Hi Nat Doig here! After two weird wanders away from the Wade we are back in Biggleswade. I have a ghost story that stretches over a century to tell you. This story also links to Biggleswade’s mysterious tunnels, which we’ll begin to explore. Just a heads up that there is a brief mention of suicide in this episode.
Dramatic intro
It’s October 1881. Two girls are standing beneath the chestnut trees peering into the darkness of the garden between Crab Lane and Cemetery Street. It’s where Chestnut Avenue and the Library stand today in Biggleswade. Cemetery Street is now the Baulk. It’s early evening and already dark. A faint glow from the streetlamp at the top of London Road filters through the large ochre horse chestnut leaves.
One of the girls is 12-year-old Louisa Green, a maid at the Camden House School. Her companion is a pupil of the school, a boarder, called Kate Demezi Kay. Kate is 13 and almost half a foot taller than Louisa. Neither of them should be away from the school and certainly not loitering in a dark garden.
“What if they’re back early and one of the Lockwoods catches us, Kate?”
“They won’t and if they do, we’ll say you dropped something here earlier today whilst running errands?”
“Why does it have to be me? You could easily have left a music book here this afternoon.”
“Because I am older than you and less likely to be careless. Anyway, I will say that I sent you to buy sugar mice for me and you dropped them, and that is why we are under the trees looking. Then we will both be in trouble. Fair?”
Louisa nods. Kate is the only girl at the school boarder or day girl who pays any attention to her. Otherwise, Louisa might as well be invisible. But Kate is different. She likes to sneak down to the kitchen at night and beg a warm drink from cook and then sit by the fire whilst Pricilla tells them ghost tales.
And that was precisely what had got them into this predicament. Pricilla the house maid and her stories. Pricilla was strict bossing Louisa about all day, until evening came, then she’d sit in the kitchen with cook, sipping from a pewter flask and tell stories. She had told them both of a ghost or willow the wisp that haunted the Crab Lane Garden. It was seen as a glowing white light or mist, which hovered on a path below the trees in the garden. It had terrified a couple of gardeners over the summer and more recently a lad on his way home from the Hopbine said he’d seen a white figure flitting through the trees, though most said he was worse for drink at the time. Now the nights were growing long and dark, the residents of Cemetery Street were afraid to walk past the gardens.
The children going to and from school along Crab Lane were also scared. The temptation of conkers was becoming too much though and during daylight hours children would scurry beneath the trees collecting the shining nuts. But come dark none dared stray into the garden or walk near to its boundary.
Louisa was fascinated by the stories. She asked Priscilla why so many assumed the apparition was bad. Could it not be a fairy or angel? Pricilla said she did not see why it couldn’t be one of the fae folk. Cook snorted at this; such talk was above her. Kate however stated that:
“We need to study it! Rather than being terrified little mice like those gardeners and that drunken lad, we should observe it, record it’s details and apply a proper scientific method to it!”
“Listen to ‘er!” Cook exclaimed “A proper Charles Darwin! You’ll never get a husband talking like that girl!”
But Louisa just looked at Kate with nothing but admiration, as Kate brushed an unruly strand of auburn hair from her forehead ignoring cook’s outburst.
“Louisa” Kate said, “Tomorrow evening we shall go and see if this apparition emerges, and we shall study it.”
“No, you shan’t!” Pricilla had interjected.
“Why not Pricilla? It is Sunday evening. Both Louisa and I are free from any obligations. You would not deny us this educational endeavour, would you? Think of the stories you’ll be able to tell if we come back to you with evidence of this spirits existence!”
And so, Cook and Pricilla had turned a blind eye to the girls plans. Cook was away visiting her brother anyway that Sunday and Pricilla was already sipping away at her pewter flask by the time the girls had snuck out.
And that is why Kate and Louisa are standing beneath the chestnut trees staring into the much darker interior of the gardens.
“How long should we wait?” Louisa asks.
“Until we hear the clock strike the hour, then we’ll have to leave. So do be patient.”
Louisa doesn’t expect to see anything. She believes in the Crab Lane spectre as many are now calling it, but it won’t appear whilst you are looking for it, surely? That’s not how these things work.
Time is dragging its heels. The fallen leaves at their feet swirl in an eddy of cold breeze then settle again. Louisa shivers.
An owl calls startling them both for a moment.
Then more waiting. Holding her breath Louisa’s mind begins to wander, to the tasks awaiting her before bed.
Then Kate grabs her arm and hisses “look there…”
Louisa isn’t sure where “there” is, she looks at Kate’s face, dark and indistinct, then looks back into the blacker garden.
“I don’t see anything.” She complains.
“Just ahead and to the right.” Kate whispers.
