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General
In 792AD King Offa of Mercia founded a religious house on land that was occupied by the Hicca tribe. This was the origin of Hitchin’s parish church which grew until it was second only in size to St Albans Abbey
Hitchin is recorded in the Domesday Book as being a royal manor and by mediaeval times it was a thriving town on the banks of the River Hiz. Like most towns Hitchin became a major stopping off point on the stagecoach routes during the seventeenth century.
The present church was built in the thirteenth century using money derived from the wool trade as the hills surrounding Hitchin had excellent grazing.
Modern Hitchin is filled with timber framed houses and buildings along with narrow streets and picturesque courtyards.
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Aram's Alley
After dark in the alleyway between Churchyard Walk and the High Street you may encounter the ghost of Eugene Aram as many people before you have. Eugene was a murderer who knew no rest when he was alive and seems to have found none in death.
Aram murdered a tramp in Yorkshire and was on the run for some time. It is said that he kept constantly looking over his shoulder and he would lock his bedroom door with a heavy bolt every night. In August 1758 Aram was arrested in Kings Lynn, tried and hung for his crime. Now his ghost haunts the narrow passage in Hitchin known as Aram’s Alley.
Eugene Aram was a scholarly man who became an usher at a local boys’ school in 1750. He was a frequent visitor to Lord Lytton at Knebworth and Lytton’s grandson, Edward Bulwer Lytton, wrote a novel about him.
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Hitchin, Aram's Alley
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Bancroft 1
At one time number 30 Bancroft was the Hitchin workhouse but it later passed back into private ownership. When the house was once more a private residence a child living there reported having seen a little old lady dressed in an Elizabethan style ruff and gown. The child said that lady moved towards his bed then suddenly vanished. The story was corroborated by a nurse who was in the room at the time.
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Bancroft 2
A flat above Ladbrokes in Bancroft is believed to be haunted by the ghost of a cat. People living in the flat are said to have been scratched on the legs. It is reported that a pet cat belonging to a previous tenant was run over and shortly afterwards the owner committed suicide.
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Bar Amigo
Bar Amigo in the Market Place in Hitchin is said to be haunted by the ghosts of an old man and a little girl who have been seen to walk with arms linked together straight through a wall.
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Bridge Street
The owner of a shop in number 37 Bridge Street was rather shocked when a woman walked into his shop and told him of her experiences as a wartime evacuee. It seems she had stayed at the house where she kept having a recurring dream. In the dream a shadowy figure would walk through the wall and cross the floor of the small back room where she was sleeping. The owner was shocked because the remains of a small staircase had been found at the back of the shop during some repair work. The staircase used to enter the back room at the spot where the woman had dreamt she had seen the figure. The owner of the shop had for some time prior to this been disturbed by eerie sounds in the property.
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Bucklersbury
At number 8a Bucklersbury, a flat above Hawkins the clothes shop can regularly be heard the sound of footsteps on the landing. There are also cold spots in the flat and the spirits of a woman in a blue dress and a tall thin man with straggly hair have been seen.
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The Chapmans
Chapmans, a large townhouse in Tilehouse Street, is said to be haunted by the ghost of a former owner who gave the house its name, George Chapman (1560-1634), a playwright, poet and translator.
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Charisma Beads
Charisma Beads in St Mary’s Square sells, as the name suggests, beads, which is in some ways unfortunate for those who work there as something has pelted them with the self-same beads. Electric lights have been known to come on at night when no one was there.
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The Coopers Arms
Many of the pub regulars at the Coopers Arms in Tilehouse Street claim to have seen the ghost of a monk.
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The George Inn
The George public house in Bucklersbury is not a place to be at night. The sounds of footsteps have been heard and the atmosphere in the cellar fills people with a feeling of terror. It is so bad that dogs, cats and even the landlord will not venture down there after 23:00.
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Halls Yard
Halls Yard, off Tilehouse Street, is haunted by the ghost of a woman. What makes this haunting very unusual is that the woman can only be seen from the knees up.
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Hitchin Priory
In 1980 the caretaker at Hitchin Priory was doing his rounds and had entered the boys’ wing on the top floor. He suddenly experienced a feeling of extreme cold and sensed that he was no longer alone. As he turned round he saw the figure of a woman floating above the stairs at the end of the corridor. He said that the woman was dressed in a short sleeved blouse and had a pearl around her neck. The caretaker was so frightened by this experience that he refused to go back to the corridor on his own.
This was not the only appearance of the grey lady of Hitchin Priory. In 1913 the Hertfordshire Mercury appealed for information regarding her but was unable to find out who she was. She has also been seen outside the Priory in Priory Park though the two instances may not be connected as the report gave a different description of her.
One theory has it that the grey lady is the ghost of the sweetheart of a Cavalier named Goring who met his end in the park. At the time of the Civil War Goring was hiding in nearby Highdown House at Pirton in an attempt to avoid capture by the Parliamentarians. Unfortunately the enemy searched the house and Goring was forced to flee. He did not get very far and was captured by a nearby elm tree and killed. It is said that his sweetheart witnessed the whole event from an upstairs window. Now on 15th June every year Goring’s headless ghost is seen riding towards Hitchin Priory completing the journey that he had started in life. And is the grey lady the ghost of his sweetheart?
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Howell's Newsagents
Howell’s Newsagents occupied an old building in Churchyard Hitchin in the 1970s and 80s. In 1979 shop assistant Ruby Males went up to the attic to make a cup of tea and saw something that she later found hard to believe. Suddenly she sensed the atmosphere change and the hairs stood up on the back of her neck. She felt as if someone was standing behind her in the cramped, beamed attic room. As she turned round she was confronted by a young man dressed in Edwardian clothes, wearing a frock coat who was staring at her. As she stared back he suddenly vanished.
