Getting spooked in Ham House

A few days ago, I expressed an interest in becoming a tour guide at Ham House. As luck would have it, the very next day there was a training session on how to guide the ghost tours.

I jumped at the chance so the following morning, the training was due to begin at 10am. The house is generally kept quite dark, to avoid light damage to any of the delicate things in the rooms. This makes the whole place a bit spooky. My plan was to go into the house at 9.30am and have a little look around for some ghosts while the place was still quiet and dark.

I went and stood in the chapel, where the Duke of Lauderdale’s body lay for a week after his death and where a woman dressed in black has been seen kneeling by the altar and where a handprint was found in the dust one morning, at the Duchess’ pew. I stared into the darkness and my heart beat fast and eventually I lit up my phone to scan the room for ghosties but didn’t see one.

Next I went to to the Round Gallery where, in the book I recently talked about, one of the main characters sees some ghosts. While I am not claiming this book is based on anything factual, I still thought I might come across something, given all the portraits on the wall.

Nothing.

Back downstairs, I went into the Duchess’ bedchamber. This is the room where she spent the last years of her life, ridden with gout and feeling trapped. I can’t remember the exact quote but she writes about feeling imprisoned in her beloved Ham House. There have been ghostly sightings by room guides here, who’ve been so scared by what they saw, that they have been unable to return to the house.

I lingered around, looked in the mirror, looked at the portrait of the Duchess as a young woman and waited.

Nothing.

Undeterred, I went into the White Closet, a beautiful little room that was one of the Duchess’ private closets in which she entertained only her closest friends.

As I stared at a painting of the back of Ham House and the gardens, I remembered someone saying that this painting contains most of the people at Ham House who have been seen/heard as ghosts. So I started looking for them in the painting. And I heard a noise…..

Whirrrrrrrr…..

Oo! Oo! It’s the ghosts! Through there! Up there! In the next room! I snuck along following the noise, with a beating heart, and found….

One of the staff members hoovering the floor in the Long Gallery.

Ah. Yes. Of course that was it. Silly me. Ghosts don’t whirr, everyone knows that.

I did tell him off, though, for hoovering while I’m looking for ghosts. How can they walk around or say hi to me if he’s busy hoovering them up? It takes them bloody ages to get back out of that hoover so I wouldn’t see them until much later in the day.

By this time, it was 10am and the training was starting so I went upstairs and complained about the lack of ghost sightings. We talked a lot about how a tour should run, then a few of the experienced guides did a sample tour for us around the house.

I still didn’t see any ghosts on this tour but not for lack of looking.

Anyway, the training finished and I left, clutching my notes and dreaming about being the Best Ghost Tour Guide The World Has Ever Seen, and ran into my manager from the cafe, who told me about a name scratched into the kitchen window in one of the house steward’s flats upstairs in the house.

The story is, briefly, a young man called John McFarlane was at the house. He was in love with one of the kitchen girls but she was in love with the butler. He was super distraught about it and threw himself out of one of the upstairs windows and died. But not before scratching his name into one of the window panes – John McFarlane 1790.

So we went to see this name scratched in. I was really having to restrain my excitement. People have photographed this window before and seen an orb in the photo! I attempted to take a photo of the name but my phone was like, “There is no more space for photographs on your phone.”

Humph.

So I deleted some photos to make space and tried again. Same thing. I deleted some more and eventually I got one but I couldn’t take any more. After walking through the front room into the hallway, we decided to look around upstairs.

As we approached the stairs, Sarah said to me, “There are stories of a little boy ghost on these stairs,” then she turned the light on…

And the light popped and the bulb threw itself out of the socket and it hurtled down the stairs towards us and smashed on the ground, only just missing us. I tried to photograph the smashed glass but the phone was having none of it. Sarah checked the fuse box but nothing had blown….

Make of it what you will, my friends. Make of it what you will.

London trip (Part 1)

Good morning all. It’s over to my guest blogger today for a little tour of some of London’s little-known hotspots…

 

After my visit to Bletchley Park I drove further south and stayed overnight in London. Next day a relative had organised a walk round some of the lesser known parts (and some of the more well-known). We headed by tube to Blackfriars and began walking from there. The origin of name Blackfriars itself goes back to the 14^th cent. It comes from the black cappa worn by Dominican Friars and the Friars part comes from the French word frères meaning brothers. Close by we saw this very unusually named church:

 

Now if you’re wondering how a parish church can get a name like St Andrew By-The-Wardrobe I can tell you it goes way back in history to 1170. However the “wardrobe” bit of the name did not come about till 1361. Apparently Edward III (1312-77, reigned 1327-1377) moved his royal wardrobe (included, arms, clothing & personal stuff) to somewhere just near the site of the church and so that’s how it got its current name because it was near (or “by”) the king’s wardrobe.

