Haunted London (5 page)

ST MAGNUS THE MARTYR, CITY

By London Bridge (until 1750 the only bridge across the Thames), almost hidden among the tall buildings of Lower Thames Street, stands the church of St Magnus the Martyr. The church is of very ancient foundation and there is reference to it in confirmation of a grant of 1067, but even the origin of the dedication is uncertain. Some authorities maintain that the church was dedicated to a Christian who suffered martyrdom in Caesarea at the time of Aurelian, AD 273, while others agree with Professor Worsaae that the dedication is to a Norwegian jarl, killed in the twelfth century on one of the Orkney islands and buried in Kirkwall Cathedral, which is also dedicated to him. A previous rector of St Magnus brought to the church a stone from the apse of the ruined church of St Magnus on the island of Egilshay and a piece of a chest in which the saint’s body was found.

The original St Magnus was the first church to be destroyed in the Great Fire, for the fire started nearby and the Monument, erected to commemorate the fire and containing 345 black marble steps, is but a stone’s throwaway. Among the collection of relics in the church there is ‘a piece of the Holy Cross’, ‘duly authenticated’, and the famed Falstaff cup, referred to in Henry IV Part 2 and probably used by Shakespeare.

In the south-east corner of the church lie the remains of Miles Coverdale, who produced the first complete English edition of the Bible, and it is here that some visitors have seen the unexplained figure of a cowled man, stooping in silent contemplation — a figure that disappears when it is approached. Other visitors have noticed a peculiar feeling of sadness and anticipation in the vicinity of the white marble inscription to the former rector of St Magnus; still others have remarked upon an indefinable impression that they are being watched.

A church worker saw this figure on three occasions. It appeared twice whilst she was sewing in the vestry, the first time walking around her and then disappearing through a solid wall, and on the second occasion it suddenly appeared beside her, so close that she could see the ribbing of the serge material of the cassock. As she looked up, she realized to her horror that the figure had no head, and becoming very frightened she left the room without looking back. The third occasion was during Mass early one Sunday morning. As the worker turned to put her money in the collection box, she saw the priest, wearing the same serge cassock, walk up the nave and into the row behind her. At first she thought it was a real priest, but then she remembered the figure she had seen in the vestry. She turned round quickly, but there was no one there, and when she questioned the verger he said that no one had come into the church during the service.

Some time later, a young electrician worked in the church for several days, making alterations and checking the wiring. Afterwards, as he was about to leave, he asked the rector about the priest who watched him so intently and who seemed to be there one moment and gone the next — a priest who wore a serge cassock. And one Easter time a man in the choir told the rector that he had passed a robed figure on the stairs and when he looked round afterwards he saw the figure disappear into one of the old walls of St Magnus. This man, a very practical and level-headed individual, was very frightened by the experience.

A former rector, the Revd H. J. Fynes-Ointon, told me that he had no doubt whatever but that the church was haunted by a robed figure and he thought it might be the ghost of a former priest at St Magnus. His verger, who had been a regular soldier, a reliable and unimaginative man, had seen the ghost one Sunday evening after service. Everyone had left and the verger had locked the doors but all the lights were still on. He was busy putting some things away in a cupboard behind a side altar when he saw the figure of a priest immediately in front of him. He was on the point of asking how the priest had entered the locked church when the figure, only a matter of four or five feet from him, suddenly stooped down and seemed to be searching the floor. The verger, puzzled, asked whether he could help —what had been lost? Whereupon the figure straightened up, looked at the verger and smiled, and then faded away to nothing in front of his eyes. The rector told me that a former verger’s wife had twice seen a short, black-haired priest kneeling in the Lady Chapel. She particularly noticed that the figure wore an old-fashioned ‘sort of cassock’ and when she spoke the figure turned towards her and then disappeared. The same thing happened on both occasions.

Several witnesses of the ghostly priest at St Magnus have described the figure as ‘cowled’ or ‘wearing a hooded robe’ and it is interesting to recall that Miles Coverdale, in the vicinity of whose grave such a figure has been seen, was a friar and one-time Bishop of Exeter.

ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, CITY

One of the little-known stories about St Paul’s Cathedral (reputedly built on the site of a temple to Diana, a fertility goddess) concerns a secret stairway and the haunting of the Kitchener Memorial Chapel, formerly All Souls’ Chapel, at the extreme west end of the cathedral. In fact, the cathedral is honeycombed with secret passages and stairways and it is likely that many have yet to be discovered.

The Kitchener Memorial Chapel used to be haunted by a former official of the cathedral. He appeared in old-fashioned clerical clothes and had a fondness for whistling! Vergers and other members of the cathedral staff would find themselves being followed by the apparition, who, every now and then, would annoy and alarm them with a high-pitched but not unmusical whistle. After a time, it was noticed that the old parson whistled more often and more loudly in the vicinity of the Kitchener Chapel and at one particular spot in the chapel he would often disappear into the stonework.

When some structural repairs were being undertaken in the chapel a hidden doorway was discovered at the place where the whistling ghost often disappeared and when the little door was opened a winding stairway was disclosed that ascended through the heart of the cathedral to the dome.

When new stonework was incorporated in the renovations in the Kitchener Chapel, a secret stone doorway was fitted to the staircase that can be made to slide back by pressing a spring, but the stairway is one of a number of parts of the cathedral that is seldom shown to visitors. Special permission is required even to enter the Kitchener Memorial Chapel and it was hastily re-arranged when I entered, although as far as I know the ghost has not been seen for many years now.

St Paul’s Cross, the open-air pulpit that has never been used for preaching, beyond the north-east corner of the cathedral, is built on the site of the old cross, the foundations of which were discovered six feet below ground level in 1879. The old St Paul’s Cross, first mentioned in 1194, was called by Carlyle ‘a kind of Times newspaper of the Middle Ages’ since it was the official pulpit not only of London but of the whole country. Here, in 1441, Roger Bolingbroke, necromancer, was exposed with all his instruments during a sermon and he was afterwards ‘drawn, hanged and quartered’. In 1538, a crucifix, the Rood of Grace from Boxley Abbey, which had eyes that opened and closed and lips that seemed to speak, was exposed as having ingenious secret springs and was thrown down amid derision.

Before the Protestant Reformation the cathedral possessed many relics including ‘a piece of the true cross’, stones from the Holy Sepulchre and the Mount of Ascension, some hair of Mary Magdalene and some blood of St Paul. Legend has it that the fire in the eleventh century destroyed everything but left unharmed the resting-place of St Erkenwald, Bishop of London, buried about AD 700, and for centuries pilgrims flocked to the tomb and lavished riches of all kinds upon it. During the reign of Richard II, one Richard de Preston, ‘a citizen and grocer’, presented a remarkable sapphire that was supposed to cure infirmities of the eyes. Sacrifices in the shape of a doe in winter and a fat buck in summer were offered at the high altar for some centuries during the Middle Ages.

WEST SMITHFIELD, CITY

A spot so full of historical associations as Smithfield is likely to be haunted by echoes from the past. St Bartholomew’s Hospital is here, the oldest hospital in England where men were treated who suffered from wounds sustained at the Battle of Hastings and from later famous battles such as Crecy, Agincourt, Naseby, Blenheim, Waterloo, the Crimean war and, of course, two world wars. For centuries, traders in clothing and food have held markets at Smithfield and as far back as 1180 it was famous for its horse races and the ‘show of fine horses for sale’. It stands on the site of an ancient tournament and jousting ground, where Edward III held festivities that lasted for seven days in honour of his mistress Alice Pierce (or Perrers) in 1374; Richard II held tournaments in 1390 attended by sixty knights from all over Europe, and it was frequently used as a duelling ground, for Shakespeare mentions a duel in which a ’prentice fought his master whom he had accused of treason. St Bartholomew’s Fair was instituted in the reign of Henry I and held annually for more than seven centuries. Ben Jonson used it as the subject of his play, written in 1614, and in 1668 Pepys met an extraordinary performing horse, a ‘mare that tells money, and many other things to admiration; and among others, came to me when she was bid to go to him of the company that most loved a pretty wench in a corner. And this did cost me 12
d
. to the horse which I had flung him before, and did give me occasion to kiss a mighty belle fille.’

