TheVillage Art

Ghosts, Murders & Scandals of Worcestershire came out too late for our October issue, but although Halloween is over, these stories are still perfect reading for a dark autumn night!

One of Burcot’s residents, Rae Fowler, has collected these stories from local people. She points out that they have all been told to her by people who have experienced the ghosts!

• During the Second World War, a bomb dropped on the village and destroyed one of the cottages known as Dale Cottages. A lady living there was killed. More recently, the cottages have been converted into one house. The present owner woke up one morning and found a lady leaning over her, who disappeared as she sat up.

The people who live in the house that was next door to Dale Cottages (a house has recently been built between them) have seen the lady several times. She has appeared to the father twice, the most recent appearance being last Monday. She always appears hanging over the person as he wakes up in bed in the morning. Was it the ghost of the lady killed during the war?

• Another incident occurred in one of the houses at Hewell Grange. A lady moving into her new house smelt a strong smell of antiseptic. This smell persisted for three days and she was later told that her house had been built over the spot where a nurse had been murdered during the war.

• At The Old House at the junction of Greenhill and Alcester Road, the present owners were just moving in, and as they passed an open door they glanced into a room and saw a little girl dressed in Victorian costume.

Being very busy and perhaps thinking it was a village child in dressing-up clothes, they thought nothing more of it until they met people who had lived at The Old House some years ago. During their conversation they asked if the newcomers had seen the little girl yet - apparently the previous owners saw her several times, but she only shows herself to females!

• On the ground where the present County Gardens is built, there used to be an old barn which apparently burned down one night and the body of a tramp was found in the rubble the next day.

Some years later when some greenhouses were erected, a workman took his little girl to work with him. He left her to play and she came running back very excited, saying that she had seen “a dirty old tramp walk straight through the glass.”

• Another story purports that the name of Vigo, covering the properties at the top end of the village beyond the sandstone railway bridge, was bestowed on this group of ancient dwellings by the man who built them.

Legend has it that he was an old sea captain who made his fortune plundering the treasure ships sailing in and out of the Spanish port of Vigo, and it is said that on windy nights you can hear the sound of his ship’s bell faintly in the distance.

In support of the origin of Vigo, there is no doubt that the timbers in these old houses are certainly old ships’ timbers, probably dating back to pre-Armada days (pre-1588).

• Just south west of the point where Birmingham Road is crossed by the M42 in Bromsgrove, there once stood Barnsley Hall. The Barnsley family were in Bromsgrove as far back as the 1400s but in 1771, the hall was pulled down and a large farm built.

The 324-acre site was bought by Bromsgrove Council and a hospital opened there in 1907. Although its proper name was Bromsgrove Lunatic Asylum, it was always known as Barnsley Hall Hospital.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, three wards were taken over and 30 new wards were erected in the grounds. Barnsley Hall became one of the largest emergency hospitals in the county, taking casualties including air-raid victims and men from the Front.

Few people realise how large this complex was - the hospital behind 165A and Barnsley Hall could take 500 patients. It has since been demolished and a housing estate built on the site.

George Gregg, a psychiatric nurse, worked in the hospital between 1979 and 1990. He says:

“The hospital had the reputation of being haunted. The old School of Nursing was creepy, especially on the top floor. It was more obvious when I was working late on my own. There was a sense of presence in the place.

“All kinds of rumours reached my ears. In the elderly care wards, nurses could hear footsteps going to the toilet. I heard that a night sister who passed away in the 1960s used to put in an appearance from time to time in one of the female wards.

“One morning, around 1982, I was told about a strange experience that had occurred during the handover by the night staff. The staff nurse said that the patients were asleep and the wards were in semi-darkness, the only light being in the office.

“It was about 3am when there was a sudden blinding flash of light accompanied by a tremendous explosion somewhere outside. The nurse in charge dropped her pen and rushed to the door. She thought that a gas main must have exploded somewhere. Several other staff were in the corridor, saying, “What was that?”

