensive renovations to the pub, an old and previously unknown stairway down into the cellar was uncovered at around the point where the little girl is said to 'bob down'. This has led some to believe that she was in fact descending down an old set of steps, perhaps as she had done many times previously in the past.
 
The more unsettling figure of the tall man dressed in dark clothing has also been reported by both staff and customers. The man was strikingly tall, with some estimates putting his height at over six and a half feet! He was seen after hours walking through the Vault towards the side door of the pub. Barman James Tickle described him as 'wearing a long dark coat and with a very pale face' which he says was visible in the gloom. A regular customer described how, late one Sunday night, she saw the figure of a 'darkly-dressed' man sitting in one of the seats in the Lounge Bar. Convinced it was just someone hanging around she turned away momentarily only to find that the man had disappeared when she looked back. 

The Norfolk Arms was a stopping point for the coaches that regularly travelled over the Dark Peak towards Sheffield. The old stables which housed the horses still stand at the back of the pub and it has been suggested that bare-knuckle fighting regularly took place 'on the cobbles' between the coachmen. The coach companies did choose tough men, prizefighters and ex-convicts, to act as drivers on this perilous journey. Their life-expectancy in the job is said to have been twelve months and it's thought that the tall dark stranger frequenting the Norfolk could be the ghost of a former coachman.
 
In the summer of '98 the Norfolk Arms was extensively renovated and while no bodies were discovered beneath the floorboards various old everyday objects were found, including clay pipes and an old bone toothbrush. During the renovations themselves, unexplained bangings and loud knockings were heard downstairs on several occasions at night but investigation by those on the premises revealed nothing.