A London ghost walk: Smithfield and Farringdon

Watch out for padding monks

This London ghost walk brings together medieval monks, a headless duke and a phantom dog, among others.

It begins at Faringdon Underground station. At the entrance, turn left and follow Cowcross Street uphill. Soon you reach the junction with St John Street, the buildings of Smithfield market to the right.

Cross into Charterhouse Street, passing the ornate façade of the Fox and Anchor pub, with its two grinning leopards.
Entering Charterhouse Square you pass the gables and chimneys of the London Charterhouse, once a Carthusian monastery.

Two ghosts are said to roam here. One is a monk, unhappy at Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1537. The other is that of Thomas Howard, Earl of Norfolk, who was living here in1572 when he was arrested for plotting against Queen Elizabeth I.

He was later beheaded and his spirit is said to walk the buildings, sometimes without his head.
In the centre of the square an area of grass, planted with large plane trees, is the site of a medieval plague pit. It is rumoured as many as 50,000 victims of the Black Death may have been buried here during 1348.

Walk through here on a dark, quiet night and legend has it you can still here the faint cries of those who the terrified burial parties interred before they had actually died.

Leaving Charterhouse Square you skirt around the eastern edge of the Smithfield Meat Market before taking the narrow Rising Sun Court, passing the Rising Sun pub – reputedly once frequented by bodysnatchers – to the 12th-century St Bartholomew’s Church (pictured above), haunted by its founder, a monk named Rahere. He is said on occasion to move among its aisles with his cassock flowing and his sandles slapping on the flagstones.

Certainly, on a winter’s day, the church can be very shadowy, and it doesn’t take much imagination to start seeing gloomy corners begin to take on a more human form.

Another figure that has been spotted here is that of a man in a long coat and cap, possibly, rumour has it, one of the World War I soldiers commemorated on the memorial at the exit onto West Smithfield.

Turning left out of the church entrance and crossing Little Britain, the walk continues past the monument to the Protestant Martyrs – burned at the stake here at the orders of Queen Mary I – and a plaque to the Scottish patriot, William Wallace.

Continuing past St Bartholomew’s hospital, along Giltspur street, you pass the Golden Boy statue, which marks where the fire of London was halted and once adorned the front of a pub called the Fortune of War – another haunt of bodysnatchers, who would bring their wares here to sell to the medics of St Barts.

At the bottom of the street the Viaduct Tavern is reputed to incorporate a few of the cells of the grisly Newgate Prison, made famous by Charles Dickens and many others, among its cellars and is said to have a poltergeist among its regulars.

From here, you cross Ludgate Hill, turn right down Warwick Lane and you come to Amen Court.
Just visible at the bottom of this private road is a nondescript brick wall that is another relic of Newgate gaol.

On dark, stormy nights a black shadow is said to appear at the top of the wall and then slither down into the darkness below.

This, rumour has it, is the black dog of Newgate – the spirit, perhaps, of a 13th century necromancer who was devoured by his starving fellow captives during a famine.