Should I stay or should I go?
Penny Griffiths Morgan • 6 November 2026
You are a decorated Second World War army Colonel and you find out your house is haunted, what do you do?
Well in the case of Colonel sir Arthur Noble and his wife Lady Irene Noble, not a lot really.
They moved into their home on Gravel Lane in Chigwell in around 1953 and were apparently told from the get go that it was haunted. There were a lot of other claims attached to the property known as Marchings, that it not only a non-rent paying tenant in the guise of a White lady, but that it had also been the hunting lodge of King John as it was a stone’s throw from Hainault Forest, part of the larger Forest of Essex, a well known hunting ground for royals and those given permission by the crown.
I would say the house itself was not somewhere King John would have visited in the 12th or 13th century as the building has been dated as 16th century but…stone columns of unknown origin were found in the grounds and the architects were unsure of their origin so maybe that particular legend has some accuracy.
Anyway, onto the Colonel and his wife…I get the impression from putting together a potted biography about him that subjects such as ghosts would have been met with short shrift, this was a man who spent his formative years at boarding school (Felstead) and was then a military man. His deployment during World War Two to North Africa with the Essex regiment had him noted more than once for his dedication to service and also saw him awarded a Distinguished Service Order having displayed “conspicuous leadership, forcefulness and initiative” (Brigadier D.R.E.R. Bateman). During his later years he was very involved in the sports trust in nearby Harlow and helped launch Harlow Sports Centre.
After a few years they realised or at least Irene did, that the legend of the ghost was actually true…Lady Noble would see the apparition at the bottom of the stairs, watched it walk right past her. The myth was that it was a friendly ghost and as far as she was concerned, they were more than happy to co- exist with their house share. In a newspaper interview she was asked about contacting a spiritual medium to try and contact the entity to find out who she was, her reply? She could not see the point, plus the Colonel would hate it.
I am not sure who is currently living there, but I wonder if their revenant resident is still friendly and welcome
This is Peter’s stone near Wardlow Mires in the Peak district, looks like just an interesting geographical feature right? perhaps if I give it it’s other name, that of the gibbet stone you may realise it has a bit of a dark past. Gibbeting was the somewhat gruesome practice of hanging a person in chains, many times after they had already been hanged by a noose and executed. The Murder Act 1751 specified that murderers’ bodies were either dissected or gibbeted – women were never hanged in chains, firstly because of well…decorum but also because their bodies were really sought after by anatomists. The whole point of gibbeting was to discourage others from committing the same crime which was why the gibbet post tended to be placed near to where the crime was committed. Take Anthony Lingard, in mid-January 1815 the 24 year old murdered toll keeper 48 year old widow, Hannah Oliver, taking both money and some footwear of hers as his spoils. It was when he gave some of the cash and the shoes to a local girl who he had seduced and got pregnant that it began to go wrong as she refused the gift having been aware of a local rumour as to what had been taken from poor Hannah. He was not actually being generous towards the future mother of his child; he was trying to bribe her to point the finger at someone else having got her in the family way… It did not take long for Lingard to admit to his guilt and he was held at Derby Gaol until the Lent assizes in the March of that same year. His execution took place just days later on the 28 th March 1815 from where he was removed back to the Mires and hanged in chains until his remains were so disgusting it was cut down around eleven years later. As with so many local stories, there are variations on why Lingard was visiting Hannah, one was that he was trying to persuade her to marry him as he knew she had money on her – running a tollgate was a lucrative business…another was that it was purely opportunistic as he was local and knew the traffic that passed by would have meant rich pickings There is not much on the victim that one can find which does seem to be the way with these kinds of murders, especially when it is a woman. I believe that Hannah married Richard Oliver in 1813, he was a widowed and quite a bit older than her, he passed away less than a year later. Hannah was buried a couple of days after her murder in Stoney Middleton. Whether gibbeting was worth the expense (well into the thousands of £ in modern day money) in dissuading people from committing crimes is something historians have debated for years, bit like the horror of knowing your family member was being dissected as opposed to buried “whole”, but the practice was abolished in 1834. I stood there on a nice summers’ day, obviously knowing what the area had seen, a highwayman by the name of Black Harry was also executed there, he was not just displayed there, according to records he was hung drawn and quartered first and I genuinely felt a real sense of unease. All I will say is that if you are in this area, and you hear the galloping of hooves or the clank of chains? Keep walking.