Louisa stares and stares and then, she thinks she sees a slight shimmer amongst the darkness. Like a reflection off water. But there is no water in the garden, there is no light. The shimmer becomes brighter, fuller, like a sparkling oval twisting and turning in the darkness. It’s beneath a rowan tree she thinks. So, it can’t be bad can it? Rowans protect you from evil and from witches or so her grandmother said.
“What is it?” Louisa asks.
“I don’t know.” Kate admits, reaching for Louisa’s hand. Kate’s hand is gloved but Louisa can feel it trembling.
“But I must observe and lay down to memory what I see. You too Louisa, you shall draw it after, so pay close attention.”
Both girls watch, and observe as this oval of white and pearlescent light shimmers through the darkness. Sometimes it seems to swell in size, then shrink back down again. Sometimes it floats gently to the left then it slips back to its original position. It is utterly mesmerising.
“Could it be one of those new electrical lights?” Louisa whispers.
“I don’t think so.”
The shimmering swells again, becoming a mist of many tiny sparkling points of light until suddenly it shrinks, flits right, in a zig zag and through the grass bank that borders the garden, and it is gone.
The girls wait, watching, wondering if it will come back. The tension in their bones loosening, Kate lets go of Louisa’s hand in what feels like a rush.
“Righty Oh, I think it’s gone. Let’s get back and write up, or in your case, draw what we witnessed!”
Suddenly all action again, Kate is marching away to the gate her boots crunching through the green spiky shells of conkers and fallen leaves. Louisa tags along behind, remembering that her friend’s hand had been trembling, and this confident strident girl ahead of her had in fact been scared.
Both girls rush into the kitchen out of breath to find Pricilla working over the stove in Cook’s absence.
“You’re cutting it fine! The Lockwood’s are due back any minute.” Then her face softens “Did you see anything?”
“Oh yes!” both girls exclaim in unison.
After supper, Kate retires to write up her scientific observations of the Crab Lane anomalous light as she is calling it. Louisa is preparing for the following day’s work. Monday is wash day. She is sorting through the laundry when Pricilla appears at her side.
“You really saw something then?” She asks, joining Louisa in her task.
“Yes, we did. It was a sparkling, rippling light of some kind. Most peculiar. I thought it might be one of those new electric lights but Kate said no.”
“Well I never. I believe you girl and I believe you have a rare gift Louisa Green. You are what we might call sensitive. What do you believe it was you saw girl?”
“A fairy or an angel maybe. It was not frightening. It was beautiful.”
Pricilla is silent for a while, her brow furrows.
“I do believe you girl, you have a gift for such things, for seeing the things which are hidden. But they are not all light and pretty, like the Crab Lane spirit. Do you understand what I’m saying? Some are dark and not to be trifled with. Yeah?”
“I think I know what you mean.”
“Good because that Kate de Mezi Kay will drag you to the ends of the earth in her pursuit of scientific nonsense. She don’t understand what she’s meddling with. Nor does she understand that she can’t remain friends with you for much longer. You inhabit different spheres. She will have to give up this science nonsense just as she give up you girl one day. She is not as well to do as some but she is in a different sphere to the likes of us. You understand that?”
Louisa lowers her head, staring at her hands, their red knuckles.
“But I am currently more vexed about her pursuit of science and spirits. I hoped you’d see nothing in Crab Lane gardens and she’d grow bored and find a new pursuit. But she is more fired up than ever. Like a terrier after a rat that girl is.
So, I want you to promise me Louisa Green, that you will not tell her about the tunnel entrance in the basement. Do you promise!”
Louisa pauses in her sorting of the dirty clothes. She’s not thinking about the tunnel nor the basement she is thinking on Pricilla’s words about her and Kate inhabiting different spheres. She bites her lip.
“Did you hear me girl?”
“Yes. Why would I tell her about that anyway? It’s just an old cellar tunnel.”
“Nah, it is not just an old cellar tunnel gril. It’s a dangerous and haunted place. You must not approach it nor tell anyone else of it. Do you understand girl?!”
Louisa nods.
“Now head off to bed I’ll finish up here.”
Louisa slinks off to bed pondering Pricila’s strange behaviour. Pricila being thoughtful and generous is more frightening than when she bullies and bosses. But Louisa’s curiosity is now piqued. She had not thought to tell Kate about the basement tunnel… but now she’ll do anything to keep them both in the same sphere, for a little bit longer.
Welcome
Welcome to Weird in the Wade, today we will be exploring ghost stories stretching over two centuries which are linked to the site of Camden House School which is the most easterly extent of the Biggleswade tunnels that we know of. Yes we have a Victorian ghost story but also ones dating from the 1950s and 60s. The place was eventually so notorious that the local newspaper referred to business based in Camden House as the ghost shop in 1970.