It is believed that the ghost may be that of Frederick Griggs who worked as an etcher in the early 1900s. He occupied the rooms above the shop which used to back on to the newsagents. During renovation work in the 1980s leather boots, clothes and clay pipes were found that had belong to Griggs.
Griggs’ spirit seemed to have a dislike of children because when ever they would come into the shop he would stomp around upstairs. When she was five years of age Howell’s daughter was pushed down the stairs by an unseen force and dogs would never go into the rooms above the shop.
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Jayne Boulton
This bridal gown supplier in St Mary’s Square is said to be haunted. The haunting started when a wall was being altered and a shoe was found.
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London Road
A house in London Road used to be occupied by a man who gave Hitchin its first sewers. He lived there in the nineteenth century and after his death returned to the house. Heavy footfalls would be heard during the late evening and even the sound of a flushing toilet.
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Philpotts Furnishings
Numbers 10 and 11 Sun Street are now occupied by Philpotts furnishings but for a while the upper floor of the Queen Anne building was used as a flat. One room therein was oak panelled and used as a dining room. Within that room there are cupboards on one wall one of which had a false ceiling opening into a small dark secret room. At times the air in the room would turn suddenly cold and the false ceiling would open equally as suddenly. Knocking noises could be heard throughout the room and food and drink would be thrown over the people there. Items would vanish, literally in front of people eyes never to be seen again. The activity became so bad that the residents stopped using the room completely.
In the flat footsteps would be heard both during the night and during the day when there was no one there to make them. One night a resident was woken up by the sound of footsteps approaching her door then the brass handle began to slowly turn. The door opened with a creak and light streamed across the room but there was nothing there, only the sound of someone whispering the name of the occupant. The terrified woman leapt out of bed and fled to her parents’ room waking everyone up so that they all heard the sounds of the footsteps retreating down the stairs.
Another ‘witness’ was a soldier who was staying in the house and who had woken up in the middle of the night screaming. He claimed that he had been pinned to the bed by his throat and that it had taken all his strength to escape from a large and dark figure. The family then decided to all sleep in the same room. That was not the end of things as during the early hours they all saw a dark hooded figure kneeling beside one of the beds. They challenged the figure whereupon it proceeded to disappear through the floor, feet first.
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Priory Park
On January 31st 1816 a local butcher, Richard Atkins, was taking a stroll in Priory Park. He was waiting for the local bailiff, a Mr. Cox, so that they could inspect some sheep together. As he stood waiting by the Carriage Road which led across the park to the Priory he noticed a woman dressed in a red cloak and black hat approaching him along a path. He glanced away for a second to see if there was any sign of Mr. Cox and when he looked back the woman had gone. He searched the area where he had last seen the woman but there was no sign of her and no where for her to have hidden.
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The Red Hart Inn
In the late 1960s a trainee manager at the Red Hart Inn woke one night to find the shadowy figure of an elderly man sitting in an armchair which stood near her bed. The manager, Mrs. Shepherd was duly shocked by the experience.
The Red Hart Inn dates back over five hundred years and is thought to stand on the site of the last public hanging in Hitchin.
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River Hiz
It is said that you can hear the sounds of a bowls match being played by two members of the clergy along the banks of the River Hiz in Sun Street. The only thing is that the players are long since deceased.
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Rosenberg
Rosenberg was a Victorian house which stood between the Pirton and Offley roads, a site now occupied by the Tudor Court flats. On a specific date once a year the walls in one of the bedrooms looked as if they were covered in running water but they were found to be perfectly dry when touched. It is said that a widow, Mrs. Bower, drowned herself in a nearby pond and the water is as a consequence of that event. Mrs. Bower’s dripping ghost is reported to pass through a door which leads from the grounds of Hitchin Priory into Charlton Road.
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The Sun Hotel
Upstairs in the Sun Hotel is a room that is allegedly haunted by the ghost of Lord Havisham who committed suicide there in the 1800s. It seems that the spectre of Lord Havisham is so terrifying that the hotel manager refuses to say in which room he appears.
The hotel is also said to be haunted by the ghost of a woman. One guest, Mike Marsden from Yorkshire, was woken up suddenly in the night by the feeling as of the body of a woman lying across his face, choking him. He was so frightened that he ran out of the hotel and wandered around the streets of Hitchin until the dawn. The room in which this took place has an atmosphere so that people who merely enter the room will refuse to sleep there. Mike is not the only person who has suffered in that terrifying way whilst staying in room 10.
A former barmaid once saw the figure of a monk who walked from one corner of the bar to the other. This happened twice while she was working there. On one occasion the monk walked behind the bar so that the barmaid thought he was about to help himself to a drink.
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Sun Street
A woman living in a cottage at the junction of Sun Street and Bridge Street was rather surprised when, in 1969, a soldier from the Civil War period suddenly materialised by her fireplace. The cottage was an old one and the soldier was thought to have billeted there for a while.
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Tilehouse Street
Number 84 Tilehouse Street is an elegant town house that is haunted by the ghost of a nineteenth century midshipman dressed in a blue naval uniform. During the 1980s and 90s the building was occupied by a legal firm and the ghost was seen several times walking through the walls.
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Union Workhouse
In 1907 a local newspaper carried the story of a haunting at the Union Workhouse. Nothing was ever seen but was certainly heard. The ghost so terrified the members of staff and patients that one nurse resigned and the others refused to do night duty. The ghost was believed to have been male.
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Woolworth's
Woolworth’s store is haunted by a ghost known as the Lavender Lady. She is so named because her scent has been smelt by the members of staff.
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