(Shadowtime Home)
'Mysterious Mitcham' is the online sequel to 'Strange Mitcham':
Second (2011) edition now available.
'MYSTERIOUS
MITCHAM'
Contents:
Front Cover
Introduction
Receive Updates
Map
Part 1 - Mitcham:
The Phantom Cyclist
of Mitcham Common
(update to Strange
Mitcham)
A Dark Figure on
Mitcham Common
Tales from the Vestry
Hall
'Calico Jack': The
Playful Ghost of
Lacks the Drapers
The Faces on the
Walls: Hancock's
Cottages
The Haunted Cottages
in Tramway Path
The 'Haunting' of Hall
Place
The Legend of
Mitcham Fair
Remember the Grotto
The Phantom of the
'Folly'
An Apparition at
Woof & Sabine
Haunted Rooms at Fry
Metals
The Phantom Cat
Mitcham's (not so)
Haunted Mansion
The Kingston Zodiac
The 'Ghost Tree'
Ghostly Gardeners,
Medicinal Plants and
A Magical Tree
The 'Thing'
The Wrath of God
A Ghostly Experience
in Morden Road
Mitcham Clock Tower:
When Time Ran
Backwards
The Rosier Family
Legend
The 'Ball of Fire'
UFO over Mitcham
Common, 2004
UFO over Tooting
Bec Common, 1990
Part 2 - South of
Mitcham Common:
Carew Manor
The Ghosts of
Beddington Park
Beddington Parish
Church & Churchyard
The Figure in the
Alley
Under Beddington
A Spectral Cavalier
Other Information:
Author's website
The Mitcham Ghost
Ride
Strange Mitcham
(2002): Errata
Strange Mitcham
(2011)
Haunted Wandsworth
(2006)
Covers the London Borough of Wandsworth (Balham, Battersea, Putney, Tooting & Wandsworth):
Haunted London
(2007)
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The Faces on the Walls: Hancock's Cottages
In the early 1960s, the occupants of an old house on Commonside East were terrified by mysterious 'faces' that appeared on the walls.
The faces made their first appearance after some old wallpaper was taken off the living-room wall in the house, one of a row of houses called Hancock's Cottages (beside St Thomas of Canterbury school). New plaster was put on the wall and as it dried strange images became visible.
Above: Hancock's Cottages. (James Clark, 2007)
According to the occupants, Mr and Mrs Johnson, about a dozen faces - including images of cavaliers, grenadiers, women and young children - had manifested on various walls throughout the house by the beginning of February 1962.
Builders working on the house said they would not stay after one of them thought he saw his dead father's face on a wall. Another builder and decorator was taken aback by a powerful smell of perfume apparently coming from a wall.
Mr Johnson, a lorry driver, worked nights and Mrs Johnson was so scared to be alone in the house that she left to stay with her mother in Paddington. 'The faces looked at me all the time,' she said, and she 'couldn't stand it any more.'
An estate agent who visited the property told the Mitcham News & Mercury newspaper: 'I have never seen anything like it. There are so many faces and they are so clear that I was quite scared.' One of the walls, he added, had only been plastered five weeks before.
The newspaper also claimed that 'often people who have stayed in the cottage for more than a few minutes have fallen asleep.'
The Rev. E A Noon, Vicar of St. Mark's Church, offered to visit the house and perhaps perform an exorcism but when he called at Hancock's Cottages there was nobody home. He left his card but as at the time of the latest newspaper report I have so far found, the Rev. Noon had received no reply.
Interestingly, Hancock's Cottages stand only a few seconds' walk from Rose Cottage, which is also reputed to be haunted: see 'The Haunting of Rose Cottage' in Strange Mitcham.
[Sources: 'The Faces on the Walls', Mitcham News & Mercury, 2 Feb 1962, p.1; 'Vicar May Exorcise Ghosts', Mitcham News & Mercury, 9 Feb, 1962, p.1; 'Faces on Walls - Vicar is Waiting', Mitcham News & Mercury, 16 Feb 1962, p.23. I am grateful to Chris Patterson for alerting me to this story.]
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