In semi-fiction, George Eliot's "Scenes of Clerical Life telling the Sad Fortunes of The Rev. Amos Barton", gives a thinly veiled picture of Chilvers Coton's church and village in the early 19th century in which she uses the name Shepperton. If anything real is to be gleaned for its use, it is perhaps a passing similarity. "Shepperton Manor" by John Mason Neale was contemporaneously written in 1844 fifteen years after he had spent six years living in the village. Old parts of Shepperton are said to be haunted by the ghost of a headless monk. Battlecrease Hall (formerly home to Walter Hayes, Ford executive and a founder of the company's Formula One programme) is alleged by its owners and certain visitors to have poltergeists.