Edinburgh is a fascinating city, both geologically and historically and these two elements meet in the vaults beneath the city. Because it is built on steep ground it lent itself to the building of vaults, rooms beneath street level, which could house many families cheaply, because in effect the space didn’t exist at ground level. Then the history kicks in; these vaults became so insanitary and basically unsafe, being damp and crumbling, that at the end of the nineteenth century they were filled in and...
No one who has read even the most cursory details about the witch hunting craze which gripped England in the seventeenth century could fail to have heard the name of Pendle. The small town was the site, in 1612, of fully fledged witch mania and before the year was out, twelve people were dead, hanged as witches. The two families at the heart of the coven, as it was supposed to be, were possibly a little eccentric and had certainly badly frightened various neighbours, who went to the magistrate with their...
Smithills Hall as a building is a real mixture of eras and styles. There has been a house on the site since the beginning of the fourteenth century and looking at the frontage you can easily believe that everyone who has ever lived in it has left a little something behind. Inside is just the same, and it is possible to step from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth by the simple act of walking through a door.
All this makes it very interesting to anyone who likes the supernatural. In a very haunted...
Morecambe Winter Gardens was built in the very last years of the nineteenth century and for eighty years was a huge draw for visitors and residents alike. Sadly, in the seventies, it shared the fate of many large theatres around the country and closed its doors and began a slow decline into decay, before being rescued by the Friends of the Winter Gardens. Today, it is restored to its former beautiful condition and is a credit to the Central Promenade once again.
The secret heart of this lovely building...
In the confines of a prison emotions run high and it is not surprising that these leave a mark on the fabric of the building. Lincoln prison, within the walls of the castle, was in use for less than 100 years and followed the dreaded separate system, where men – and women – were allowed no contact with each other at all, being masked and kept strictly apart, even to the extent of having the chapel broken up into mini wooden cells, one per prisoner. Imagine the despair of these people, never speaking,...
Drakelow Tunnels are built into the sandstone near Kinver, in Worcestershire. They were originally designed as a mirror factory of the Rover works nearby, which was manufacturing engines for the war effort in the Second World War. They were built quickly because the sandstone was so easy to tunnel and are very extensive, with a total length of nearly four miles, although obviously very convoluted and twisting. Because of their original purpose of manufacturing quite large components, the tunnels have...
Lincoln Lunatic Asylum was opened in the nineteenth century as one of the first in the world to attempt to treat the insane with kindness rather than cruelty. Until then, anyone showing signs of madness, which could range from slight eccentricity to out and out paranoia and all stops between, would be treated very harshly and death was often quick and welcome. Families wishing to tidy away inconvenient members often resorted to incarceration in lunatic asylums and the Lawns, as the Asylum was later...
Blair Vaults are part of an area of Edinburgh formed when the South Bridge was built in the late eighteenth century, at the time a staggering engineering feat which joined the two sides of the valley together for the first time and helped build the beautiful city we see today. The vaults were never meant to be lived in, having been intended as workshops for the shops above, but eventually, as was often the case in Victorian England, with its unprecedented influx of people into the cities, they inevitably...
