Trerice is located in Cornwall - a few miles from the seaside town of Newquay. It was built in 1573 by Sir John Arundell on the site of an earlier house. The fifth Sir John Arundell was appointed governor of Pendennis Castle after the outbreak of the Civil War. When Pendennis came under siege by the Parliamentarians in 1646, he stubbornly held out for five months until he could no longer bear the sight of women and children starving to death.

The Trerice estate remained in the ownership of the Arundells for over 400 years; in 1802 it passed to the Acland family of Killerton in Devon. They sold the estate in 1915 to the Cornwall County Council. The considerable lands around the house and garden were divided into farms and put on the market. Over the following decades the house changed hands several times before being purchased (in a ruinous condition) by the National Trust in 1953 for £14,000.

A guide book to Newquay written around the time of the Great War referred to Trerice as:

"...an ancient baronial mansion which the country people still declare to be haunted by the unhouseled spirit of a certain passionate Lord of Arundell, known in the neighbouring villages as 'the wicked lord' ... a delightful survival of the picturesque old days and the very ideal of an old haunted mansion ... grey, venerable, hedged in with dark cypresses dotting the moss-grown lawn ... the north wing of the old house was pulled down in the latter part of the nineteenth century, as no one would live in it, and all the personal possessions of 'the wicked lord', his desk, his papers, hunting and other gear, hurriedly burnt. For more than a century the place was left untouched...".

The north wing was completely rebuilt in local stone by the National Trust. Many of the odd happenings and hauntings at Trerice have been located there.

During the reconstruction of the north wing, workers reported sensing and hearing a ghostly presence. An unseen person walked past builders, making a sound like crinolines sliding across the floors. Staff and visitors also regularly smell perfume in empty rooms and corridors. Less frequently mentioned are sightings of Trerice's Grey Lady. She walks the north wing, crosses the Gallery and disappears, descending a non-existent circular staircase which once led down to the original entrance of the building.

The stables and stable yard are said to be haunted by the restless spirit of a lad who was trampled to death by bolting horses - enthusiastic collectors of ghost stories have asserted that the traumatic event is replayed at irregular intervals...and that sightings of the boy are an omen of death. Many visitors have experienced strange feelings of time standing still at Trerice; some have even got the impression that they have been transported into the past for a few short moments whilst exploring its rooms.