This is the first part in an exploration of the Biggleswade tunnels. Next time I’ll be telling a ghost story linked with the tunnels most westerly point.
As always I am keen to hear from anyone who has any information about the tunnels or Camden House School. Please email me at weirdinthewade@gmail.com or find weird in the wade on social media.
But before we return to 1880s Biggleswade I just wanted to thank everyone who attended the one year anniversary live stream. It was so lovely to see so many of you there! If you missed it you can still catch it on YouTube. There’s a link in the show notes. On the live stream I talked about my night in the chamber of trembling madness in York. As well as answering questions.
I also wanted to let you know that Weird in the Wade now has a patreon so if you are able to and want to support the show with a regular donation you’ll receive bonus content through the patreon. The first bonus patreon episode went live in mid May and was all about the Treasurer’s House in York and the many hauntings associated with it. I even share my own spooky encounter at the house in that bonus episode. I’ve also made that episode available to anyone who has or does support the show through Ko-fi. This means if you can’t commit to monthly support you can pay a one off amount of your choice and hear that bonus episode.
But I do want to reassure everyone that the main Weird in the Wade episodes are and always will be free.
And if you do want to support the show one of the most affective ways to do that is to either rate or review the podcast if you haven’t already. It really does help other people find the show.
I really appreciate all the support I get and wanted to say Hi to all my new listeners as well as my old regulars! Thanks for being part of Team Weird!
Right, lets get back to Camden House School.
The Crab Lane Ghost
The opening story was one that I imagined but I based it on the few facts that we have about the school and the Crab Lane haunting. In the early 1880s (and so most likely some years before) the school was run by the three Lockwood sisters and a cousin. They took in a few boarders, and one was Kate de Mezi Kay (interestingly her father was a wine merchant with a shop and home on the market square so it seems odd that she is boarding at a school a 2 minute walk from her home. Also, the de Mezi part of her name is a middle name and she is the only person in her family at the time with such an unusual moniker.) In the 1881 census there is a maid named Louisa and one called Pricilla living at the school along with a cook. But whether any of them saw the Crab Lane apparition we will never know.
What I do know is that during the 1880s the Crab Lane gardens were so well known to be haunted that people who lived along Cemetery Street (now the Baulk) were afraid to walk past them after dark. The school children who attended Camden House School were aware of the ghost story as well, with many afraid to travel along Crab Lane alone. It caused a real headache for the school teachers and parents of the children.
The glowing white ghost was so infamous that in 1885 a local lad named Sam, decided to don a white sheet, and pretend to be the Crab Lane ghost as a prank. This led to a sudden increase in ghost sightings and a group of local men decided to quote “lay the ghost once and for all” and like an episode of Scooby Doo the white sheet was pulled from Sam’s head in a public unmasking! This story became so entrenched in the town’s memory it was being repeated in the local news paper at regular intervals up until the 1960s.
I remember attending an event at Biggleswade library in the early 80s where ghost stories were shared including that Crab Lane was haunted by a headless horse man, though that as we have seen is not how the haunting story began!
It seems early on it was just a white glowing thing that was seen in the gardens, which is why Sam’s white sheet trick worked.
It sounds more like a willo’ the wisp to me but maybe I’m being influenced by the fact that there is now a fairy glen outside the library under those chestnut trees. When one of the chestnut trees became diseased and was chopped down, the library made a fairy tree stump adding decorations, fae folk figurines and even better in the autumn actual fungi create stages for the fairies to rest on. Photos as always are on the blog.
But that’s not the only reason why my mind turns to fairies and helpful spirits and sprites. I have been told by someone who works in the vicinity that some mysterious but helpful things have happened to her and her colleagues. Items being tidied up on their own accord for example. I hope to bring you more on that story in the next episode!
An education
It seems Camden House School it’s self and not just it’s immediate environs was rumoured to be haunted and it’s not hard to imagine why.
Think back to your own school days? I bet you knew a ghost story connected with your school right? I asked on Twitter recently if anyone remembered any ghost stories relating to their schools and just about everyone seems to remember some vague notion of the stage or the toilets or the changing rooms being haunted. I was told a tale of a mining accident leading to a haunting in one school. In others it was former headmasters and teachers whose souls could not leave the establishment. In another it was a box headed dog, yet another education establishment recorded incidents staff experienced in a dedicated book. It’s clear I need to do a Weird Wander episode about school hauntings!
Because schools are scary places especially when empty of the bustle of the school day. As a former teacher I know just how eerie it is to stand in a space usually raucous with activity and yet for it be so silent you can hear your heart beating.
