Paige Shiver on the folklore of SW1X, the Brompton Road apparition, and what wealthy neighbourhoods do with their uncanny history
Tuesday. Knightsbridge. Slightly Unsettled.
The ghost of Brompton Road is not well documented in the way that London’s more famous apparitions are documented, which is to say it does not appear in most of the standard London ghost guides, does not have a Wikipedia page, and is known primarily through the oral tradition of people who have lived in the neighbourhood for long enough to have absorbed the stories without being entirely sure where the stories came from. This is the condition of most genuine folklore, as distinct from the formalised ghost tourism that has annexed more photogenic London legends and turned them into ticketed evening walks.
What people report, when they report anything: a figure in the area between the old Brompton Road tube station — closed since 1934 and still intact behind its tiled facade on the Brompton Road — and the junction with Montpelier Street, usually in the early morning or late evening, usually seen briefly and not available for confirmation when looked at directly. The old station was requisitioned during the Second World War and used by various military and government functions, which gives it the kind of history that attaches stories. Whether those stories are evidence of anything beyond the human tendency to populate liminal spaces with narrative is a question that my interest in London myth and legend does not require me to answer definitively.
What Knightsbridge Does With Its Uncanny
Wealthy neighbourhoods have a particular relationship with their uncanny history: they absorb it or they ignore it, but they rarely perform it in the way that more populist London neighbourhoods perform theirs. Knightsbridge does not have a ghost tour. It has a very good restaurant on Walton Street and several art galleries and Harrods, which is its own form of uncanny if you spend enough time in it. The folklore exists anyway, beneath the surface of the expensive postcode. The London Prat on London history this week is relevant. The old station is still there. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