Do you ever get bored and just read through old newspapers to see what stories you can find? Just me? Ok… I was having one of those mornings and I found a newspaper, The Worthing Herald from 3 rd June 1988 which was talking about different ghost stories from the years. One of the ones it showed was of a spirit who was said to cause chaos in a restaurant (it is no longer there and is a residential property again) I decided – me being me - to look into it, they had mentioned the name “Eales” and that she had died after being severely burned in the front room of her house, which was now where the diners would sit to eat. The tragic accident was said to have taken place in 1901 at 4 Ambrose place, so there would have been quite a lot of information available digitised for me to check. There was indeed an Emily Mary Eales who had lived on Ambrose place at that time, she had shared a property with her father up until his death on 13 th March 1903 at the age of 93. She had died a month later, at 63. Whilst it took some thinking out of the box to find out what happened to her, it did appear eventually. Two men walking past the house caught sight of flames through the window and ran to get help, when they managed to break through the front door and quell the fire enough to get into the property they found Miss Eales, every single vestige of clothing had been burned off her body and she was in a very bad way, thankfully she was already deceased so was not having to deal with the slow pain of severe burn injuries. The lady was a cat lover, owning many and had been left in a chair by the fire place whilst her housekeeper was preparing dinner. She had been heard shouting and was discovered in flames, either she had fallen into the fire place – she suffered with epilepsy and it had happened before – or had leaned over to pick up a cat and caught her dressing gown on the embers. As the housekeeper ran to get help after trying unsuccessfully to help her, she accidentally locked the front door on her way out and was unable to regain entry. They knew the rough time of death as the clock above where she had been sitting stopped at 6.55pm. A sad story regardless, especially when you read that her father had left her the house for her sole occupation and the will was not read until after her death. Whilst I could not find any specific accounts of tragic deaths at the actual restaurant site, there was a fatal accident that took place in January 1901. The domestic help at 11 Ambrose Place, French girl Celanie Delattre was in the process of getting the owners young son ready for bed when she accidentally brushed past an open fire and her dress caught light. She died from the shock of the burns shortly after, having been taken to the local infirmary. No blame was attributed to her employers and it documented as a tragic accident. So, do I believe that Miss Eales had been haunting the restaurant? Unless you know the area and can confirm that the house numbers have been changed I do not believe it was the property of her or Celanie, but maybe there was a fire risk that they were trying to warn about.
Most people with general knowledge can name famous aviators from the second world war, but what about those who went before them, what about the pioneers of military flight, the first world war aces? The Red baron, Albert Ball maybe? Billy Bishop? George Guyenmer? But when you look into the lists of pilots who achieved the notoriety of an ace, you will see they come from across the globe, however there is only one Greek person, Aristeidis Maraitinis Greece did not join the First world war until 1917, but Aristeidis had been in the Hellenic Navy since 1910 as an ensign and had volunteered for the brand new air arm of the force a few years later. It could even be quite easily argued he was part of the first ever aerial naval military operation when on 5 th February 1913, as an observer, he and his pilot conducted reconnaissance on an Ottoman naval base and also dropped bombs on an area in the Dardanelles. He must have got the flying bug because on the 22 nd September 1914 he went solo and achieved his pilots’ certificate, number 1087. In 1914, he and another Greek pilot, Dimitrios Kamberos took the initiative to form the first ever Greek Naval air force academy – he also co- founded the first Greek aircraft factory as well. They specialised in sea planes at their school as even though Greece itself is a very large land mass, it is full of smaller islands and there was a need for both observation and protection of shipping from the looming Ottoman threat. After Greece joined the triple entente and declared war on the central powers on 29 th June 1917, Aristeidis was working with the British Navy, flying Sopwirth Camels and over a period of fourteen months, was engaged in multiple dogfights and at the end of the war, was credited with nine aerial victories, making him Greece’s only flying ace of World War 1. It does seem to be the fate of quite a few well known aviators that flying an aircraft they were unfamiliar with was to be the end of their story - I am thinking of one of my personal heroes, Guy Gibson here – but on the 22 nd December 1918, Maraitinis was flying from Thessaloniki to Athens, when his aircraft, a Brequet 14 which he had not many flying hours in, went down in bad weather near to the infamous Mount Olympus. Neither the wreckage of the plane nor his remains were ever located, the Ace of the Mediterranean was 27 years old.
