Closing of Rooms on account of Death

In the *Spectator*, No. 110., July, 1711, one of Addison's papers on Sir Roger de Coverley, the following passage occurs: "My friend, Sir Roger, has often told me with a good deal of mirth, that at his first coming to his estate he found three parts of his house altogether useless; that the best room in it had the reputation of being haunted, and by that means was locked up; that noises had been heard in his long gallery, so that he could not get a servant to enter it after eight o'clock at night; that the door of one of his chambers was nailed up, because there went a story in the family that…