But, most of all, Smithfield (originally Smoothfield) is famous in history as a place where many executions were carried out, and where many religious offenders were burned at the stake. At a spot known as ‘The Elms’ (from a clump of trees that grew there) on St Bartholomew’s Eve in 1305 William Wallace (
c
. 1272-1305), the Scottish patriot, was executed, together with his servant and two Scottish knights. In 1530, a cook named Roose (or Rose) was boiled alive for having put poison in the soup served to the Bishop of Rochester’s household, resulting in seventeen cases of poisoning and two deaths. In 1538, a prior of the Observant Convent at Greenwich was suspended in a cage over fire and roasted to death for denying the supremacy of Henry VIII.

It has been calculated that during the reign of Mary 270 persons were burnt to death in England for heresy, the great majority at Smithfield. The usual place of burning was immediately opposite the entrance to the church of St Bartholomew the Great, with the victim facing the east so that the great gate of the church was in front of him. The prior was generally present. In 1849, the exact site of the burnings was discovered during some excavations whilst a sewer was being laid. Three feet below the surface were found un-hewn stones, covered with ashes and charred human bones. At the same spot, strong oak posts were discovered in a fire-blackened condition together with a staple and ring.

Small wonder then that even today ghostly groans and occasional blood curdling shrieks are said to be heard by people passing this way at night. There have been reports of people hearing the crackling noise of burning faggots and wood, and occasionally people have smelt the appalling stench of burning flesh.

THE ADELPHI THEATRE, STRAND

The late Ellaline Terriss (Lady Hicks) first told me about the Adelphi Theatre ghost, for she was the daughter of William Terriss, the actor-manager who was stabbed to death on December 16 1897 at the doorway in Maiden Lane; his ghost haunted the theatre and a nearby Underground station for years afterwards, and perhaps still does. William Terriss had been a sheep farmer in the Falkland Islands (where Ellaline was born) and he had been a horse-breeder, a gold-miner and a sailor before becoming an actor. He had great success on the stage and was scoring a considerable triumph as the vigorous lead in the thriller
Secret Service
in which an ambitious and jealous man named Richard Prince had a very small part. Prince really believed that he could play the lead better than the experienced and popular Terriss and furthermore he thought he would be given the part, if only Terriss was not in the way... That chill December evening William Terriss dined early with a friend and at seven o’clock he made his way into ill-lit Maiden Lane. He was just opening his private door at the back of the theatre when Richard Prince sprang at him from out of the shadows and without a word stabbed Terriss twice with a dagger he had bought that afternoon, and the forty-nine-year-old actor slumped to the ground, fatally wounded. He was carried into the theatre and died twenty minutes later, his head supported by his distraught leading lady, Jessie Milward. Those who were with him at the end say that just before he died he mumbled something that sounded like, ‘I will come back.’

Ellaline’s husband, Sir Seymour Hicks, went to Bow Street police station to identify Prince, who had been seized in Maiden Lane, and found the murderer screaming and cursing and foaming at the mouth. Back at the Adelphi, Sir Seymour knelt by the dead body of his father-in-law and said afterwards ‘In utter silence I heard a voice say to me, “Are there men living such fools as to think there is no hereafter?” and I knew beyond doubt that I would meet William Terriss again.’ At the subsequent trial Prince was found guilty of murder, but insane, and he spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor where he died in 1937 at the age of seventy-one. Soon after the murder, actors and actresses at the Adelphi were disturbed by strange tapping and rapping noises that seemed to emanate from the dressing rooms used by William Terriss and his leading lady, and this was just the beginning. Over the succeeding years, unexplained footsteps, the strange behaviour of mechanically sound lifts, odd noises, strange lights, the overwhelming impression of someone being present in the deserted theatre at night (especially in the vicinity of the two main dressing rooms) and the feeling of being watched, all these apparently inexplicable impressions and occurrences have been attributed to the ghost of William Terriss, and his ghost has been seen in Maiden Lane.

One summer evening in 1957, a visitor to London who knew nothing of William Terriss or the ghost story, encountered a tall and handsome figure dressed in old-fashioned clothes, seemingly quite solid and normal in every way. A figure that passed close by but which disappeared completely at the doorway where Terriss had been struck down.