I also think it is interesting that these hauntings are often associated with places of stress for children within the school. Like the toilets for example. One of the few places where teachers are not routinely present. All sorts of things can happen in school toilets, bullying, tearful confessions, lonely kids hiding in them, and they’re often dark and gloomy spaces. Similarly changing rooms are places of anxiety and fear for many children and so is the stage or school hall where performances of all kinds happen, and the nerves associated with them seem to resonate in the air.
I am sure Camden House School was no different.
A History Lesson at Camden House School
What Camden House was before it was a school is unclear. The building I would estimate is at least 200 years old. Like most town centre Biggleswade buildings it is likely to have been built or at least redeveloped after the fire in 1785. I’ve looked at census records but prior to 1881 it is not a school and it is hard to pin down exactly who was living there. The numbering of Stratton Street seems to change with every decade. And Camden House as it’s name only appears when the school does. There’s also no constant family at that end of the street to help anchor it. Unlike on the High Street with the constant Spongs as I like to call them running their chemists near to the Crown Hotel for almost 200 years.
Camden House school was run by a succession of sisters. There were the Lockwoods in the 1880s, then the Millers, then the Satchell’s stepped in during the early 1900s but it wasn’t long until a rival school based on the Baulk in what would become the doctors surgery, took over Camden House school and these sisters were the Birds led by Elizabeth and Lottie Bird. (There were three other sisters in tow.)
In the late 19th and early 20th century education was being revolutionised across Britain. What had once been the privilege of the upper classes was now opening up to middle and finally working class children.
Fears for the welfare of children and in an attempt to end child labour, compulsory education for children between the ages of 5 -10 was introduced in 1880 through a decade later only around 82% of eligible children were complying. For girls this number was lower and their attendance was more sporadic. For working families needing help in the home or with home industries girls were taken out of school as and when they were needed whilst boys’ education was seen as more important. And it wasn’t until 1893 and 1899 that blind and deaf children and then other disabled children were provided with an education, although this was segregated away in special schools.
But it was a boom period for schools being set up across the country. Although most but the poorest parents paid fees for their children’s education there was a growing need for schools that catered for the lower middle class. It appears that Camden House School was initially one of these establishments.
The women running the schools were well educated, unmarried and decidedly middle class. The Millers and Satchell’s advertise that they have been trained at reputable colleges including Cambridge. And for women of this background, running a school was a viable alternative to marriage. Being a school mistress in a fee paying school like Camden House was a respectable job and a position of authority that most women were denied.
This becomes clear when you read the articles and advertisements run in the local newspapers about Camden House School.
The school specialised in teaching girls’ music, languages, art and literature. There is always a young French school mistress based at the school teaching French. Regular concerts are held in Biggleswade and the surrounding area featuring the schoolteachers and pupils playing classical music and more modern respectable theatrical and music hall numbers. The school regularly announces the achievements of its pupils in music, art and language exams.
There are frequent charitable teas, garden parties, concerts and performances to raise money for local nurses and other suitable charitable organisations.
By 1905 a new school room has been added along Crab Lane, most probably the single story Labour Hall which stands behind Camden House today. This school room would open up education to boys and more day students.
By the 1920s there will be tales of how the school is haunted by a young school teacher who died of a broken heart after an ill fated love affair.
I could find no suspicious deaths or deaths of any young women linked to Camden House School. But I did discover that in 1911 Miss Elizabeth Ann Bird, head mistress of Camden House School passed away of what was described as “heart trouble.” She was however in her mid-50s and had been ailing for a year. But it was clear that the town mourned her greatly. The Biggleswade Chronicle devotes a lot of space to her funeral including recording all the floral tributes and messages sent down to Southampton where she was buried.
In fact her predecessor Miss Satchell also died of “heart trouble” aged 58.
Maybe these deaths by heart trouble got mixed up as a broken heart by later story tellers.
Exactly 10 years later in 1921 Elizabeth Bird’s sister Lottie who took over as head mistress died suddenly and completely unexpectedly. She was also by this time not a young woman and left behind three further sisters at the school.
The impact these women had on the town can not be under estimated. I found obituaries of former pupils in the 1930s onwards which mention the difference the Miss Birds had on their lives particularly in teaching children music.
There is one heart breaking obituary from 1931 of a young man named Frederick who was taught music by Miss Bird and developed not just a love of music for life but also of instrument making. He made tin whistles and pipes and taught himself to play various musical styles after his initial education with Miss Bird. But then the first world war happened, and this boisterous and sociable young man joined the navy testing the very fastest war ships and seeing action in at least at one major naval battle.
Frederick returned to Biggleswade a changed man, withdrawn, uncommunicative and sought solace in the music he loved so much. But sadly, that was not enough to sustain him and in 1931 he took his own life on boxing day.
His long and beautifully written obituary mentions prominently the influence Miss Bird and Camden House school had on Frederick whose life was so tragically cut short.