“They looked around for an explanation and in the morning the porters and nursing officer made a careful investigation outside, but nothing was ever found to explain such an inexplicable phenomenon. The general opinion of those staff who had experienced the mystery explosion was that it must have been a UFO!”

Rex G Wise, in the 1987 Rousler, says that one night, all the patients were in bed and the staff went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The door at the top of the dormitory opened and closed and they heard footsteps.

The key turned in the lock and the door leading to the steps of ‘O’ ward opened and closed. The nurse opened the door and saw a figure in Edwardian clothes making her way down the steps to ‘O’ ward…

• Halfway between Bromsgrove and the southern tip of Redditch are the hamlets of Bentley, Upper and Lower, an area much favoured by the gentry in times past.

In 1714 Sir Thomas Cookes, founder of Worcestershire College at Oxford, was living at Bentley Manor. During the next century it was purchased by a master needlemaker and farmer, Walter Hemming, and until the First World War it was occupied by a descendant of the founder, Mrs Grey-Cheape. Then it was occupied by the forces. After the war it fell into disrepair and was eventually demolished.

The lady telling this story has now moved nearer to Birmingham.

“If my mother had lived she would now be in her nineties. During her childhood she had lived in both Lower and Upper Bentley farmhouses, and I can’t remember which one had the apparition - I think it was Lower.

“At that point in time, the toilets were down in the grounds of the farm. Whenever one of the family had to go in the night, they always tried to take someone with them because a black dog dragging a chain used to come out of the wall of the privy. My mother saw it, and her mother and various cousins.

“It was seen very regularly, perhaps weekly. Because it was a common occurrence, they weren’t all that bothered by it, but they tended to think there was safety in numbers. When two people went, they would both see it - however, my grandfather never saw it, in all the years that he lived there.”

In years gone by, the sighting of a black dog was said to be a warning of an impending death. An elderly lady at Cookhill always maintained that she saw such a ghost leaving her kitchen just before her brother died.

• Most of the A448 Bromsgrove Highway is a new road but, at the Bromsgrove end and near the exit for Finstall, the highway joins the old road. Many phantoms have been seen here.

The Redditch Advertiser of December 5, 1990 had the headline “Highway Horror from the Ghoul” and stated that the phantom always appears in a long cloak. The road would have been used by the monks and lay brothers of Bordesley Abbey as nearby Hewell Grange was one of their farms or granges.

A young man called Neil saw another ghost there in 2008:

“I was on the Bromsgrove Highway, near where the train bridge goes over the road. It was about 10pm and the heater was full on. I noticed that about 10 or 20 feet away on the side of the road was a woman with a long black veil over her head and feet.

“I could only see her shape and I could tell that she wasn’t real because she was hovering. She started to move towards the road and came on to the verge. As I went past the spot the car went icy cold, although the heater was still full on. After I had gone past, it warmed up.”

Ghosts, Murders & Scandals of Worcestershire, featuring more than 150 strange tales, is published by Hunt End Books and is available in good bookshops priced £7.50.

What Villagers have been saying about this story . . . most recent comments first

Comment posted by Man on Fire
from Blackwell on March 24 2011 at 1:50:46

I was driving around with my friends one night a few weeks ago in January (2011) when one of my friends and I, noticed a man in the distance, running into the middle of the quiet country road, waving his arms as if wanting me to stop. I slowed down a little but he had already crossed the road and into the field on the other side of the road, the strange thing was, when we got closer, the more it looked like he was on fire! And when we passed the part of the road he crossed, not 10 seconds later, there was no sign of him. We even drove back up the road and down again to make sure, but he was definitely gone. Does anyone know what this could have been? I can’t remember the exact road, but it was definitely in Cookhill, on the road heading into Redditch (Past the Neville Arms).

HAVE YOUR SAY . . .

What do you think? Share your views by typing in the box below.

Return to Front Page

sidebar