Last Friday was Halloween, and it’s got me in the mood for a
ghost story. There’s no better place for a ghost story than Woolwich.
Recently there were a number of sightings of a lone
rider-less horse galloping through Woolwich town centre. Some say the horse had
simple gotten lost from its stables in Abbey Wood. But others believe it was an
apparition from when Woolwich was a Roman lookout post, and that the horse
was trying to get to Londinium to warn of Vikings, or British rebels, sailing
up the Thames to invade the city.
Sadly we will never know which of these stories are true because
the horse bolted out of the front doors of Tesco, across the main square, and
over the horizon quicker than you could say ‘every little bit helps.’
I’d heard that Firepower - the Royal Artillery Museum
located in the former buildings of the Royal Arsenal - was packed full of
ghosts. Not surprising really, the museum has been there in one form or
another since 1778, so that’s where we went in search of a fright. We were shown round by the
manager of Firepower, Richard Smith-Gore. In his time working in the building he’s gotten to know all the ghosts pretty well.
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| Firepower - the Royal Artillery Museum |
The first ghost he told us about was a young boy who’d
worked in the old gun powder factory called Piggy. Children were often employed
to work in the factory because their small fingers were ideal for stuffing
gun-powder into shells. The downside of getting little children to do the work,
is that they produce a ridiculously high amount of bogies. Some of the shells
that made it to the front line were so covered with bogies; that the soldiers
refused to touch them. In one of his letters back to his superiors during the
boar war, 1st Earl Kitchener complained ‘our men have not returned fire for
over 7 days. They refuse to touch the artillery shells, believing them to be
minging, and possibly containing the lurgies.’
Piggy got his name by pulling the pig-tails of the little
girls he worked with, and making them cry. One day Piggy decided to play a
nasty trick on one of the boy’s in the factory. He got two pieces of flint,
placed a small amount of gun powder on one of them, and banged them together
next to the boy’s ear to make a loud bang. But Piggy was too young to
understand, that the factory air was saturated with gun powder. So the small
bang he had planned blew him and his victim to pieces. To this day Piggy
haunts the factory, pulling the pig-tails of little girls visiting the museum.
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| The old gunpowder factory by night - haunted by Piggy |
It seems a strange way to spend eternity to me. But I guess
pulling pig-tails is what little boys did back then, and if it’s what he loves,
then who am I to argue? When I was a little boy I desperately wanted to be a
WWF wrestler. So I’d have probably haunted Firepower by drop-kicking people,
shouting ‘Oh yea,’ and super-slamming them, before declaring that, ‘Hulk-a-mania
will live forever.’
The second ghost was a prostitute - let’s call her Julia -
who haunts the basement of the old officer’s quarters. Julia had been
discovered by one of the guards, naked, in the Duke of Wellingtons bed. It’s
not clear if Julia had gotten there using her own initiative, or if the Duke,
who was due that day to arrive at the barracks after attending to matters in
another part of the country, had arranged for her to be there waiting for him.
Either way, the guard was terrified he would get in trouble. So he took her
down to the basement, wrapped only in a bed-sheet, gave her two bottles of wine
to keep her quiet and, after promising to return shortly, shut and locked the
door. He, however, never returned again. When Julia was discovered some time later, she was dead, and
half eaten by rats.
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| The Royal Arsenal |
These days men who walk into the basement, have complained
about feeling their hair being touched. Or finding the buttons of their
trousers have become undone. Purely for reasons of science, I walked into the
basement. But felt nothing. Feeling a little rejected I asked Richard why Julia
had snubbed me. His answer was brutally honest. “Because you look poor” he said.
I haven’t time to talk about all the ghosts, but this last
ones worth mentioning. There’s an impressive medals gallery in the museum. The
collection serves as a memorial to those who have ‘Served the Guns’ since the
foundation of the Royal Artillery in 1716, and to the tens of thousands who
laid down their lives.’
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| The coats of arms of all the division of the UK Army - on display at Firepower |
In the medals room is the ghost of an old woman. She has
been seen many times, by many different people, and she is always in the same spot, staring at
The Memorial Plaque - otherwise known as the 'dead man’s penny', which was
issued after the First World War to the next-of-kin of all British and Empire
service personnel who were killed in WW1. No one knows who she is, or what the
medal meant to her. Maybe it was given to her because she lost her husband,
son, or father.
To be honest, I don’t really believe in ghosts. But 1,355,000
plaques were issued, that’s far too many lives lost, and far too many
heartbroken people left behind. And if it takes a silly ghost story to remind
us of that, then I’m all for them.
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| Firepower |
If ghost aren’t your thing then you can still enjoy
firepower by learning the story of artillery and role of the Gunners in our
Nation’s history. http://firepower.org.uk/
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