I am not sure exactly when Camden House School closed. But a wonderful and strange article written by a former paper boy in Biggleswade during the war fills in the picture for us. The rather disjointed and badly formatted article appears on the Comet newspaper archive and does not state who wrote the article but this is what they said back in 2006:
“Mrs Dutton of West Norwood took over the school for a short period and indications were that the school would continue, but Camden House was sold to Parker Herbert early in 1922.
Parker Herbert was in business as a newsagent and stationer. He produced a series of pictorial postcards that are much sought after today.
He also sold toys, Meccano and Hornby trains.
I went to work for him in June 1940 as a paper boy. During the London Blitz daily newspapers always came out, but arrived late and we delivered them during the school dinner hour.
Soon afterwards Mr and Mrs Binder took over and I continued as one of their paper boys, collecting newspapers from the early train a short distance away as well as delivering in London Road.
Mr and Mrs Binder expanded the business, taking over Larkinson’s Market Square shop in 1943, also opening a bookshop at the Market House in 1945. They retired in 1948, selling both newsagents shops to Horace Marshall and Son Ltd.
The High Street shop has changed hands many times. It was Chopsticks in 1957 and it is now Sunflower takeaway.”
And it’s in the late 1950’s and early 60s that we take up the story of Camden House again.
The Ghost Shop
By 1964 Camden House had been home to a newsagents for over 40 years just as long as it had been a school.
The school room was the labour hall behind it.
Camden House it’s self is a large white house with a smaller cottage attached, which was known as Camden cottage and was part of the school buildings back in the 19th century. By the 50s it was three separate businesses including the Chinese takeaway and the newsagents.
The newsagent and stationers was called Wyman’s and the manager was a gentleman called Mr Boniface.
We know this because Mr Boniface and some of his colleagues spoke with the local newspaper about some peculiar and unsettling incidents that had been occurring in the shop and above it whilst renovations were taking place.
The Haunting of Camden House
It started out rather innocuously as hauntings often do. Painters and decorators who were in the building carrying out work for Mr Boniface reported hearing strange moans and groans coming from empty rooms they were yet to work in. Naturally they thought it could be several things, a radio playing, one of their mates messing about, even the old building settling. But none of these explanations ever added up. All the lads working there experienced it and none owned up to playing a prank. Mr Boniface admitted to hearing the noises when in the shop by himself and before the painting and decorating had begun. But the noises increased in frequency once the work started.
If the sound of ghostly groaning wasn’t enough. One afternoon a young painter and decorator, lets call him Derek was up a ladder, painting away, when he heard footsteps running up behind him. Turning, thinking it was his mate after something, he was shocked to see no one there. The footsteps had been clear and definitely stopped just behind him. There was no time for anyone to scuttle away. He’d turned immediately to see what they wanted. To say Derek was shaken by this was an understatement.
Another worker, lets call him Howard, was busy in one of the upstairs rooms, right by the attic stairs. The attics were not used at the time and lay empty. The door at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the attic was securely closed. It was a heavy door and rarely used. Howard was getting on with his work when he heard footsteps clattering down the stairs. This surprised him, he hadn’t even realised that anyone was up there. He turned to see the heavy door swing wide open but no one came through and the clattering footsteps stopped at the door. It was as if an unseen person had run down the stairs flinging the door open to get out from up there.
All of this unsettled the staff and it led to a newspaper reporter being told of the tales. He visited Camden House, and explored the upstairs attics which he described as having an “eerie atmosphere.” The local reporter dug around for more information about the building and the haunting. And he was then told a tale he described as “more strange” than anything he’d heard so far.
It’s the late 1950s and Camden House has a Chinese takeaway operating out of it and Wyman’s newsagents but it’s before Mr Boniface’s time. I do not know the managers name nor his wife’s but let’s call them Bill and Ivy. They live in Camden House in a flat above the newsagents. The road outside their house is still the great north road, the A1 bypass of Biggleswade is yet to be completed. There are still many old pubs and coaching inns open in Biggleswade in some ways it has more in common with the time of Camden House school under the Miss Birds than it does with the Biggleswade of today.
Bill and Ivy like living above their shop, although the building is old and creaky it’s home.
Our strange tale happens at night. Ivy is asleep in bed, until she isn’t she wakes suddenly bleary, a little confused as to what has woken her. But she sees Bill has got up, he is standing at the end of their bed. It’s obvious that is what has woken her. And her next thought is what on earth is Bill up to getting up at this time of night. She yawns and groggily asks
“Bill what are you up to love?”
Then the temperature in the room plummets, her heart feels like it’s stopped only to kick start up again and race into her throat because she hears Bill at her side stir after she speaks. The person standing at the end of the Bed is not Bill.