You may remember recently I wrote about some Commonwealth War Graves I had stumbled across in the cemetery in Chelmsford, there was one that I felt deserved his own blog as the death was very…questionable. The gravestone for Private F Root does not tell you what exactly happened to him, but for those of you with an enquiring mind, I do wonder why there was not more of an investigation into his death. As with so many Great War documents, there are fundamental gaps in the records when you go searching on line, so Fredericks papers are very scant and still leaves me with many things I cannot find answers for. Thomas Frederick Root was from Essex originally, and had joined the 2/6 th Essex battalion, essentially a home defence territorial force who were formed in November 1914 to protect and undertake duties required back in Essex. It appears that his responsibility was to perform sentry duties at Chelmsford railway station, and he was living in digs locally. On Sunday 16 th May 1915, Frederick turned up at the station and spoke with Sergeant Turner to explain that as it was 11pm, he did not want to go back to his billet and potentially disrupt his landlady so could he do a night duty then instead of the Monday night he was rostered for. This actually worked out quite well for Turner as half an hour earlier a drunk soldier had been arrested as “not altogether sober” by the commanding officer Major Evans which had left Turner a man down for that night’s shift. At midnight, Root went on duty at the viaduct end of the station, and two hours later, Sergeant Turner went to relieve him but he was no where to be found. It took a little while for him to find Fred, he was deceased and lying near to the rails. It was surmised that he had slipped, stumbled onto the tracks and been hit by a train from behind. Then the inquest began…the first accusation was that Root had been drunk and blame started to be placed on Turner for allowing him to work, he vehemently denied that fifty two year old Root was a drinker and maintained he was stone cold sober when he had asked to swap his duties at 11pm. The reason that doubt was cast on Root’s sobriety was a witness statement from PC Crabb who stated he spoke with the deceased at 11.30 pm – he was quite adamant about this as he had been asked the time - outside the station and that he could not walk straight so he presumed he was intoxicated. It was not difficult for the enquiries to find people to confirm he was sober. Why did PC Crabb’s evidence differ so much from Sergeant Turners? The Private who was also on duty had confirmed that the deceased had come into the guardroom at around 11pm and was certainly not inebriated then, but could not guarantee what had happened between their speaking and his shift commencement at midnight. Is it possible to become roaring drunk in thirty minutes? I guess so, but is it likely? No. What I find strange is that there is no mention of what trains would have come through the station during that two hour period in the reporting, nor are any train drivers called as witnesses. Also why was he in Chelmsford at 11pm at night ? he had apparently spent time that afternoon with one of his sons who was also a soldier – that poor guy had been the one to formally identify him, someone was obviously lying about whether Root was sober or not. His death was marked as accidental, not the first or last sad fatality to happen at Chelmsford, but I do have questions…
Recently I posted some Commonwealth War Graves that I found whilst walking around Chelmsford cemetery, I say “found” but obviously they were not lost…I would have said stumbled across but even that would be inaccurate so found it is. When you see war graves from the First World War in the UK you know that the person did not lose their life in the trenches, you may wonder how I know this? well, in March 1915, the British government banned the exhumation and repatriation of “Imperial” soldiers - originally the Commonwealth war graves commission was called the Imperial War graves commission. Whilst this move may seem harsh, the sheer number of deceased and also the health risk of trying to bring them back to the UK (or wherever they were from) was prohibitive, so the rule was upheld. It was not just for sanitary reasons however, there was also an element of equality as well. To put it in plain terms, the family of an officer were far more likely to be able to afford the costs of exhuming that body, and having it shipped safely back to his home, the next of kin of tommy's? Less able…and one of the things that the powers that be strove to drive home was that everyone was equal when it came to war. Well, unless you were one of those senior commanders sitting in your ivory tower, miles behind the front line and very safe thank you very much. I digress. So, remember that if you see a WW1 war grave, it is virtually definite that they passed on home soil, that does not mean they did not see action, nor does it mean they were not injured abroad as they could have been given a “blighty pass” (the ticket home to be treated) but they left this world on this side of