Socyberty » seaside

A True Ghost Story. The Gentleman of Magdalen Street

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 15:14:17 +0000

This is a picture of mist on the River Yare; the River Yare and the River Wensum converge in Norwich.

When Adam (my partner) and I decided to set up home together back in the mid to late 1980s, although we would have loved to have bought a property in a rural location unfortunately we couldn’t afford it. We live in quite an expensive part of England in the beautiful Norfolk Broads area which is both tranquil and picturesque, a haven for wildlife, and thus the country properties attract top prices.

Adam, at that time, was a lorry driver for a local brewery and I was a legal secretary working in the city of Norwich so it seemed only practical that we buy a property in the city. We looked at several Victorian terraced houses but, both of us being country people, we just couldn’t envisage that we’d be happy living in a claustrophobic street overlooked both front and rear and with nothing more than a pocket handkerchief backyard for a garden so we ended up buying a fairly new ground floor flat in a relatively quiet area on the outskirts of Norwich, which had a little piece of garden and was only overlooked by the flat upstairs.

With Adam working for the brewery, he had to be up with the lark (about 5.30) and off to work by 6.30. The brewery was some 11 miles away so it was obvious he would need to take the car and, like most first time property buyers, we weren’t particularly well off so we couldn’t afford a second car and I had to get a bus to and from. However, by the mid 1990s I got frustrated with having to struggle onto hot and stuffy buses which, by the time they hit my stop, were packed and this meant I had to stand for the whole journey, so I decided to take the healthy option – a 40 minute walk! This walk took me along a very old street known as Magdalen Street.

Every morning I’d plug into my Walkman, put on some flat walking shoes and stride out.

On one particular morning I got as far as a very battered and dilapidated building in Magdalen Street which had been a public house/night club known as The Jacquard Club. It had recently closed but was, at the time, being refurbished by the local council. The building was surrounded by scaffolding which was partially screened by green plastic netting and, due to the narrowness of the footpath at that point, it was sometimes necessary for one pedestrian to give way to another coming from the opposite direction. The alternative was to take your life into your hands and walk out into the stream of traffic which, at the time was two-way, although it has since become one-way due it’s narrowness.

As I reached the scaffolding I saw a businessman – smart dark suit, dark hair, fairly full beard – heading towards me. As I was in a position to sidestep into an alleyway, I just moved to one side to allow him to come through. I waited for a few seconds but nobody passed me so I moved back into the centre of the footpath, looked through the scaffolding and discovered there was no-one there.

At the time I thought the guy had crossed the road and I hadn’t realised it so I wasn’t particularly concerned.

Above is a picture of The Jacquard (originally The White Lion) as it is today. On the left hand side of the building as you look at the photograph, you can see the alleyway that I stepped into. The scaffolding ran the whole length of the building. The “apparition” was coming from the right hand side of the picture.

A few months later I was walking along the same route but had gone beyond the Jacquard Club and had almost reached the far end of Magdalen Street where it met with Fye Bridge, a water bridge, and on the junction of a side road known as Fishergate.

There was a café called The King of Hearts on the corner of Magdalen Street where it connected with Fishergate which had huge windows and I had got into the habit of looking through the windows to see if anyone was coming round the corner, in which case I tended to wait some way back so that I didn’t scare the wits out of anyone coming round the corner.

On this particular morning I looked through the window, saw a businessman walking with a black Labrador dog heading towards the corner so I waited. At that moment the cassette tape in my Walkman came to an end so I quickly ejected it, flipped it over lo the other side, pressed play and looked up to see where the man and his dog had got to but there was nobody there. I knew for certain that nobody had walked past me. I carried on walking towards the junction with Fishergate and assumed that the man’s dog had probably had to stop due to the call of nature, or that he had crossed the road to walk by the river, but when I reached the corner, no-one was there. I looked along Fishergate, back along Magdalen Street (just in case I’d missed him) and over Fye Bridge but he was nowhere to be seen.

Above is a picture of the café. You can see the large glass windows. I was coming from the left and looked through the glass to the junction (on the right).

The above is a picture of Fye Bridge (taken in the 1960s) looking towards The King of Hearts. You can just see the building - it’s to the right hand side of the photograph; the grey and white “striped” building above the fisherman’s head!

Following my second sighting, I carried on walking to my office and it wasn’t until later in the day that I remembered my previous encounter by The Jacquard Club when it suddenly occurred to me that the gentleman then bore an uncanny resemblance to the gentleman I met coming along Fishergate that morning, the only difference being that with my second encounter he had been accompanied by a black Labrador.

I assumed that it was all perfectly logical. Maybe I’d just been so wrapped up in my music and had imagined both encounters, but I didn’t see the “apparition” again as a few months after my second encounter Adam and I were finally able to move out to the country to the house we live in now. It was natural that I totally forgot about these sightings but a year or so after we moved into our rural idyll in Spixworth I was watching a programme on the TV about haunted buildings and this episode was particularly interesting to me as it was looking at properties in Norwich.