She is wide awake now. The blood in her veins feels like ice. She can not tear her eyes away from the figure at the foot of their bed. Her first panicked thought is that it is a burglar. But there is enough street light filtering through their bedroom window for Ivy to see that the figure is not quite right. Not quite solid.
It is motionless and shadowy. Darker than the dark around it but also flat. It’s like an outline on a black board, chalky around the edges. But it feels very much like it’s staring at her, like it can see her just as she can see it. And whatever it is it is full of dread.
She grabs her husband’s arm, digging her fingers into his flesh.
“Bill wake up, wake up Bill” she hisses and as her words escape the shadow figure at the end of her bed seems to dissolve. Like its being rubbed out. There is a smudge of what looks like chalk dust and then it’s gone.
By the time Bill is awake there is nothing to see at the end of the bed.
We don’t know what happened to Ivy and Bill but they’re clearly not living in Camden House a few years later when Mr Boniface is in charge.
The news reporter’s interest is piqued and he begins to dig even deeper into the history of the building. The school in particular. Some in the town say that the old school is haunted by a former pupil or young school mistress who died of a broken heart.
But the reporter also unearths mention of the Carb Lane ghost from the 1880s who haunted the garden path where the Ambulance depot now stands. He wonders if this is linked to the Camden House haunting. But no conclusions are drawn and the story seems to rest again until Friday 13th March 1970.
On that day the Biggleswade Chronicle ran an article with the headline Ghost Shop Closes. It reports that the small newsagents, formerly Wymans, had become a John Menzies. There was a much larger John Menzies on the market square next to the Woolworths. But this smaller shop which at this point had been a newsagent of some description for 48 years was going to be shut by John Menzies, the decision it says was made in John Menzies Edinburgh HQ.
The newspaper article goes on to explain that the shop was supposed to have had a ghost, and that in its basement it has an entrance to a tunnel which is rumoured to lead all the way to the church.
The tunnels
I was surprised when I read about the tunnels stretching as far as Camden House. I had no idea that the tunnels in Biggleswade reached that far east. So back in March I met with a lovely lady named Beverley who has researched Biggleswade’s mysterious tunnels to quite extraordinary lengths.
I met Beverley at the Sufin Café on the market square on a mild early spring day. Beverley was wearing a gorgeous patchwork and embroidered coat. She works in hospitality including previously at Biggleswade’s Conservative Club and had that practical confident air that you need when running a bar or pub.
She had also drawn me a map!
Beverley started her research with her children as a school project but it had grown into something bigger. Her children eventually lost interest, but Beverley kept going. She researched online, at the library and in person at many Biggleswade properties. She was let into many of the cellars and took photos to show where doorways have been blocked up and bricked up.
Two things really struck me about Beverley’s work above and beyond how dedicated she is to it, and that is:
The map of where the tunnels are beneath Biggleswade and the business and homes they emerge under could be a map showing something else altogether.
And one of the creepiest photographs she has from a cellar is from under Camden House!
The map
As I looked at the map, and again there is an image on the blog, I realised that a lot of the properties marked on it had something else in common, not just the tunnel entrances. They corresponded with ghost sightings or paranormal reports.
There are two town centre based ghost stories I am aware of which do not link to the tunnels (The telephone exchange on Hitchin Street and the Sea Cadet Hall on Station Road.)
But the following locations all have ghost stories attached as well as tunnel entrances beneath them. Camden House, The Golden Pheasant, the Crown, the old Woolworths and Boots (which was the Catherine Wheel Pub site) the Conservative Club, the haunted pound stretcher and the shop next door, The old Coach and Horses pub, and Millenium House towards the north end of Shortmead Street.
Now there are some logical reasons for why this might be. The older a building the more likely it was to have a basement, also the more likely it is to have a tunnel entrance. The older a building the more likely it is to have a ghost story attached to it.
But I still found it rather intriguing.
And what of that photograph of the bricked up tunnel entrance beneath Camden House. The business who let Beverley into the basement to take the picture are no longer based there. So I don’t know what it looks like now. I’ve shared the photograph on the show blog at weirdinthewade.blog so you can see. There is clearly a bricked up small doorway but then in front of that doorway is a brick arch and in front of that brick arch a window has been fitted. It is utterly bizarre.
Why a window would be fitted to a bricked up doorway I do not know and the window looks fairly modern. This isn’t more than a few decades old. There’s only a matter of inches between the doorway and the window. Have a look for yourself and I’d love to know if you have any theories about why there’s a window there! Maybe I’m missing something.
You’ll also find images of the tunnel map with haunting locations on the blog as well.
***
And that’s where I thought we’d end today’s episode. In fact I recorded my narration and was ready to add the sound effects and music… but something just didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the tunnel side of things. That’s all coming in the next episode. It was Camden House School.
