The owners of the real Wolf Hall, on which the BBC series is based, are four siblings who say it is haunted and “a bit of a mess”.

The site of the legendary Tudor manor, near Burbage, is now home to the Binney family – three brothers and a sister who inherited it from their mother when she died in 2013.

They live where Wolf Hall, home to Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, once stood, even though her famous house is now gone.

But ancient buildings where the home once sat still remain – Wolf Hall Manor where the Binney family live and farm buildings at the end of a muddy track.

The 12-bedroom Wolf Hall Manor was inherited by Dominic Binney, 30, and his siblings Theo, 25, Orlando, 23, and Genevieve, 20.

Dominic is now working to clear and clean the estate. He said: “We are just trying to clean up the house and not because of the attention. Tenants did what they wanted and we need to change it all. It’s a bit of a mess and it’s now time to clean up.”

Dominic added: “We don’t know what happened here, good things, bad things.

“What secrets lie buried in the dirt, you just don’t know. A lot of the men who lived here were apparently beheaded.

“Over the years we have had many people feeling a presence here that makes their hair stand on end.

“I’ve felt and heard unexplained things. We had mediums and psychics come here to chase the ghosts away.”

Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall is named after the Seymours’ original medieval manor.

No one knows quite where the original house stood but it is thought to have been around the farm buildings on the nearby hill.

King Henry stayed there in the summer of 1535 when the fair Jane caught his eye.