The Cottage

I wasn’t sleeping very well. I had just moved in to an old Victorian cottage near Hexham in Northumberland. My picture framing business wasn’t doing terribly well and this old cottage needed a lot doing to it. I put my insomnia down to money worries; that was until one night when I felt an eerie presence just before retiring. It was midnight and I’d just put down an old tome of Conan Doyle and finished my hot chocolate. It was the middle of winter, the end of January in fact, and bitterly cold outside. The wind had got up and flurries of snow brushed the window panes. The solid fuel heating system was working well, however, and I was glad of that if nothing else. The bedroom at the back of the property was not as warm as the rest of the cottage though and I had to steel myself to enter the room at night. While I sat in my old armchair I thought I heard a coughing sound, a muffled moaning, and then the sweet voice of a child, a girl in fact, but I couldn't make out words, yet I was convinced it was something unexplained.

Dark shadows played on the cottage walls outside when I peered out of the curtains. A thin layer of snow covered the small lawn at the front of the house and I realised I was feeling colder. I decided to go to bed, so I entered the bedroom and turned down the covers. As I've said the bedroom wasn't as well heated as the rest of the house and from the first I had felt it to be just a trifle unfriendly. Bedtime wasn't  my favourite time. As I stood in the bay window of the bedroom ready to pull the red, velvet curtains I could see a shape in the middle of the garden. As I looked closer it seemed to be the figure of a man, but not a man of the twenty first century, rather it was a man dressed like an old Victorian, wearing a black frock-coat and sporting long side-whiskers. I was a bit terrified. The face was menacing, unhappy, even angry-looking. Then I realised he was not alone. He was holding the hand of a small child, a girl, aged about eight. I hadn't seen her immediately because she was dressed in a white dress and this had blended in with the snow, still falling outside. I stood aghast for about two minutes but then my cat Byron started meowing and I turned to look for him. When I looked out of the window again the apparition had disappeared.

Now, quite shaken, I pulled the curtains to; was I going mad, or was this seemingly innocuous cottage haunted?   I slipped beneath the covers, all sorts of conflicting emotions going through my mind. I began to think of my inability to sleep in the new bedroom and thought of reasons why. The dead were still here; it was their cottage and they weren't letting go. It was an old house built in the eighteen-seventies, so many people must have lived in it, but the figure I'd seen looked so old, as if they had been one of the first residents in Victorian times. Something wasn't right; these spirits weren't at peace. Somehow my financial worries seemed to be of small matter indeed compared to my new worries. I decided to take a sleeping pill and drifted off to slumber. Maybe in the light of a new day this would all seem to be so much fuss about nothing.  

I woke up to a sunny winter's day. Outside the snow was about four inches thick. Today I was going to have a talk to the neighbours, particularly my next door neighbour, Mrs. Titchbourne. Maybe she could throw some light on the peculiar happenings last night. The terrace I lived in consisted of eight double-fronted cottages, all with two bedrooms and bathroom extensions built on the back in the nineteen-sixties. They were only one storey buildings and had gardens at both the front and back. How different they were to similar properties built in the cities at the same time. You certainly did not get a garden like you did in the countryside. Mrs. Titchbourne was a fastidious sort of woman, now in her eighties, and always seeming to be very busy doing something or other. I knocked on her yellow-painted front door with vigour.

She answered almost at once. “Before you say anything else a large packet came for you yesterday and they couldn't get an answer. They left it with me.” “Oh, thank you.” I perused the packet and realised who it was from, from the the name on the return to sender label if it could not be delivered. It was from the solicitors Maybury and Warlock. I realised straight away what it would be, from the bulk of it. It was the deeds of the house. “Settling in all right are we?” my neighbour began. “Well, I'm having a few problems actually, and that's one of the reasons I called on you.” “A few problems? What sort of problems?” “Well, I'll cut to the chase, Mrs. Titchbourne, I think the house is haunted.” “It's not the first time I've heard that.” “Oh, isn't it? Who last reported it?” “Well I don't go back before 1950, Mr. Trent, but then neither does the last person who lived in the house Mrs. Birchall. She used to say things to me. She's in a nursing home now. You best speak to her.” “Oh, which home is she in?” “Rosemount in Hexham.” “Thanks, I'd like to hear what she has to say.” “Did you see something then?” “Yes, I thought I saw a man and a little girl out in the garden.” “Oh that's much what she used to say to me, but quite honestly I thought she was a bit touched. Maybe I should reconsider when you've had the same experience.” “Yes, maybe you should. I'll have to go now, Mrs. Titchbourne. Thanks for keeping the parcel.” “My pleasure. Let me know how you get on with your 'ghost'.” I retreated from my neighbour's house with a spring in my step. I was not going mad.

