Underbank Hall on Great Underbank has operated as a bank for well over a century, but the front portion of the building remains largely as it was, with oak-panelled rooms, a carved antique staircase, and an atmosphere that the original journalist described as entirely suited to ghosts.
The hall’s tradition of haunting centres on a fair lady in bridal attire, said to belong to the period when the Arden family occupied the building. The account that has been passed down concerns an old caretaker who lived in the hall for many years and who, lying awake in one of the panelled rooms one night, saw a half-light fill the chamber before a female figure emerged from the wall near the fireplace. She crossed the room silently, passed through a door into the room said to bear bloodstains on the floor, and disappeared in the direction of the stair. The young bank clerks laughed when he told them. He maintained the story to his dying day.
In 2009, a letter published in the Stockport and District Heritage Magazine described a separate encounter. A woman with family connections to the area described entering the bank and instinctively glancing toward the small window at the top of the staircase, where she sensed the presence of a girl of around six to ten years old with long fair hair, watching from the window as though waiting for someone to return.
