General:
At the end of October Luton Borough Council were putting on a special event for Hallowe’en entitled Have a Scream for Hallowe’en. This was to take place at Stockwood Park Museum on the afternoon of the 28th. The event was mainly aimed at children will lots of children’s activities but, of course, adults would be present. For the adults attending LPS were asked to put on a display of the type of investigations we do. As the council wanted a local theme we were asked to investigate Wardown museum and report on that investigation at the Stockwood event including a DVD of our investigation. This we were more than happy to do as it gave us the rare opportunity to investigate Wardown House.
A couple of weeks before the investigation we paid the museum a visit so that we could go over all of the areas we would be allowed access to. This enabled us to plan the investigation so as to cover the greatest number of areas during the time we were there. These areas especially included the Lace Gallery, Main Stairs and a corridor in the cellar where bodies were left when the building was used as a First World War hospital.
The investigation itself went very well with the teams accumulating hours of audio recordings, nearly 30 hours of video from various locations and being able to undertake 27 hours of vigils in the various rooms. The results of this investigation are given in the team reports below and interesting occurrences are included in our Audio and Video archives. The DVD which we produced for the council can be purchased from LPS; details are given on our Shop page.
We would like to thank Luton Borough Council and the staff at Wardown Museum for the opportunity to investigate the site.
History:
The museum in Wardown House moved there in 1931 after starting out in a single room in the Carnegie Library (which stood on the corner of Manchester Street opposite the Town Hall, where Poundstretcher now stands). The move was a welcome one as the museum had quickly outgrown the room it had occupied for 4 years.
The house itself stands on the site of a farmhouse known as Bramingham Shott, the original building being purchased by Chapman Scargill, a Luton solicitor, on 2nd July 1868. Scargill had the current Wardown House built on the site at a total cost of £10,000 with the work being completed in 1877. Originally the new house was not called Wardown but had retained the original name. The change was made by B. J. H. Forder, the owner of a brick making firm, who was leasing the property after Scargill left Luton in 1893. In June 1903 the estate, including the house, was put up for sale and was bought by two local businessmen, Asher Hucklesby and Edwin Oakley. In 1904 they sold the house to the council for the same money they had paid for it. The park was opened to the public the following year but the house was just left to rot. It was used as a military hospital during the First World War then later rooms were let to Council employees before it was finally changed to the museum we see today.
Haunting:
The ghost of a former housekeeper now haunts the museum in Wardown Park. In 1971 two heating engineers were working in the cellar late one night when they heard footsteps coming down the stairs behind them. They turned and saw a woman wearing a long dark dress and carrying a large bunch of keys on her belt. The figure said nothing just turned around and went back up the stairs. The two workmen found the caretaker having a cup of tea and asked him about the woman but he said that neither he nor anyone else had been near the cellar. After this the figure was never seen again but the sounds of footsteps were heard on the stairs late at night or early in the morning when there was no one about.