Loose Ends and Coincidences

We returned to the High Street, as Jackie had read on a website that there has been an archway to Leighton House by No 28. No 28 turned out to be the entire building of Wilkinsons plus Cancer Research and Wilkinsons used to be… The Co-op! The latter, of course, is where Leighton House and its grounds used to be. (I hope you are following this!) We have found out since our last entry that The Cistercian Monastry became Leighton House in 1823.

We did indeed find the remains of an archway over the top of Lauren’s café in High Street Mews, but it doesn’t seem to be very old. We kept going on down the mews and came out in a car park by the area we had been dowsing only the previous week, which was the garden of the Cistercian/Leighton House. We were definitely in the right place. In this car park is the famous Co-op sign and if we turn right we end up at Popes Corner, which is exactly where we started from! We also noticed that the upper wall of the cottages at Pope’s corner is made of old Leighton sandstone, which makes these cottages older than we had originally thought. We had now gone completely round the entire boundary of Leighton House.

We now feel the mystery of Leighton House is finished. Mission accomplished.

We then went to All Saints churchyard to take more photographs of the gated passage (see previous blog dated 9th October 2009)) to see if, this time, the farthest gate could be seen. As you can see from the photograph you can see the gate quite clearly. So this mysterious anomaly has not been solved.

We adjourned to Room No. 9 for a bowl of soup and a pot of tea, when, would you believe it, sitting on the next table was the lady we had met whilst dowsing for the Rowriddy Stone in Adams Bottom. Talk about a coincidence. And even more of a coincidence; her house backs on to Adams Bottom and is only next door but one from where we think the Rowriddy stone actually stood! We think that this was meant to be and no coincidence at all but the Universe showing us our next step. We found out that her name is Denise and she is a local artist, who’s work is being displayed at the moment in Room No. 9 and can be bought from there. She has very kindly agreed to let us dowse in her garden. So watch out for that another day.

Leighton House

Sian’s husband had found out, quite by chance, that the Rothschild family, before they moved to Wing, had lived in a place in the High Street called Leighton House and that it had stood where the Co-op had been (now Wilkinson’s). Leighton House, we subsequently discovered, had been built on an even earlier house, Cistercian House, which was thought to have a secret tunnel leading to All Saints Church. We thought that this might be a good place to dowse and see if we could pick up any energies.

Walking along Pulford Road to Church Avenue we come to Popes Corner. The road leading down to Pulford School was probably not here in the time of Leighton House and the boundary of the Cistercian house (the house before Leighton House) could have been the wall surrounding the church. Also possibly the gate at the end of the wall could have led directly from Leighton/Cistercian house directly into the churchyard. Standing on Pope’s Corner there is a modern arched concave wall but underneath there looks to be a very old wall. Was this part of Leighton House? On both sides of the driveway there are old walls. This was certainly the entrance I would have thought. As we walk down further down the driveway the energies suddenly hit us. When we were standing on the empty ground our rods did a full complete circle when we asked if these were the boundary walls of Leighton House.

Our rods pointed to a broken down old building with corrugated iron roof when Jackie asked the question "Is there anything of particular importance it wanted to point out" – so we decided to follow where it pointed. The only way we could follow it was by retracing our steps and go into Parsons Close. On our left was an old wall, which we followed so we were obviously on the right track. This took us to Ticklebelly Alley, which has the remains of a very old wall on the right. Carrying along Ticklebelly Alley we come to a car park with a wall to the left of us, the bottom third of it looks very old.

Turning into the car park there is an enormous expanse of wall ahead of us and right at the end we saw the dilapidated building which we could see from the grounds of Leighton House. So we were obviously the other side of the wall where our rods had been pointing. How exciting! We were standing on the site of the now disused cattle market. We climbed through the fence and our rods pointed to the left when Jackie asked her rod to point to the boundary and any original walls of Leighton House. Right at the end of this wall there was a very tiny alleyway, which Jackie didn’t know existed, even though she has lived in LB all her life. This alleyway has very, very old walls. We emerged from this in the High Street between The Chinese Acupuncture and Squares Estate Agents.
We are concluding that we walked all the way round the outside of the boundary of Leighton/ Cistercian House and that we have established where the house and grounds were and that it was quite a substantial property.