the channel. On that note, the five WW1 graves I saw, what happened to them? I was waiting slightly to write this as the cause of twelve deaths in Chelmsford in the 1915 period amongst soldiers was meningitis. Henry Edmondson was born in 1896, in the city of Bristol, he had joined the army at 16 and was a member of the South Midlands Field Ambulance service who in the early years of the war had been billeted in Chelmsford. He had been working as an orderly at Oaklands military hospital (the site of the Chelmsford museum now) and even though as a means to try and control the outbreak they had moved a lot of people away from that site, he was to contract the illness and die after around a week at the same hospital where he had originally been working. William Bruton from Worcester was also to lose his life from the condition, just two days before Henry on the 17 th February 1915 at the age of 17 – although his records say he was 19 so it may have been he exaggerated his age when he signed up. The case of William Pilbrow, born in Northampton, he was also part of the South midlands division although this time the Howitzer brigade. This gunner was 19 when this happened to him, and by the looks of his records, he had been toying with the military since around 1911 when the census records show him as living in the Northamptonshire depot regiment building on Leicester Road. On the 10 th June 1915 he was being escorted to the Chelmsford & Essex Hospital on New London Road for an operation on a cut wrist, he had actually been detained by the military police so you do wonder what had happened to him. On the day in question he was told not to eat anything as he was going to be having a general anaesthetic so that his wrist could be operated on, but it seems that Gunner Pilbrow may have thought this a joke, and when he was coming round from the anaesthetic began to vomit partially digested food. There was a full inquest into who was at fault for this, and it was decided that William had been told on multiple occasions to not eat anything, but maybe they should have asked him before he was put under, it was still found that no medical staff were to blame. The other sad story I will tell is that of Frederick Root, but you will have to wait for that one…
How often - for those of you that do research – do you stumble across information that you are not intentionally looking for but is just too good to ignore? That is indeed the case with the lady who I am going to talk about shortly, but I cannot do her amazing exploits justice in this short piece so please do read further if you find her as fascinating as me. Whilst I was researching for a short video I placed on my social media accounts recently about the 19 th incarnation of the Bethlem Royal - I had to remove the post but will be redoing it - I noted the name of Hannah Snell, a woman who in 1791 was admitted to the Moorfields site of Bethlem (I so hate using the word Bedlam) and sadly died there, she was buried in the graveyard of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, but why? Sit back, grab a beverage and read on… Born in Worcester in 1723, Hannah was the youngest of eight and a few months before her twenty first birthday she married a Dutch sailor by the name of James Summs. This was not a match made in heaven, Summs was a blatant womaniser, and after blowing through what money they had living a lifestyle well beyond his means, he abandoned Hannah whilst she was pregnant with their daughter. Tragically Hannah was to lose her first child before they reached the age of twelve months, and she moved in with her sister in Wapping. With no real ties to anywhere she decided to travel to Coventry and find out what had happened to her arsehole of a husband, when she discovered he had been executed for murder (could not have happened to a nicer person I think) a plan must have formed in her mind. As a child she is said to have enjoyed “playing soldiers” and so she dressed in male clothing, assumed the identity of her brother in law James Gray and joined the 6 th Regiment of foot. According to the work “The Female Soldier” by Robert Walker, she excelled in training and nobody had any idea that was in fact a woman. Why exactly her superior, one Sergeant Davis decided that “James” would be the best person to aid him in gaining the trust of a young local woman who he had his eye on, so concerned with what his plans were for the girl, James/Hannah befriended her, Davis - with a somewhat one track mind – came to the conclusion that his soldier and the woman he had wanted were lovers and had Hannah sentenced to six hundred lashes outside the walls of Carlisle Castle. She received “only” five hundred, but even then her true identity was not revealed. After that, she did a runner from the army but instead of giving up on her military aspirations, she became a Royal Marine! To cut a quite long story short, she ended up fighting in the Siege of Pondicherry - having been transported there on the HMS Swallow – she was injured in a battle at Devicottah (now known as Theevukottai) which resulted in three months of recuperation, I