Tag Archives: ghost

Cockpit Steps ~ a little Grade II listed oddity in London with a ghost story.

10 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Free Activities, Royal London, Westminster

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Easily missed, but adjacent to St. James’s Park, Cockpit Steps is a small connecting passageway that links Birdcage Walk with Old Queen Street.  The steps are Grade II listed for their historical significance.  Next time you are in this area, take a little detour over these steps.  When you enter at the Birdcage end and emerge on Old Queen Street you almost feel as if you’ve found a secret neighbourhood.

History:  Cockpits Steps is so named as it is the last remaining part of a long lost Royal cockpit.  Note that there was also a Royal Cockpit Theatre, built as part of Whitehall, that was nearer to Horse Guards and the Banqueting Palace which was a different venue.  The cockpit here was built in the 18th Century for the upper classes to attend cockfights - whether to enter their own birds or just to watch and bet.  By charging a 5 shilling admission price, this cockpit didn’t taking on the rough character many other pits did.  The sport of cockfighting had become popular in Tudor times and had grown to become heavily integrated into English culture.  Rules were created and books were published about the sport.  This Royal cockpit remained popular but was demolished in either 1810 or 1816 (surveys of the time are conflicting).  The curving steps from around it remained.

Ghost Stories:  For what its worth, Cockpit Steps is supposedly haunted by a headless woman.  The story begins in the late 18th Century when a soldier stationed at Horse Guards murders his wife and beheads her.  While trying to hide the body in the lake, he is caught.  The first report was in 1804 when The Times reported that on January 3rd, a sentry, George Jones, with the Coldstream Guards reported sighting a headless lady in a red dress.  The incident ending up being recorded for posterity when he was summoned to testify in front of a magistrate.  Numerous other sightings have been reported.   Even as recently at 1972 the apparition was in the news again when a driver hit a lamp post claiming he swerved to avoid a headless woman in a white blood stained dress.  Surprisingly he was acquitted of dangerous driving!

Located at:  Cockpit Steps (from the north side, enter off Birdcage Walk, just west of Horse Guards Rd - from the south side, enter near the Two Chairmen pub on Old Queen St).

Closest Tube:  St. James’s Park

Nell Gwynne Tavern

07 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by in Pubs of interest, Westminster

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Eleanor Gwyn or Gwynne (1650-1687), known as ‘Nell’, was a long term mistress of King Charles II.  Samuel Pepys called her “might pretty Nell”, and she embodied the Restoration Period of England.  She also was a rags-to-riches personality, who moved from the streets of Covent Garden to actress and mother to two of King Charles II’s illegitimate children.  She moved into the Theatre initially as a seller of oranges to theatre goers.  From there, to acting, and given her looks, fame and personality, became the King’s mistress.   This small, cozy pub, dates from 1650 and is relatively hard to find as it is down an alleyway between the Strand and Maiden Lane.   The current building was rebuilt in 1897.  The Bull Inn was the pub’s original name (from which the alley gets its name).  It was renamed after Nell and it is appropriately located near two theatres. There is a sign at the Strand end of the alley. A sign on the pub wall gives a brief history of Nell Gwynn and tells of the murder of an actor outside one of the nearby theatres. The story claims that in 1897 a stagehand from the nearby Adelphi murdered the actor, William Terris, in the alley and he continues to haunt the location.

Located at: 2 Bull Inn Court, Strand, WC2R 0NP

Closest tubes: Charing Cross, Embankment or Covent Garden.

Spaniards Inn & tollhouse.

31 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in Barnet, Pubs of interest

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Built in 1585 as a tollgate inn on the Finchley boundary, the Spaniards formed the entrance to the Bishop of London’s estate - an original boundary stone from 1755 can still be seen in the front garden. These boundaries are still relevant today - the pub is in Barnet and the tollhouse is in Camden, both are now listed buildings and traffic is reduced to one lane between the two. A proposal to demolish the tollhouse opposite the Spaniards in 1961 was successfully resisted, partly on the grounds that it would lead to more and faster traffic.  The Inn remains a quaint, oak panelled and atmospheric pub with one of the best pub gardens in London which were originally created as pleasure gardens, with an artificial mound from which one could see views over London and even as far as Windsor Castle.  Dick Turpin is thought to have been a regular at the Inn and his father is rumoured to have been a previous landlord. What is certain is that highwaymen frequented this area and likely used the Inn to watch the road; at that time the Inn was around two hours from London by coach and the area had its fair share of wealthy travellers. Records from the Old Bailey show that on 16 October 1751 Samuel Bacon was indicted for robbery on the Kings Highway and was caught 200 yards from the Spaniards. A tree (now gone) at the end of the road was a famous site where highwaymen were hanged when caught.  The pub also has a great literary heritage. Not only has it been mentioned in Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but it can count among its previous frequenters the artist Joshua Reynolds and the poets Byron and Keats. If you believe the Inn’s spiel, Keats allegedly wrote his Ode to a Nightingale in the gardens, and Stoker borrowed one of their resident ghost stories to furnish the plot of Dracula.

Located: Spaniards Road, NW3 7JJ

Closest tube: Golders Green (and 210 Bus) or Hampstead (15 min walk).

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