Winchester

There were two plays on the bill when I visited the Theatre Royal in Winchester. Was it just by intriguing coincidence that they happened to be The Way of all Flesh and The House of the Spirits? For indeed spirits have been seen within its walls, as I was to learn from theatre historian Phil Yates.

Brothers John and James Simpkins built the Royal in Jewry Street during 1913 by converting and extending the Market Hotel, which had occupied the site since 1880. After only eight years as a variety house and revue theatre it was used as a cinema from 1922 until its closure in 1974. Strenuous efforts were made to save and refurbish the grand old building, and its doors were reopened to theatre-lovers in 1978. The ghost of John Simpkins surely looks approvingly on the restoration as it drifts around the theatre.

According the Phil Yates, the Simpkins brothers had a slight tiff while they were building the Royal. James arranged for the initials ‘JS’ to be included on the decorative proscenium arch over the stage, but John thought the engraving should have read ‘J & JS’.

James never fulfilled his promise to amend the initials on the cartouche, an omission that aggrieves his brother even after his death. His ghost returns periodically to the theatre to see whether James has yet kept his word. John’s small office is now a dressing-room, from which his phantom emerges to walk around the back of the circle until it reaches one of the boxes by the stage. From this vantage point the ghost studiously inspects the cartouche before drifting onto and across the stage, through its back wall and into the main dressing-room next to John’s former office.

Not too many years ago one of the theatre’s stage managers was astonished when she saw an apparition - it may have been ghostly John Simpkins - disappear through the solid back wall of the stage.

Phantom footsteps have been heard climbing the stairs towards the circle, a tread so distinct that it startled the manageress and an assistant of the little pub (now the Theatre Bar) adjoining the Royal. "It happened before the theatre was reopened," Mr. Yates told me. "They thought it might be burglars, but when they rushed next door to investigate they found all the doors properly locked and the theatre deserted."

Another mysterious even at the Royal concerned the ghost of a dead soldier. It happened during the First World War. Among the many young men called away to the trenches was one of James Simpkins’s spotlight operators, who in those days were known as ‘lime-boys’. During a patriotic show called Soldiers of the King, an actress on stage looked into the wings and saw the apparition of a British Tommy. She promptly fainted. Simpkins used to assemble his staff for a farewell photograph if one of them joined the armed forces, and when the actress was shown a particular photograph (which, incidentally, has been preserved) she identified the ghostly soldier as the young lime-boy. It transpired that his mother had received a War Office telegram the previous day, notifying the boy’s death in action.

Winchester Cathedral and its ancient surroundings have produced many tales of supernatural visitation. Special horsemen have been reported here, riding through The Close and down Dome Alley. Walls are no obstacle - the riders pass right through them.

Quite a stir was caused in 1957 with the publication of a photograph taken inside the cathedral by a visitor. It seems to show thirteen ghostly men in medieval clothing standing before the High Altar. No logical explanation has been found by experts who have studied this celebrated picture and another, taken moments before, showing the area to be deserted. Theories that they might be reflections of nearby store sculptures have been discounted.

The wife of a former cathedral canon became quite accustomed to seeing a ghostly monk in The Close. It always appeared in the garden of number 11, moving across the lawn, before passing through a high garden wall and into the cathedral. An unusual feature of this shadowy figure, she said, was its pronounced limp. When the garden wall was demolished some time later, three skeletons were unearthed nearby. Experts pronounced the bones old enough to have been the remains of members of a medieval order of monks and, intriguingly, one of the skeletons bore evidence of an arthritic knee - which could well have caused a limp.