You see if there’s one thing that making Weird in the Wade has taught me it’s that however thin a rumour might seem there is usually some truth to it. And the rumour from about 1920 onwards was that Camden House was haunted by the ghost of a young school mistress. You see Miss Satchell and the Miss Birds dying was clearly a shock and upset to the town of Biggleswade, but they were all middle aged when they died. There had to be something else surely.
So, I went back to researching and at 11 o’clock last night three days before this episode is set to be released, I stumbled across a story that might just fill in the gaps.
Annie Bryant
Annie Bryant was born in 1895 in Bridgewater Somerset. A market town considerably larger than Biggleswade but with some similarities, being important towns for transport. Annie’s father Howell George Bryant owned a coal merchants but was more famous for playing rugby for Somerset’s first XV and for the Bridgewater Dreadnaughts.
Annie grew up in a respectable middle class family with a couple of servants to assist her mother nancy, in the running of the household.
In 1911 census records show that Annie who was 16 was a student at St Margaret’s School for girls in Burnham on Sea. There is a fabulous web page dedicated to the school on a Burnham on Sea history website. It includes a school photo from 1910 which surely Annie is on somewhere. I will as always post links to this page on the show blog. I wonder which of the girls Annie is? The school is definitely grander than Camden House but the images of the school and in particular it’s hallway and dinner gong as well as the school room all shown on that website will give you a good idea of what Camden House School was like, just on a smaller scale.
Annie must have done well at school because by the time she is 19 she is working at Camden House School in Biggleswade as a third form school mistress. School forms were the groupings of children by age. A form was the original bench they would have sat on. We still talk about 6th form in England for years 12 and 13.
Even when I was at school in the 80s one school, I attended called years forms. It wasn’t a posh school either just old.
We might think nowadays of third form being year 9 or teaching 13- and 14-year-olds. But back in the 1910s compulsory schooling only went up to age 12. So, I think third form children would have been age 8- and 9. A nice age group to be teaching.
We don’t know much more about what Annie got up to in Biggleswade. But we do know there was a talk given in February 1915 at Biggleswade methodist chapel, that she most likely attended as the school teachers of Camden House School were present. The talk was by a soldier and focussed on encouraging temperance in the British forces fighting in World War One.
It must have been a worrying and stressful time for Annie, who most likely arrived at Camden House School as a teacher aged 18 in 1913 on the eve of the Great War. The news article about the talk given by the soldier promoting temperance says that many soldiers and military personnel are being put up in Biggleswade homes. I wonder if these two things are linked! Keep the soldiers staying with you off the drink people of Biggleswade! Annie was most likely living at Camden House as most young school mistresses did. It must also have been an exciting time for her, to be away from home, starting an independent life as a schoolteacher. I remember how I felt 80 years later when I first started teaching.
But the reason I am telling you Annie’s story is because in the July of 1915 just 5 months after attending that temperance talk at the methodist chapel in Biggleswade, Annie Bryant suddenly died.
Local newspapers cover the death as deeply saddening to all at Camden House School. They say Annie was a much loved third form schoolteacher. That she had bouts of anaemia and neuralgia but was taken seriously ill suddenly and died in Bedford’s County hospital on a Sunday. She was buried in Bedford.
There are a few things that strike me about Annie’s death. Firstly, that she is buried in Bedford. There is no mention of who attended her funeral, or the tributes paid, which many other funerals receive. Also, that she is not returned home for burial in Burnam on Sea where her family then lived and remained for the next 25 years. There is no death notice in the newspapers of Somerset that I can find. Now this might be down to protocol during the war. With so many young men dying in France maybe ordinary or non war related deaths were being sidelined. Maybe transporting her body back to Somerset was seen as too much expense during a war. But other notices of funerals are more lavish in details than poor Annie’s. It does read as if no one apart from the school really cared or even wanted to acknowledge her death.
Her cause of death anaemia and neuralgia could mean many things. Neuralgia at the time was used to describe nerve pain as we use the term today, but it could also be used to describe headaches or undiagnosed pain. In the late 19th century, it was often used to describe what male physicians deemed the mysterious pains women suffered. Often putting the pain down to an over stimulated mind or all in their female patients heads. One doctor even wrote that too much education could bring on neuralgia in women. I am sure the teachers at Camden House School had no truck with such beliefs and these theories were on the wane during the 1910s. Though we still live with the consequences of such beliefs today with women’s pain especially in relation to conditions like endometriosis, and the like often not taken seriously or underestimated and under studied by the medical profession.
I don’t think we’ll ever know what poor young Annie died from. But we do know that it saddened her students and colleagues at the school.
So, I wonder if it was Annie’s death which inspired those ghost stories. Her’s is the only young woman’s death I have found in connection with the school, though it took a lot of digging. She is in many ways the perfect candidate for a ghost story to grow up around.
