Jason Hollis - Haunted Enfield

I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for their assistance and support. Most notably, I would like to thank my wife Emma, my parents, Janet Thompson and her family, Graham Dalling, Kate Godfrey, Steve Dowbiggin OBE, Bryan Hewitt, Terry Oliver, Sarah Scales, Peter Everett, Martin Harrow, Jane Hodgson, Alex Mattingly, David Farrant, Celia Gooch, Gavin Williams, Vicky Sanderson, Maria Hamer, Oliver and Adam of Trent Park Open House, Christine Matthews, Leonard Will, Justin Hobson and of course Mickey, Louise and the rest of the NLPI team.

I have had a fascination with ghosts since childhood and have collected many books on true hauntings. The books concerning London usually include a couple of entries for Enfield, but always the same ones. I was born in Enfield and lived there for many years before moving to Hertfordshire, and it always disappointed me that other haunted locations within the borough were never mentioned. To end my disappointment, I decided to write this book.

Haunted places in and around the London Borough of Enfield. ( Jay Hollis, 2013)

I started my research in 2000, never thinking that it would take thirteen years to complete the book. Thats not to say I have been writing it for thirteen years. I gave up a number of times and life had a habit of taking precedence: since then I have met, courted and married my lovely wife, faced the uncertainty of redundancy and re-employment and become a father to two wonderful children, who are a constant distraction.

Perhaps it was inevitable, but after almost twelve years of researching ghosts I joined North London Paranormal Investigations (NLPI) and I am now one of their key investigators. Having been with them for a year I still class myself as a novice in the field and, as most of this book was written before I had even considered becoming a paranormal investigator, it should not be read as the memoirs of a ghost hunter. Indeed, it is not that, but rather a collection of stories that have been gathered together in one volume for the very first time.

I have discovered more haunted sites within the borough than I initially thought existed, although there are probably others yet to be unearthed (and I have deliberately left out a few). However, I am not trying to suggest that Enfield is the ghost capital of the world, or even London, for I believe that if you dig deep enough into the history of an area youll find plenty of ghosts.

I hope you enjoy this journey through Enfields shadows. If you have an Enfield ghost story you would like to share, please email me at ghosts@jayhollis.plus.com.

Jason Hollis,

March 2013

There are many tales of ghostly horse-drawn coaches from all around the country and they are often embellished with grisly details. Anne Boleyns coach, for instance, is said to arrive at Blickling Hall in Norfolk, driven by a headless coachman and drawn by headless horses, as is the coach that arrives at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire, carrying the ghost of the equally unfortunate Lady Jane Grey. It would seem that neither of these ladies are about to let anyone forget how they died. Less gruesome, but equally frightening, is the phantom coach and horses that has been seen in the eastern regions of Enfield, most famously in Bell Lane, Enfield Wash, in 1961. However, the first of the various sightings related here occurred a few weeks before Christmas in 1899.

It was a cold, clear, starlit night and sixteen-year-old Mary Read was walking home with two friends, Florence Beatty and Daisy Taylor, from the Edison Swan United Electric Light Co. factory (known to employees as The Lamp) in Ponders End, where they were employed in the production of electric light holders. They had been working late and it was dark as they made their way home along a path that crossed the fields to the north of Nags Head Road; an area that has long since been lost to housing developments.

All of a sudden, a black old-fashioned coach drawn by four horses appeared to rise up from the ground ahead of them, and the three startled girls watched the coach as it careered northwards, towards Brimsdown. They could clearly see a driver sitting at the front and there appeared to be a man leaning out of the window of the carriage as it rocked from side to side. The girls were a little uneasy and unsure of what it was they were witnessing, but what happened next left them with little doubt. The coach had almost reached Durants Arbour, an old and crumbling moated farmhouse, when it suddenly vanished. Mary and her two friends didnt wait to see if the coach would reappear: they ran the rest of the way to a house in nearby Durants Road, where one of them lived.

This manifestation occurred in Ponders End, but most of the reported sightings of the phantom coach have been in Bell Lane, over a mile further north in Enfield Wash. Nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey maps of the area show that Bell Lane used to follow a route that consisted of three long sections, joined together by two short ninety-degree dog-legs. The road ran eastwards away from its intersection with Hertford Road, the main thoroughfare that once formed part of the old road from London to Cambridge. The first of these sections no longer exists, and Bell Lane is now connected to the main road via Eastfield Road. However, there may once have been a relatively straight track that passed through the area, sharing part of its route with what is now Eastfield Road, continuing into Bell Lane; the course that the Phantom coach has been seen to follow suggests that this may be the case, for it was seen here in 1912 by a lamplighter who watched it pass through a house whilst on his round in the early hours of the morning.

In his book Dark Journey, paranormal investigator David Farrant relates the testimonies of a number of people, interviewed by him, who had seen the phantom coach. The first of these, chronologically, was David Hanchett, who saw the coach during the Second World War. On the night of 28 June 1944, at about ten oclock, he was cycling home along Bell Lane. Approaching the junction with Eastfield Road, he noticed two lights on the other side of a hedge bordering some allotments. They were approaching from the south-west (so at this point it was not following the course of either Bell Lane or Eastfield Road) and he stopped to watch as the lights got closer.

His intrigue turned to shock as a ghostly coach drawn by a team of four phantom horses suddenly burst through the hedge and continued to speed along the lane, rocking from side to side, before disappearing through a gate that led to some old garages, which have since been demolished. Mr Hanchett described the carriage as being a tall, black, box-like shape. It was silent, making no sound whatsoever, and an eerie, electric-blue light outlined the entire apparition. It was driven by a coachman in a tall black hat with a long whip at his side, and people could be seen inside the coach as it passed directly in front of him. He also noticed that the wheels were about 1ft off the ground. The same apparition was also seen by a young boy, who ran away in terror.

Another witness interviewed by Farrant was a woman who had lived at Eastfield Cottages in Eastfield Road throughout her childhood. In the early hours of Christmas Day 1957, when she was nine years old, she woke up and looked out of her bedroom window, whereupon she saw a black coach drawn by a team of horses. Thinking that it must be Father Christmass sleigh laden with presents, she quickly woke up her younger brother and they both watched the coach as it silently passed the gates of Albany Park opposite and disappeared down Bell Lane.