 

Next we came to the College Of Arms. Now this is nothing to do with weapons. It’s all about coats of arms. It’s the place which oversees the granting of various heraldic symbols, shields & town crests used by various councils and individual families across England, Wales & N.Ireland. If you want your family to have its own crest or coat of arms it’s to them you have to apply. (It’s not cheap by the way!). Here’s the entrance:

You can just see the name above the shield over the centre window. It was founded by Richard III in 1484. (His remains, as you may have seen in the news recently, have just been found in Leicester buried under a car park!). Although a royal corporation, with heralds appointed by the British sovereign, they are self-financing and receive no state funding.

Now if you or I decided to make up and use our own coat of arms or indeed someone else’s without their permission we could be brought into the courtroom at the College of Arms. Here’s the pic.

This is where you would be tried for your crime of using an unauthorised coat of arms or misusing someone else’s.

 

Next stop was The Monument. It’s only ever called that and most people know it only by that name. Many people don’t know what it’s a monument to; I also didn’t. It was designed by Christopher Wren & Thomas Hooke and commemorates The Great Fire Of London (1666); it was built 1671-77. Interesting things about it: it is 202ft (62m) tall and lies 202ft from the place where the fire started in Pudding Lane; it is the tallest single stone column in the world; there are 311 steps to the top. As we arrived we saw a queue waiting to go up to the top. However the wait wasn’t too bad and soon we were paying our entrance fee and climbing the spiral stone staircase. I tried to keep count so I knew how far there was to go; I ended up at 314 so not too bad in that I only miscounted by 3 (less than 1% error!). It was pretty full at the top and we could only just about move. They were letting too many people in and not balancing it with those coming out. However it was a great view from the top. Apparently it was used by a number of people for committing suicide by jumping off the top so the area is now fenced in.

 

From there next stop was a church called St Magnus the Martyr. It’s interesting because it stands at what became the start of the (very) old original London Bridge. The church was cut back and an arch built so that horses and carriages could get onto the bridge. Here’s the arch

 

And the sign nearby

 

The original bridge as you will know had many buildings on it – houses, shops etc. Selling them was how they financed the building costs. In the church they have a model about 5-6 feet long showing just how many buildings were crammed onto the bridge.

 

On the way to St Paul’s Cathedral we went past a statue (bust) of John Donne (1572-1631): poet, satirist, lawyer and cleric in the Church of England.

He is famous of course for a number of poems but perhaps his best known lines are No Man Is An Island & For Whom The Bell Tolls. As I looked at the statue I thought that probably Paul Simon would disagree with the sentiment in the first as his song I Am A Rock (from the album Sounds Of Silence released 1966 although the song began life a year or two earlier) says he’s built walls that make a fortress deep and mighty that none may penetrate; also that he has no need of friendship because friendship causes pain. Van Morrison fans – yes I am one – will know there is a tribute to the man on his album Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart and the track Rave On John Donne. (The song also references Walt Whitman, Omar Khayyam & WB Yeats.)

 

Then we passed a sign reminding us how the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) started – no not in 1978 with The Village People! In 1844 George Williams and eleven others began it in the drapery house where GW lived and worked. The closing words on the plaque are: From its beginning in this place, inspired of God, the association grew to encompass the world.

 

And how about this place?

 

The name comes from the nearby GPO (General Post Office) Headquarters.

In 1900 the park became the site of the Memorial To Heroic Self Sacrifice (by George Frederick Watts). Basically it is a memorial to ordinary people who died saving the lives of others. Here are a couple of examples of the sort of acts commemorated

 

That seems a good place to take a break – with people whose only thought in that moment of incredible danger was for the person in the danger and not themselves; and their actions, whilst saving that person, actually ended up costing them their own life in the process.

 

I will do part 2 next week.

Northwich Salt Museum, Part 2

Hello again. It’s Wednesday and time for my guest blogger to take over.

A couple of weeks ago I visited the Weaver Hall Museum in Northwich (Cheshire) as a follow up to the post NaCl (1.8.12). I covered the first part of it in last week’s post – “A Trip Back In Time To The Workhouse”. This one is to cover the salt side. Here’s my salt collection. (The tray map may be familiar to JumeirahJames).

Before we start, let’s just have a think on something here. You know the chemical formula for salt is NaCl: that means it’s made up from ions of sodium (Na) and chlorine (Cl).

Not that interesting perhaps except if you think back to your school days. Remember those chemistry lab demonstrations that the teacher did to show you the properties of certain elements? Sodium is a metal which reacts violently with water and chlorine is a sickly smelling greenish-yellow gas and yet together they produce a substance which everyone in the world eats, in some form or other and it dissolves easily in water. Strange, hey?

Here is the coat of arms for Northwich with the Latin phrase I mentioned last time, Sal Est Vita (salt is life).

As an aside, note the symbol on the right of the three flags on the golden ship at the top. The blue & white wavy lines were from the Mond family crest and believed to be the inspiration for the current ICI logo which is so familiar to us today particularly on their tins of paint. (It has two wavy lines with the letters ICI above. ICI was formed by 4 companies in 1926 one of which was Brunner Mond.)

