CHISWICK GHOSTS

  CHISWICK HOUSE --- London

 

This is a glorious example of 18th century British architecture.  It was designed by the third Earl of Burlington in 1725.  Burlington sort to create the kind of house and garden found in the suburbs of ancient Rome.  To do this he employed William Kent to design sumptious interiors to contast with the pure white exterior.

The house was used as a meeting place for artists, sculptures and influential polititians before becoming a home and entertainment venue for various dukes of Devonshire.  Two Prime Ministers have died here.  Charles James Fox in 1806 and George Canning in 1827.  Later in the 19th century it became a lunatic asylum before falling into disrepair.

                                                      

Chiswick House was in the hands of the Ministry of Works in 1958 when extensive restoration was carried out. It was during this work that the inexplicable smell of bacon and eggs would waft around the building.   The workmen laughed that it was the ghost of `one of the mad cooks`.   Ever since though, staff and visitors have been constantly mystified by the distinctive smell of fried bacon the gallery and can hang in the air for up to three months, then not to be noticed for a few years.  Some visitors claim to sense a female presence in the bedchamber and one visitor looking in the mirror there -  the only original mirror in the house - was dumbfounded to see the distinctive form of Lady Burlington reflected behind her, but on turning she found the room was empty.

 

  

ST NICHOLAS CHURCH Chiswick

Founded in the 15th century, this church was dedicated to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors and fishermen, when Chiswick was a fishing village.  Although the church was rebuilt in 1882, the tower is original and dates from 1446.

Barbara Villiers was buried here in an unmarked grave, and the churchyard contains a fine memorial to the engraver William Hogarth.  The churchyard is haunted by the white-clad figures of Mary Falconburg and Frances Rich, daughters of Oliver Cromwell.  After their father`s death, they lived to glorious and ripe old age.  Rumours have long circulated that, following her father`s posthumous beheading.  Mary bribed a guard to allow her to smuggle her father`s headless corpse away from Tyburn,  and that she subsequently had it re-interred in the same vault here at St Nicholas`s Church where she and her sister would eventually be.

When the church was rebuilt in 1882, the vicar decided to investigate the rumour and opened the vault.  He found the coffins of the two sisters but also spied a third coffin which showed signs of rough usage, pushed hard against the wall on the far side of the vault.  fearing the arrival of groups of sightseers to moralise over Cromwell,  he had the vault bricked up and left it unmarked.  Perhaps the fact that there resting place was desecrated by a vicar who, by his own admission, disliked everything their father stood for is why the two spirits return to wander amongst the graves.  They drift through early morning mists until the first rays of daylight are heralded by the dawn chorus, then melt into the wall of the church and return to their unmarked grave.

 

   by Tonitags