Today Clifton Hall sits empty – or does it? – waiting for the next stage in its long and varied history. Its most recent occupants, Anwar Rashid and his family, moved out citing spectres, screams, mysterious blood splattering and a general feeling that something otherworldly was afoot.

In the end, Mr Rashid stopped paying the mortgage so that the bank was forced to repossess the mansion.

But if ghostly apparitions have indeed haunted it for years, they weren't a problem for the family that lived there for nearly a century, and shared the hall's name.

The Clifton family's association with the area was bookended by two significant military encounters – the Norman invasion and the Second World War. In 1676, Dr Robert Thoroton wrote The Antiquities of Nottinghamshire, in which he traced the Clifton family backed to Sir Alvered de Clifton.

Nottingham Castle's guardian under William Peveril, Sir Alvered was a powerful man when the Domesday Book sowed him into history in 1086. But although he took his name from the land, he did not own it, nor was he lord of the manor. Until the 13th century that honour went to the de Rodes family. When they sold up to Sir Gervase de Clifton, a line that would last into the 20th century begun.

Dr Thoroton gave a thorough account of Sir Gervase, with the doctor even being present at the end of his life.

"He received from me the certain notice of his near approaching death," the doctor reported before going on to describe the post-mortem examination that revealed one of his kidneys had been "totally stopped with a wonderful great stone".

The Cliftons developed a tradition of free thinkers who often didn't conform to the conventions of the day. Sir Gervase was married seven times and made sure his eldest son, also Sir Gervase, didn't get the hall. Instead the estate went to one of the elder Sir Gervase's sons from his second marriage, Sir Clifford Clifton.

Generations of Cliftons made the place their home, eventually making the village a "closed" one that no outsider could relocate to – a decision that meant it remained a tiny place until well into the 20th century.

One notable 19th century resident was Sir Robert Clifton, whose early years as a sport-loving gambler didn't offer much clue as to his later life as a popular Nottingham MP.

After returning from a debt-enforced exile in Paris, he followed in the footsteps of his ancestors. But according to historical accounts he was friendlier with the working men, talking frankly and without reserve to them. He was elected to Parliament three times, although one was declared invalid after accusations of bribery. He died, unmarried, of typhoid fever in 1868. He was 43.

Since he had no children the house passed to cousins, though it remained in the family.

Centuries of wars couldn't dislodge the Cliftons from Clifton Hall, but post-war rebuilding could.

Just after the Second World War the Nottingham City Corporation bought up land for new housing – modern Clifton was taking shape. The city came calling with a compulsory purchase order. By the end of 1947, 950 acres of farmland had been bought. All of Clifton had been sold in 1950 and by 1958, there were no Cliftons left there. According to a 1999 report, most Cliftons decamped to Hampshire, although a few went as far as Australia.

The house's next incarnation would be as a girls' school, which opened for the 1958-59 school year. It remained for almost two decades, closing in 1976 after a sale to what was then Trent Polytechnic School of Education. That stage would last another two decades until the building, now part of Nottingham Trent University, sat next to the sprawling, modern Clifton campus.