One of my favourite guest blogs over the last few weeks has been Colin Higgins from Yorkshire, who - incidentally - was the winner of the compy in last month's `On the Track`.There was a good deal of tabloid fuss last year when Anwar Rashid, a multi-millionaire businessman with a 26 property portfolio handed back the keys to his luxury home Clifton Hall, claiming it was horribly haunted.
Unsurprisingly the internet was full of froth and conjecture ranging from claimed eyewitness accounts of paranormal activity at the house on the banks of the River Trent near Nottingham, to the inevitable opinion that Mr Rashid had bitten off more than he could chew in the credit crunch and wanted rid of the financial albatross.
There seems little evidence the Anwar business, which the red tops might call ‘a nursing home empire’ was in difficulty and one can only imagine a man used to extensive old houses might be familiar the normal run of bumps, creaks and apparently unmotivated groans such properties make.
What wasn’t mentioned in any of the reports I came across was that the Clifton family whose estate the house belonged to were linked to a curious omen.
A number of aristocratic lineages are host to portents of one animal kind or another; the Gormanston foxes, the Oxenham white bird, the Fowlers’ owl but the Clifton’s harbinger of doom was a sturgeon that travelled upriver past the house. As the Clifton family vacated the premises in the 1950s and the house has since been a school and a university annexe it’s hard not to link their decline with that of sturgeon in British rivers.
Two hundred years ago the fish was known in domestic fresh water and rare examples were recorded into the 20th century, indeed the biggest rod caught UK species is (depending on who you read and how big) a sturgeon of some hundreds of pounds - although I reserve doubts about the ability of even modern tackle to land such a beast, netted river giants are well attested. For more detail read: HERE
Occasional specimens turn up in British off-shore waters and a few have been placed in lakes for angling purposes (an aberration to match still water barbel and chub IMO) but it seems for the moment at least, the migrant sturgeon is absent from UK rivers.
Unsurprisingly the internet was full of froth and conjecture ranging from claimed eyewitness accounts of paranormal activity at the house on the banks of the River Trent near Nottingham, to the inevitable opinion that Mr Rashid had bitten off more than he could chew in the credit crunch and wanted rid of the financial albatross.
There seems little evidence the Anwar business, which the red tops might call ‘a nursing home empire’ was in difficulty and one can only imagine a man used to extensive old houses might be familiar the normal run of bumps, creaks and apparently unmotivated groans such properties make.
What wasn’t mentioned in any of the reports I came across was that the Clifton family whose estate the house belonged to were linked to a curious omen.
A number of aristocratic lineages are host to portents of one animal kind or another; the Gormanston foxes, the Oxenham white bird, the Fowlers’ owl but the Clifton’s harbinger of doom was a sturgeon that travelled upriver past the house. As the Clifton family vacated the premises in the 1950s and the house has since been a school and a university annexe it’s hard not to link their decline with that of sturgeon in British rivers.
Two hundred years ago the fish was known in domestic fresh water and rare examples were recorded into the 20th century, indeed the biggest rod caught UK species is (depending on who you read and how big) a sturgeon of some hundreds of pounds - although I reserve doubts about the ability of even modern tackle to land such a beast, netted river giants are well attested. For more detail read: HERE
Occasional specimens turn up in British off-shore waters and a few have been placed in lakes for angling purposes (an aberration to match still water barbel and chub IMO) but it seems for the moment at least, the migrant sturgeon is absent from UK rivers.
Perhaps a glimpse of a bone-headed fish the size of a midget submarine passing the bottom of the garden - having negotiated various locks and weirs - would itself bring on a seizure. Whether the portent is transferable to a new owner Mr Anwar is now unlikely to find out.
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