I mentioned the brilliant book by Mark Kurlansky (Salt – A World History) last time; as I entered the museum there on the shelf was the paperback version of the very book. Other subject related books and pamphlets were available and I ended up with 3 of the latter.

The first display boards covered salt production dating back to the Bronze Age and up to the present day. I mentioned Roman involvement and how important access to salt was for their empire building.

Rome itself was located near a source of salt and had a street named Via Salaria (salt road) which was used to transport salt to the city; it also served the salt trade, eventually stretching 150 miles (242kms) north-east to the Adriatic Sea. In Roman times a man in love was called a salax meaning ‘in a salted state’; the ablative case of the noun is salaci which is the root of our word salacious (meaning lustful, lecherous).

Remember the refs in the Bible mentioned in the previous post – here are a couple more:

1. In the book of Leviticus: “And every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt; you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offering you shall offer salt” (Lev 2:13). Salt was an essential part of worship.

2. In the book of Ezra: “Now because we eat the salt of the palace and it is not fitting for us to witness the king’s dishonour, therefore we send and inform the king, …..” (from ESV version of Bible, 2002) This verse was part of a letter written to King Artaxerxes (ruler of Persia (Iran) from 465BC-424BC).

The inference here is that, for the writers, eating salt (of the palace) meant they were being loyal, law-abiding subjects as opposed to those who ate salt ‘not from the king’s palace’ and therefore not paying the tax included in the price.

At various times through history, rulers around the world have made salt production and its sale a monopoly to generate tax revenue for their governments. You have only to think of the population of the world, presently around the 7 billion mark, to realise the potential in terms of revenue for private companies or governments if they’re involved in a state monopoly.

In 2011, the top four salt producing countries (in order: China, USA, Germany, India) accounted for just over 50% of the world total; UK is 13th in the list producing just 2% of the world total.

Indian salt workers are not well paid and feel trapped in their situation. Saltpan workers in the state of Gujurat which produces 70% of (4th placed) India’s total, say this: “There is a saying here that if you’re a saltpan worker, you have three ways to die: first gangrene, second TB (tuberculosis) or third blindness. In every house, people die this way.” It is not a healthy occupation! Life expectancy is only 50-60 yrs.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported in Feb 2010 that, after death, certain parts of the bodies (hands & feet) of Indian saltpan workers are difficult to burn when they are cremated because of the salt content.

A saltpan, in this case, is not a pan like the ones we use in our kitchens; it is a rectangular bed or beds grouped together containing brine which, with heat from the sun, begins to evaporate and form crystals which are then collected by the workers.

Apologies for the digression – back to the Museum and a bit of geology in order to understand why the area became such a centre for salt production.

Northwich’s salt deposits lie in two layers: one is approx 150ft (40m) below the surface, called the Top Bed, and the other 330ft (100m), called the Bottom Bed. Rainwater sinks into the ground and when it reaches the rock salt deposits begins to form brine & eventually brine streams. The deeper the water goes the more saturated (concentrated) it becomes. This water can be as much as 8 times more salty that ordinary sea water – not the sort of water swim in for sure!

Here’s an example of the different grades of salt produced and their uses.

In Victorian days salt mining, along with many other industrial processes, was very labour intensive.

Here’s a picture of a mine worker and the tub the salt was collected in which was then pushed out on rails. Note the photo in the background: the guys working on the mound are all stripped to the waist as is the man pushing the rail tub. There are three men stood by the tubs in the black & white pic who have white shirts and ties on so it must have been a posed photo with above ground workers at the mine or maybe some local bigwigs on a publicity shoot.

In the next photo you can see some of the effects of salt mining in the local area. The bottom left photo is rather extraordinary. It demonstrates that the Victorians had been mining far too much salt from the Top Bed without leaving sufficient support to prevent sinkage. Despite the angle the building is leaning at the actual brickwork didn’t give way and the whole building just tilted over. Amazing!

The next pic is proof that the ‘pun headline’ favoured by our (UK) tabloid newspapers is not a new invention.

Do you see what they did there with the brand name? Substituted Middle Witch for Middlewich (the town’s name) which is about 7 miles SE of Northwich and a big salt producing area. Remember the “-wich” ending for a place name often means it was a place where salt was produced.

I’m not quite sure how you make salt go “twice as far” other than by halving the amount you use. Maybe what they mean is that you got twice as much for the same price or am I missing something? Also, don’t forget the one penny referred to was in the days when an English pound had 240 of them (not the 100 we have today).

As I reached the end of the tour round the museum I came back to the reception area where the goodies were on display. Apart from the 3 pamphlets I couldn’t resist getting an actual piece of rock salt and here it is.

And of course I had to wet my finger and touch it and then taste – rather salty I thought. No surprise there then & probably 0/10 for originality! I wasn’t the first and I won’t be the last. At the end of my visit the curator told me of a (free) guided tour at another salt related site not far from the museum. As this has rambled on longer than I expected I’ll do that one next week.