There was something about my cottage that was definitely untoward; others had seen something too.   When I got back home I opened the package Mrs. Titchbourne had given me. It was indeed the deeds of the house. My, they were old documents, and obviously originals – no photocopies here. The land on which the houses were built had been sold to the builder by Lady Bowes-Lyon no less. All of the occupants of the house were recorded right from the time it had been built in 1875. The first occupant was a builder named Clegg. He lived in the house until 1890 but then the house was sold to a Mr. Dorking and he lived in it for only eight years. His occupation was recorded as coachman.  Then it passed to a Mr. and Mrs. Sanders and they seemed to have lived in it quite happily until 1940. Then there was a name I recognised – Mrs. Hilda Birchall, who I realized was the mother of the husband of Mrs. Birchall now in Rosemount, because in 1952 the house passed to a Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Birchall when the old lady died. The last resident was of course myself, Trevor Trent.

I was convinced the man I had seen in the garden was either Mr. Clegg or Mr. Dorking, because of his dress; anyone later than that was virtually Edwardian and this man was definitely Victorian. I was narrowing down the field of enquiry. My next port of call was to see Mrs. Birchall in Hexham.   I spent a restless night in the cottage that night. Although I didn't actually see anything with my eyes I saw weird things in my mind's eye, as I lay sleepless in my bed. The man in the garden holding the hand of a little girl haunted my imagination. I couldn't get it out of my mind. I muttered in my half sleep, half waking state “Who are you? What do you want?” Then I got an answer: the man was saying 'kill him, kill him..' It seemed the spirit was vindictive, while the little girl looked on imploringly, helplessly, still in the white Victorian dress and still looking somehow forlorn, ineffably sad. Eventually I drifted off to sleep but I couldn't help wondering just what had I let myself in for in this old cottage.  

The next morning I woke with a start. The clock radio kicked in with 'Wonderful world' by Louis Armstrong. It's wonderful all right, I thought to myself; weird and wonderful more like. I had shut the shop this week while I settled into the cottage. As a consequence I didn't have to go into work. I would take the car into Hexham and call at Rosemount, see if Mrs. Birchall could throw any light onto my problem, the last person who lived in the cottage. I was quite hungry so I tucked into a full English: bacon, eggs, sausage, mushrooms and fried bread. It would set me up for the day ahead. It was a bright, sunny day when I eased the car into the driveway of Rosemount, a big Victorian house now converted into a nursing home for the elderly. Mrs. Titchbourne had confided in me Mrs. Birchall was a magnificent ninety-two. I wondered for the first time if she would be coherent. Maybe she was prey to Alzheimers; so many old people were these days. Anyway I would see for myself.

In reception there was a middle-aged woman with greying hair and glasses looking over some paperwork. I introduced myself and asked if I could see Mrs. Birchall. “Oh, she doesn't usually get visitors,” I was told quite abruptly. “She never had any children you know.” No, I didn't know, but it was all information I was gaining. “Can you come this way?” The receptionist ushered me down a long corridor. “I think she's in the day room just in there. Yes, there she is over by the window.” Mrs. Birchall looked as if she was dozing and it was only 10.30 a.m. “Visitor to see you, Edith.” She looked up with a start: her snow white hair cropped quite close to her head and gold-rimmed glasses perched precariously on her small nose.

“Who is this?” “I'm Mr. Trent, Mrs. Birchall. I live in your old house now. I wanted to know if you could tell me something about it.” “Oh, I'm glad to be out of it; it'll be the haunting you're talking about I suppose. “Well yes, it is.” “I put up with it all my life. I got used to it, so in the end I said nothing to anyone.” “Do you know who it is?” “Well I always reckoned it was either the first occupant Mr. Clegg or Mr. Dorking the next one. He called me a whore and all sorts. I heard voices at night. This was mainly when we had just moved in. It quietened down after that. Maybe you'll find the same. It seems to be a resentment of filling his space when someone new comes.” “Oh that is encouraging, Mrs. Birchall. Last night I imagined he said 'kill him, kill him'.” “ Well I never. I didn't experience anything of that nature. The place needs an exorcism if you ask me.” “Mmm, I hoped I wouldn't have to go that far. Why didn't you search the church records, try to get a handle on the whole thing?” “I wanted to but my husband stopped me. He said it was morbid and I shouldn't be so daft as to suppose I could do any good, but maybe you should try to resolve it once and for all, if you're going to stay there.” “Yes, I think I should. I do want to stay. My business is in Hexham; perhaps you've seen the picture framing business 'Pretty as a Picture' on the High Street.” “Yes I have. I've got some photos of my husband and me I'd like famed. Can you do them for me?” “Of course.” “Come to my room and I'll give you them. You can bring them back to me framed when you've done some digging into this affair and keep me up to date.” “Sure thing, Mrs. Birchall.”