say injured, according to her biography she was wounded twelve times. Even after being treated by regimental surgeons, her real identity remained secret. Hannah eventually returned to the UK in June 1750 where she came clean to her shipmates “ Why gentlemen, James Gray will cast off his skin like a snake and become a new creature. In a word, gentlemen, I am as much a woman as my mother ever was, and my real name is Hannah Snell” Now this is something that I find amazing, but somewhat satisfying as her friends encouraged her to not only publish her exploits but also to apply for a military pension…which she did, with the Royal Hospital Chelsea granting her a lifetime annuity in November 1750 You may wonder what happened after that? It seems Hannah settled down, married twice, had children but the end was to come to her amazing life when in February 1792, having spent six months in the Royal Bethlem after a period of mental illness, she died. Hannah Snell, the first ever female Royal Marine? Further reading - The Female Soldier – Robert Walker Hannah Snell – Matthew Stephens
History has a tendency to repeat itself, antagonism towards certain groups of society can be seen through centuries of the past, and yes, it sadly is doomed to keep happening. Take the Jewish massacre in York in 1190 for example. Most people have either seen, visited or at least heard of Clifford’s Tower in the city. Originally constructed as a wooden keep by William the Conqueror (and therefore part of the castle), it was rebuilt in stone around 1245 or so but what happened to the original building? In the Middle Ages, it was against the Christian religion to lend money for interest, the religious teachings saw “usury” as being a sin, it was throwing the concept of charity and helping thy neighbour into the bin. The addition of interest payments on the loan was basically profiteering from another person’s misfortune and kicking them in the proverbial teeth whilst they were down. Not so in the Jewish faith, which meant that many became money lenders to Barons and other nobles who were desperate for funds to build their castles and such like. Those nobles included King Richard I who was in 1190, about to embark on another of his heavily leveraged crusades. As we have seen in more modern times, it is not difficult to incite unrest amongst crowds, especially when it is using a religion or way of life which they do not understand. Feeling this unease and being guaranteed royal protection, many of the Jews of York asked for help, and were granted cover in the timber tower that we know now as Clifford’s. Rumours had spread that the King had ordered a massacre of the Jewish population – not true, he actually defended them, as evidenced in London the year before– which would have been terrifying to those trying to live peacefully. Trust broke down between the Jewish community in the tower and the keeper, and when he left to run errands, they locked him out and refused his re-entry, barricading themselves inside and trying to fight off the ensuing hoard. The Chronicler of the time, William of Newburgh states in his work “Historia Rerum Anglicarum” that “ Nevertheless, they kept off the besiegers with stones alone, which they pulled out of the wall in the interior. The castle was actively besieged for several days; and at length engines were got ready and brought up” The Rabbi realised that the likelihood of them getting out unscathed was not probable, and made the request for the man of the family to kill his spouse and children, and then take his own life. The estimate is around one hundred and fifty perished, but that was not the end of it as some of the survivors set fire to their belongings which caused the wooden structure to catch light. Terrified of being burned alive, they begged to be allowed to leave peacefully if they promised to convert to Christianity. Again, William of Newburgh talks about this in his historical accounts and mentions Richard Malbeste who – “a most daring fellow, were unmoved by pity for these miserable wretches. They deceitfully addressed kind words to them, and promised the favour they hoped, under the testimony of their faith, in order that they might not fear to come forth; but, as soon as they came out, those cruel swordsmen seized them as enemies, and slaughtered them in the midst of their continual cries for the baptism of Christ”. To finish it off completely, the mob made their way to the Catholic cathedral and burned every record of Jewish lending - which had been deposited there for safe keeping – to release all from their debts. You may wonder how Richard the Lionheart viewed this? he was incensed, and sent his chancellor, the Bishop of Ely to York to punish the perpetrators. Possibly knowing that they would be incurring the wrath of the King, many of the leaders had done a runner to Scotland, so in the end financial punishments were imposed on the families, the amount dependent upon their personal fortunes. Nobody was ever tried for the murder of this, but that mound that the current tower sits on must be holding awful secrets from this tragic event.
