😱 The Ghost of the President’s Suite: Twickenham’s Haunted Painting

The ghost in the painting

If you are lucky enough to find your way into the President’s Suite at Twickenham Stadium, you’ll find yourself surrounded by the history of English rugby; the memorabilia, the trophies, the quiet weight of history. And the paintings, of course; all those wonderful paintings…

And that includes one painting in particular: The Roses Match, by William Barnes Wollen. 

But look a little more closely, and you will spot something else.

Something… well, something that is just not quite right.

Painted in 1895, The Roses Match depicts a clash between Lancashire and Yorkshire – the two great rivals, caught in a muddy, chaotic surge of forward play. 

It’s a glorious piece, dynamic and full of life; but there’s one detail that has unsettled viewers for over a century. Something that at first you think might be a trick of the light, but then – the more you look, the more the image starts to gain form…

There, just ahead of the stern-looking match referee: the faint suggestion of another figure. A half-seen spectre of a player, caught mid-stride.

The ghost of Twickenham.

A phantom left behind in the brush strokes. 

The ghostly form of a long dead player who refuses to leave the field…

The story of the Ghost of the Roses Match comes down to us through legend. It is the story of Thomas Gladwin, 22 years of age, fierce and full of life; a proud Yorkshireman who delighted on the rugby field – and this was to be his first Roses derby: the clash between the men of Lancashire and Yorkshire. 

But it was a match that he would never play.

Forced to stay late by his foreman at the works, he rushed as fast as he could to make the train to join his teammates. Even as he neared York station, he heard the controller’s shrill whistle blow and the pistons hiss into life, and spied the telltale sign of dusty soot-filled smoke escaping in puffs from the engine, as it began to draw away from the platform. 

Urgent in his mission to reach the train, he charged headlong across the cobbled street – and stepped straight in front of a four-team horse-drawn station wagon. 

His body was trampled under hoof, then crushed beneath the iron-rimmed wheels of the carriage that followed. His Yorkshire teammates had no way of knowing that young Thomas was merely yards away from joining them. 

Thomas clung to life for another few hours, drifting in and out of consciousness – until suddenly gasping, eyes wide, and a strange smile spreading across his face as he breathed his final, rattling breath at the stroke of 6 o’clock that evening… the very moment that the great match finished. 

As it turned out, York had triumphed over Lancaster – no wonder Thomas died with a smile on his face.

The following year, Wollen painted his now famous work – The Roses Match. And it is on this canvas that the ghost of Thomas Gladwin lives on, his spectral image forever playing the game that his earthly body never did…

The truth about The Roses Match painting

It is such a wonderful, chilling story… and so it almost feels rude to debunk and tell the truth of it! Especially on Halloween. And so, if you’d prefer to enjoy the moment, look away now (and come back to it tomorrow!)…

The truth behind the story – or at least, one of the preferred hypotheses about it, as nobody knows for sure – is in many ways as fascinating as the fiction, especially if you love your rugby…

The painting is real, of course, and the images here are true ones. It was indeed painted by Victorian artist Williams Barnes Wollen in 1895, and it does depict the Roses Match of 1894, which was won on that occasion by Yorkshire. 

The painting was lost for many years, eventually to be found in 1957, in a second-hand shop in Newcastle, by members of Yorkshire Rugby Club, who duly purchased it for £25 to be hung in their clubhouse. 

Eventually it found its way to the President’s Suite in the West Stand at Twickenham Stadium. During restoration work on the painting, conservators discovered that the ghostly figure had once been a real one, a Yorkshire player, who had been painted in but then painted out by the artist, Wollen himself. 

This was a decision not of accident, but of intent.

Wollen was not simply painting a rugby image, here; he was capturing a moment in a sport that was wracked by tension. 

The match he depicted took place during a period of deep division in the sport, leading soon to the schism that would split rugby into Union and League. 

Central to that turmoil was Rowland Hill, the then-president of the RFU, who was the stern-looking match referee that day and appears in the painting. However, in the original version, a player partially obscured Hill’s figure, and so the artist carefully – but imperfectly – removed him, so that Hill would feature more prominently. 

So, who was ‘the Ghost’ that’s not a ghost?

Researchers believe the painted-out man was most likely W. Donaldson of Manningham, a burly Scottish forward who featured front and centre – as it were – in the reports of the day. 

Described by the Athletic News in 1894 as “very prominent” in the loose rushes and a master goal-kicker, Donaldson’s performance that day was outstanding. But yet, in a twist of fate, he would soon find himself wrongfooted by rugby’s great divide.

Manningham joined the breakaway Northern Union in 1895 – the forerunner of today’s Rugby League. For Donaldson, this would mean his Rugby Union career were over – but perhaps he didn’t realise the implications. 

Injured and then sickening after a few matches playing for Manningham, Donaldson returned to his hometown of Hawick in Scotland to recuperate. And recuperate he did, fortunately – but having now found work in Hawick, when he tried to join his local rugby team – a team that still played its rugby as part of the Rugby Union – he found himself barred from playing, by merit of having played six matches for Manningham in the breakaway league, the rebellious Northern Union… 

Donaldson’s only option would have been to travel south to play rugby for a team signed up to that new northern league – something which simple economics did not allow him to consider. 

And so, he was forced to give up, and faded from the sport – one of many players caught in the politics that tore the game apart… a political decision enforced by none other than Mr. Rowland Hill, referee of the Roses Match that day in 1894, and president of the Rugby Football Union… 

Paranormal or not, it feels strangely poetic that Donaldson’s ghostly image should linger eerily in Wollen’s brushstrokes, to forever haunt the stern figure of Rowland Hill, the actions of whom in life, in a way, had haunted him.

Today, The Roses Match hangs in Twickenham’s most exclusive suite, a silent witness to so many post-match speeches and toasts, no doubt. But even should their curious eyes spy the spectral figure in the painting, few who stand before it will know the story of the missing player, or of the scandal and class struggle that swirled around rugby at the turn of the century.

And perhaps that is what makes this legend endure. The notion that the ghostly shape in the canvas might be something more; a trace of conscience and a reminder of the men who gave their bodies to the game long before the professional era began, and who became victims, perhaps, of politics and power-plays when all they wanted to do was to play.

On Halloween, when Twickenham Stadium falls quiet and the floodlights go dark, Donaldson will be there, the faintest outline of a fearsome player caught forever in the blood-pumping action of that forward play, chasing the oval ball throughout the mists of time.

And perhaps that’s fitting. Twickenham is a cathedral to rugby’s living spirit. Surely the ghosts of this great sport have earned their place here, too.