I collected the photos from Mrs. Birchall's room and then left Rosemount, knowing that my cottage was different in quite a peculiar way and it worried me. This ghost never died but appeared to every new resident whenever the cottage changed hands. I wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery and lay the poor ghost to rest.   I thought that my next port of call would be the local church to look at their records, just as Mrs. Birchall suggested. I was particularly interested in Mr. Clegg and Mr. Dorking. Were they married men and when did they die? Possibly more to the point how did they die? The local church near my cottage was twelth century and called St. Xavier's. I parked the car and went up to the vicarage door. It was a Westminster door chime that sounded through the house.

The housekeeper answered the door, a Mrs. Stevenson. I explained what I wanted to do, so she immediately summoned the vicar, Reverend Edwards. “So you wish to peruse our records?" The vicar intoned. I told him nothing of the ghostly goings on, all that could follow. “The records go back to the sixteenth century,” he informed me, so I told him I was interested in the late nineteenth century only. “Good,” he said, “I am sure we can help you.” I kept the two names I had in mind while I looked over the records of the eighteen-nineties because I knew the two men were alive then. There was nothing recorded for Mr. Clegg but I then came across a birth under the name of Dorking; it was for Esmerelda Dorking in eighteen ninety but I noted that her mother was recorded under another name. Obviously the couple had not been married. Well, at the time that would have been quite scandalous, an unmarried mother giving birth to a baby. Her name was Sarah Hawkins, but I then noted that she was recorded as a death on the same day as the birth was recorded, so she had obviously died in childbirth.

The father, my Mr. Dorking had taken the child to live with him at the cottage all those years ago and given it his name. A cloud would have settled over them. The people in the village would have snubbed both father and child; had indeed the vicar? Because as I noted there was no record of a baptism of the child. I asked the present vicar about this. “Oh it would have been terrible for this Mr. Dorking,” he informed me. “And the vicar at that time looks as if he has refused to baptise the child Esmerelda because she was born out of wedlock. It was a time of great prejudice. Bastards weren't given the equality they enjoy today.” “Oh,” I said, quite horrified by Victorian attitudes. But my quest wasn't finished yet. I wanted to know when both father and child died. I looked over the following years but I knew the house changed hands again in 1898 so I looked at that year in detail. And there it was in 1898 in January both father and child had died in a coaching accident.

I then asked the Reverend Edwards if I might see the gravestones in the church graveyard. “You don't understand,” he told me, “ they wouldn't be buried in consecrated ground at that time; there would be no gravestone. They would have been buried outside the graveyard boundary in unconsecrated land. It's where the horses graze now,” he said. I was appalled at this revelation and disappointed in our forbears. Those two poor people had been ostracised and cast out by so-called good people, including the church's vicar of the time. I then knew it was time to tell the Reverend Edwards of my experience at the cottage and of the two unhappy spirits haunting the house and garden. “Oh I see,” he said. “Times have changed now, we wouldn't dream of casting people out just because we thought them immoral. It is not for us to judge, but God alone.” “What can we do?” I asked. “Well I would suggest we bless the land where they would have been buried but we can't know the exact location where they lie; it is unmarked. Come out to the back of the church, I'll show you the common land where they will be.”

We came out of the church into bright winter sunshine, over a hundred years after they died and I felt a certain sadness. It was an open field now, covered in snow with a quivering aspen in one corner. A beautiful robin then caught my eye and flew over the field, then landed on the snow. This was where I would have the vicar bless the land. I felt sure the robin was a sign from God, a beacon in this terrible story of abandonment and sadness. “I can bless the land now,” he said. “I'll just get some holy water and my sprinkler.” The Reverend Edwards soon blessed the land where the robin had landed and I felt a sense of peace and hope; hope that wrongs in the past could be righted.  

Although the shop was closed up for the week I decided to go in and do Mrs. Birchall's photos for her. When I had completed them I was sure I could see two happy faces looking out at me behind Mr. and Mrs. Birchall. They were slightly out of focus but the best thing about them was the expression of both man and girl. It was a happy smile. That night I spent a restful night in my bedroom; the first in a long time. It even seemed warmer. It was certainly a lot more peaceful.  

Today I was to see Mrs. Birchall and tell her all about what had happened with the 'ghosts'. As I drove up to Rosemount with the photos I was upbeat and positive. She was sat in the same position that she had been last time I saw her. “Everything's been put to rights, Mrs. Birchall.” “Really. Tell me all about it, I'd love to hear.” “And here are your photos that I have framed for you. Look, can you see two happy smiling faces just behind you.” “No, where?” I looked at the photo and the 'ghosts' had gone, that I had initially perceived. “Really, Mr. Trent, I think you are maybe just a little fanciful.” “Maybe, Mrs. Birchall, maybe.”