She is an outsider to the town, there are no relatives to offend when children tell stories of their old school mistress whose spirit still wanders the school room and attics of Camden House.
She was young, no doubt pretty, and if she was a sufferer of anaemia maybe she already had that pale, wan and sylph like appearance of a ghost.
And maybe she had a beau. Maybe he was away at war or about to go to France. Maybe he died in the trenches or called off their tryst before he left. But maybe that was a story that just fitted better when the tales began to spread.
So maybe just maybe Annie is the ghost who haunts Camden House. Taken too young, a woman whose whole life was unfurling in front of her like a blossoming rose only to be snipped short unfairly. Maybe her spirit still wanders Camden House. Or maybe she just inspired a tale of ghostly goings on.
Either way I’m glad I’ve been able to share her story with others a hundred and 9 years after her death.
I also discovered another earlier head mistress for Camden House school whilst researching last night. In the late 1870s the school was run by a Miss Fischer but little other than her name can I find out.
Camden House might be the most easterly extent of the Biggleswade tunnels, and I might not understand fully why it has a tunnel entrance at all yet. But it’s certainly a building and surrounding area with a collection of ghost stories attached to it. But I promised you answers to the mysteries of the tunnels and for that you’ll have to wait until next time!
Next time
Next time on Weird in the Wade I reveal why I believe the tunnels were built and who built them! I’ve also uncovered another ghost story linked to the tunnels this time occurring at the Conservative Club many years ago. The ghost story not only takes place in a building which has a tunnel entrance but also might explain an even older origin for some of the tunnels in Biggleswade.
I also plan to descend into at least one of the basements to record my impressions of them and if I’m lucky one of the basements will be that of the former Pound Stretcher!
End
Thank you so much for listening today. I realised that a forgot to tell you what Camden House is today. I did mention that the old school room is the Labour Hall. I’ve been in the Labour Hall by myself on a few occasions as I used to organised quite a few events there. It is one of those spaces that does feel oddly quiet when you’re alone there. I always put it down to the fact that it is often a place of debate and discussion. But I now wonder if the walls still remember it once being full of children learning and so the quiet when it is empty is thicker because of it.
But Camden House itself still stands on the corner of the High Street (or Stratton Street as it was) and Crab Lane. The following businesses are now housed in the building, Loveday’s opticians, Domino’s Pizza and the Burger Shack. I do remember Sunflower Takeaway being there and a bakers and sweetshop. I believe it was still a newsagent when I was a child. The photograph of the tunnel is from when the wonderful Skipps florist operated out of the building. I recently did some research for Skipps who are now situated opposite the market square on the high street. Skipps have been in the town selling flowers since at least 1903 though back then they also sold sweets and confectionery.
I am very much looking forward to making the next episode about the tunnels. For those of you who are on the Patreon, June’s Patreon episode is about Peg Nut wood. A piece of woodland linking the ancient village of Sutton to Potton just to the north east of Biggleswade. The wood has a peculiar bridge which dogs, children and many adults do not like to cross. I have visited twice to record audio, video and take photos. I also spoke with local author Paul Jameson about his impressions of the place. Is there a natural explanation to our fears of the place or is there a ghostly explanation? Or is it something altogether different, a time slip or a thin place where the fae folk are active? So do sign up to the Patreon if you’d like to hear that content!
I would like to say a huge thank you to the following people for joining Team Weird on the Patreon already! Thank you so much Claire Kendall, Michelle Birkby, Ian Peacock, Sally and John Hawkes!
I’d also like to say a huge thank you to Kelfae, Ananizapta, Lesley, and TamsinWolf for your support on Ko-fi. Remember if you donate on Ko-fi you get access to the first patreon episode so you can get a taste for what gets released on Patreon.
Also thank you so much to everyone who has bought merch from the Weird in the Wade shop. We have two new items on the shop this month a beautiful notebook and draw string bag which as always might be haunted! The mugs are proving very popular as are the t-shirts now that the weather in the UK is getting warmer.
And just a reminder that the money I raise for the podcast goes back into the show and keeping it free from adverts. This month I’ve paid my annual subscription to epidemic sounds which provide the majority of music and sound effects for the show, I’ve also paid for the blog hosting, and the podcast hosting site on podbean, and my subscription to the old newspapers I use for a lot of my research. May is a costly month for the show! So, all your donations really help. Thank you!
And don’t worry if you can’t donate to the show, you can support Weird in the Wade by telling others about the show, sharing on social media and rating and reviewing the show where you listen. Thank you so much for listening.
Weird in the Wade is researched, written, presented and produced by me Nat Doig
Theme music is by Tess Savigear
All additional music and sound effects from Epidemic Sound.
Weird In The Wade 