Palickap, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
First an apology. I was going to insert photos into this piece, but the ones I took were rubbish and not wishing to compromise SB’s site with unauthorised clips I gave up with the visuals.
However if you want to see what the Elizabethan House on New Street, Plymouth looks like please follow this link: Elizabethan House
There are more things…
As so eloquently put by William Shakespeare there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are known.
One of them is my ability to ramble (and rant) when telling a relatively pointless story, so stand by.
I recently met a man whose hobby is the paranormal. A hobby that has engrossed him for the last eleven years and has taken him on journeys across the world.
After later mentioning this to Mrs B, she dutifully enquired whether I had told him about my experience in the Elizabethan period house on New Street, Plymouth. I had forgotten about that episode, but might mention it to him the next time we meet.
The Elizabethan House was built sometime in the 16th Century and was occupied by many families and people over the following years, eventually ending up as a slum dwelling in the early 20th Century. The local council were being financially encouraged by the government to demolish slums at the time and replace them with better housing and it was only by the actions of Nancy Lady Astor that this historic property was saved from demolition and preserved as an example of life in post medieval Plymouth. It must be said that Plymouth Corporation or Council, then, now and no doubt in the future have no real interest in Plymouth’s maritime history.
They name the city as Britain’s Ocean City. Do they have an example of any of the warships built in the Naval Dockyard? No. The opportunity to retain HMS Plymouth, a Rothesay Class Frigate, as a floating museum never came to anything as the Council weren’t able to secure a berth for her and despite pleas and a concerted effort to raise the £250,000 necessary to buy the ship, built in Devonport Dockyard in 1958/9 and launched by Viscountess Astor, she was sold by her owners, The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, and sent to Turkey for scrap.
As Puffins undoubtedly know, Nancy was an American who married Waldorf Astor and was elected as Unionist MP for the constituency of Sutton in 1919, becoming the first female MP to sit in Parliament. Despite being persuaded to step down in 1945 for being too outspoken during the war, Lady Astor remained a popular and liked member of local society.
Wikipedia have a comprehensive biography of her life for those interested.
Even as a child the Elizabethan House fascinated me and I often visited it on my own as a young teenager. At that time the interior contained a few pieces of Elizabethan furniture and associated artefacts and the two rooms on each level were set up as an Elizabethan family home. Nothing much to it really, but what else is there to do on a winter Saturday as a 13 YO boy?
It recently (relatively) underwent a refurbishment and now has a lot of interactive displays showing the various characters that were known to inhabit it across the centuries. The hope was that it would be completed in time for the Mayflower 400 anniversary in 2020, but hey; the road to hell…
Anyway, prior to its refurbishment I happened to be working as a project manager for part of the capital projects team. A colleague, S who shall remain nameless, and I volunteered to help out as bodies/attendees/number counters on the final day that the Elizabethan House was to be opened to visitors in 2018. Visitor attendance was via a booking website, but numbers were quite small. The house had closed to casual visitors two years prior to this, had been emptied of all its artefacts and furniture and was soon to be enclosed by scaffolding.
We arrived early on a wet and dismal winter Saturday almost 99 years to the day after Nancy Astor had been elected to Parliament and waited for the lead historian to turn up to tell us what to do. As it turned out interested parties were so small that we encouraged passers-by to come in for a look but even so the house was only really open for the morning. It was nice to know that people were interested though, the historian knew her stuff and was open and encouraging and we had a nice lunch nearby before preparing to lock up in the late afternoon, just in case anyone else decided to come along for a look around. No one else turned up, and the lovely historian (she bought us lunch, did I mention that?) left to go home.
Dusk was early inside the old house, due in part to the winter rain and in part to the dust grimed windows. S and I prepared to lock up.
We had to check to make sure that the place was empty and I had gone upstairs, reliving in part the same feelings I used to get as a young lad all those years ago wandering around the place. Nostalgia is a hard taskmaster.
I checked the upper floors and descended the enclosed spiral staircase to the ground floor where I stood waiting for S to come down and lock up. Standing in the back room waiting I heard her footsteps clattering down the stairs and turned to speak.
Nothing.
I looked around; no-one there.
A half minute later S came back in to the house from the garden at the rear after checking it clear. I said “I heard footsteps, I thought you were upstairs”. “No I was out the back” was the answer.
I know I heard those footsteps.
Nothing makes a noise on bare wooden stairs like the fall of a shod human foot.
I know there was no-one else on the premises apart from S and me.
S had not been upstairs, so could not have come down them. If she had I would have seen her.
I felt no stress, or fear, or sense of alarm or terror, but there were footsteps and they were not made by any visible living person in that house.
© Blowmedown 2024
PS The Elizabethan House on New Street, Plymouth is currently closed for emergency repairs following its extensive renovation in 2021/22.