My goal with most of my short posts on the various social media sites is to get people thinking, get those who think it looks interesting to investigate and research further, but recently I fell afoul of the participants who want to be spoon fed everything – either that or confuse my thirty second highlights to be akin to full blown hundred thousand word doctoral thesis. I had read about the events in Tunguska on the morning of 30 th June 1908 and decided to put a short piece together about it. By short I mean, a burst, literally…about one hundred words and a thirty second video, I know I talk fast but even I cannot cover every single possibility in that so I had to cherry pick the most likely reasons – and include Aliens because why not? So, I look at the comments and see one word…Tesla. Ok cryptic, does the person mean the electric car or the amazing inventor who ironically I had mentioned in a podcast only recently. When I question this person further I get told that I should have mentioned Nikola Tesla with regards to Tunguska as if I had done my research thoroughly I would have known. Rude. For those of you who enjoy reading and watching posts put together by people like me thank you, and of course I am always more than happy to learn about a subject as I do not profess to be an expert in any way on everything but there are ways to do it. When putting information together quite frequently one has to decide what is going in and what is staying out, with a situation like Tunguska there were other possibilities and the potential death ray created by Tesla was one. I had chosen to exclude it because I thought an alien spaceship exploding was actually more probable than someone creating a ray which could reach from Long Island to a remote area of Russia without actually destroying anything else in its path. I think Tesla was amazing and light years ahead of his time with his theories, but we know he was working on wireless energy transmission in 1908, his Wardenclyffe tower. All the programmes I have watched, the articles I have read (a couple of which are linked below) look at this invention as something to transmit globally wireless communications (and subsequently energy). We also know that the brilliant inventor was working on weapons with his telautomaton (wireless torpedos), and that he believed “Tesla said his transmitter could produce 100 million volts of pressure and currents up to 1000 amperes, with experimental power levels of billion or tens of billions of watts. If that amount of power were released in "an incomparably small interval of time," the energy would be equal to the explosion of millions of tons of TNT, that is, a multi-megaton explosion. Such a transmitter would be capable of projecting the force of a nuclear warhead by radio. Any location in the world could be vaporized at the speed of light." (taken from Frank Germano at http://www.frank.germano.com/tunguska.htm ) - I do want to stress that I could not find the original source for this passage as the website is no longer active (PGM) When the actual website dedicated to Tesla thinks its in the realms of ridiculousness that his tower at Long Island could have been the cause of the explosion, then I believe them. Granted I am not a scientist and even have to google some of the terminology to put it into “doesn’t have a scooby” type language, the probability that a weapon that powerful could have been created in 1908 is somewhat hysterical. To stress my point, according to various sites it was not until 1934 that Tesla started talking about death rays, in actual fact he called it a death beam as he said “I want to state explicitly that this invention of mine does not contemplate the use of any so-called " death rays." Rays are not applicable because they cannot be produced in requisite quantities and diminish rapidly in intensity with distance. All the energy of New York City (approximately two million horsepower) transformed into rays and projected twenty miles, could not kill a human being, because, according to a well known law of physics, it would disperse to such an extent as to be ineffectual” ( https://www.pbs.org/tesla/res/res_art11.html ) When I posted on my private profiles how annoyed I was at the “do your research” type comment, a good friend (who shall remain nameless) who does a role very similar to mine said she frequently got “you didn’t mention xyz…” and gave up explaining that even in a thirty minute video you cannot always cover the entire history of something. So, firstly no I did not mention Tesla because I thought it was grasping at conspiratorial straws and I thought the three other possibilities were more viable (based on the scientific reports I had read), can I cover every single variation of theory in a thirty second video? Nope but do I appreciate a private message saying “have you read about….” Rather than a snarky “do your research” type post? hell yes. https://teslasciencecenter.org/history/tower/ https://www.teslasociety.com/tunguska.htm
