Are you brave enough to join GHT on a full blown ghost hunt at Whitstable Castle. On the night you will become the investigator and take part in all the experiments and investigate this very interesting location.The location over many years has had sightings and happenings that just cannot be explained.History :EARLY YEARS (1400 – 1790) In the 15th century there was a real need for alum, a mineral used mainly for fixing dyes in cloth so that colours did not run. Queen Elizabeth I gave a licence to search for deposits and a new site was found in the cliffs at Tankerton. The resulting product was called “copperas”. The first mine opened in 1588 and for 200 years the owners made a great deal of money from what was effectively  one of the world’s first chemical industries. A copperas house was built on the site that is now the almshouse. Other smelting works were built where the bowling green is, and also by the Harbour and on the site of the Castle Tea Gardens, on Tower Hill. Workers wore small metal masks which gave little protection from the terrible fumes. The pyrites were collected by the poor, left to decompose and processed by heating and cooling in huge vats. The resulting green vitriol crystallised to form copperas. The whole process was very hazardous, and a report in the “Kentish Gazette” of February 1788, describes how a worker slipped into a vat and died 26 hours later. As trade expanded, the Harbour grew in significance. THE FIRST MANOR HOUSE -THE PEARSON YEARS  (1790- 1835) The first dwelling connected with the Copperas Works stood between where the Castle is now and the Bowling Green. The Manor of Tankerton was inherited by Elizabeth Radford of London, in 1773. She bought more land and works and in 1780 married a London businessman and Freeman of the Glovers Company, Charles Pearson. He bought several copperas works, but the industry was by now in decline. Pearson began demolishing the copperas works around 1790 and used the bricks to build an octagonal tower. The black tar of the works can still be seen on the walls. The Pearson’s home was known as The Manor House and little is known about its layout except that in 1798 the chimney to the tower was taken down and a staircase put in its place. Pearson frequently rode on horseback to his London business, taking ten hours to reach Fleet Street. By 1820 they had five children and were living in Greenwich, but every summer they travelled by Thames Hoy to Kent. Pearson planned an extension at the Tower to accommodate his large family. The family spent the summer of 1821 at the enlarged home, bringing maids and bedding down by Hoy as they did not own a carriage. The local copperas industry was by now finished, larger deposits having been found in Yorkshire. Charles Pearson now embarked on a new venture “The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway” to link Canterbury traders with the Harbour. A company was formed with Pearson as one of the owners and main investor together with notable pioneers of the railway age, including George Stephenson. The railway was planned to end on land Pearson owned to the east of the harbour where he built a station, but there was opposition to this and the line finished at the harbour instead. Pearson, always eager not to miss an opportunity turned his station into a hotel. This became the first “Pearson’s Arms”. The building of the railway ran into delays and financial difficulties. Charles Pearson died in 1828, two years before the railway opened. His son Charles Pearson Junior, born in 1786, inherited the estate and carried on using the house as a summer residence .He married Eliza, daughter of the wealthy Lord Delaware, in 1810. The Tower fell into neglect and he sold it to his cousin by marriage Wynn Ellis.The rest of the history we will leave for you to discover on the night using the experiments