From that, I discovered that one of the shops in Magdalen Street is said to be the most haunted property in Norwich. Apparently it had been an inn of ill repute – during its chequered past not only wine and song had been offered as entertainment, but certain ladies of the night had also been on the menu! Needless to say, due to the history of the establishment, there had been various altercations, brawls, deaths and murders taking place there.

Above is a photograph of the “most haunted building in Norwich“. Paranormal activity and apparitions have been encountered there and an apparition has been seen at one of the upstairs windows. The photo was obviously taken some years ago as the property has since been renovated and several occupiers have come and gone. However, the latest occupant is fascinated by the paranormal and has, thankfully, settled in there quite happily with his spirit sub-tenants!

Bearing in mind the gentleman I saw could well have been wearing Victorian or Edwardian garb and his beard would have fitted in equally well with that period or, at a quick glance, with current times, then who knows, maybe he had some sort of connection with the street.

So, if anyone out there takes a holiday on the Norfolk Broads or at one of our seaside resorts, and decides to take a trip to our wonderful historic city of Norwich make sure you visit Magdalen Street to see if you can spot my Victorian gentleman either with or without his faithful hound. The street is within a stone’s throw of our magnificent cathedral. I look forward to hearing from anyone who visits!!!

Since writing the above, I have looked into the history of The Jacquard and, from what I can gather, the pub dates back to the 1700s but whether or not the above photo shows the original building I don’t know. The club closed in the 1990s and it was converted into flats in 2004.

Saucy Seaside Postcards

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:50:43 +0000

As a young lad the scantily clad women on the cards were eye opening and as a slightly older young lad, the innuendoes were well worth a titter behind the card rack. Of course you didn’t pick one of those to buy, not in front of mum and dad; you chose a nice view of the resort. Then you took it back to where you were staying to write out to send to your friend back home.

If you were feeling kind the message usually was “Having a nice time, wish you were here.” However if you were that way out, and wanted to remind him that he wasn’t on holiday while you were then it would be, “Having a fantastic time. Wish you were here?”

By the time you were into your teens then inevitably you’d be bold enough to pick and send one of the saucy ones.

During the holiday season I’m sure delivering the mail gave the postman a bit of a giggle.

The Benny Hill type humour reflected British humour that was popular in the late fifties, sixties and seventies and seen in the popular “Carry On” series of films.

They usually contained buxom women, hen pecked husbands and “courting” couples, and always the innuendo or double entendre.

The postcard first appeared in the mid nineteenth century.

In “A brief history of the picture postcard” by Judith & Stephen Holder (FRPS) they write

“The creation of the postcard by Dr Emanuel Hermann in Austria on 1 October 1869 set in motion a revolution in the communication of the ordinary message of no especial importance, the private note, the mundane or jolly remark, the ‘wish you were here’ – indeed any short note for which no real ’security’ was required.

Almost all the main developments in the artistic designs of Postcard art originated on the continent, in Germany, Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland. The two main exceptions which developed in Great Britain were the Comic card and to some extent the Real Photograph cards of social, industrial and village history.”

Jonathan Duffy (BBC News Online) quotes from a book by Collector Tom Phillips.

“They were classless and democratic and the limited space was a blessing to those with poor spelling or without much to say. “

In an essay in 1941, the renowned author George Orwell wrote:

“Who does not know the ‘comics’ of the cheap stationers’ windows, the penny or twopenny coloured post cards with their endless succession of fat women in tight bathing-dresses and their crude drawing and unbearable colours, chiefly hedge-sparrow’s-egg tint and Post Office red?”

“In general, however, they are not witty, but humorous, and it must be said for McGill’s post cards, in particular, that the drawing is often a good deal funnier than the joke beneath it.”

Donald McGill ,was one of several notable illustrators, who among others included Tom Browne, John Hassall, Bruce Bairnsfather and Alfred Lees.

Unfortunately for McGill he was the unlucky one.

In the 1950’s there was a public morals backlash and Watch Committees were set up in seaside resorts. This led to the 81 year old McGill being prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, and several of his cards being destroyed.

These are some of those vintage postcards.

They seem somewhat tame by today’s standards. It was enough however to cause confusion to the shop owners selling them and to cause several printers to cease trading.

After a couple of years this “do-gooder” attitude subsided and the illustrators and printers were back in business.

How are postcards faring in today’s “techno” climate?

In a recent survey the broadcaster ITV said that the number of postcards sent has dropped by 75 per cent. It showed that 67 per cent of those surveyed used emails or photos while on holiday, to keep in touch with family and friends.

And Donald McGill?

In 1994 the Royal Mail brought out a set of commemorative stamps featuring McGill’s postcards.