Fear knocked at the door...

These wise words were originally gilded on to this fireplace by my Grandfather, Theo Janku, in the Hinds Head at Bray. He worked there as the sommelier from the early 1940's until he retired in the late 1960's. The words still look as fresh today as the day he printed them and are as fresh and clear as I remember them when I worked there in 1973/74.

In the late 19th century a young lady named "Hetty Slack" drowned in the Thames River at Bray.

Stories of her having an afterlife presence started soon after she died. Two ladies of the village were standing over her grave gossiping and giggling about Hetty. They were abruptly silenced when a tile in the church roof became dislodged and crashed to the ground very lose to them both.

The story I was told was that Hetty and her boy friend, maybe even her fiancé, went boating on the river and both drowned when the boat overturned. Hetty was buried in the churchyard at Bray and her fiancé was buried at Staines. And, she is reputed to look for him around the churchyard and nearby buildings including the Hinds Head

The other story is that poor old Hetty who was a servant girl and not even twenty years old got herself "into trouble". Gosh how those Victorians were good with their euphemisms and passing the buck down to the lower classes. Unable to bear the social stigma of being an unmarried mother Hetty drowned herself in Bray lock.

At the end of a quiet evening there were three or four regular customers finishing off their drinks. The manager invited them to stay behind for some "afters". As I had been working the bar that night I was invited to join them and serve the drinks. We all sat by the fireplace blazing away with a fresh pile of logs and emblazoned with:

"Fear knocked at the door, faith answered, no one was there."

One late drink became two, then three and then four. Conversation flowed until...

There was the violent sound of a door being opened and closed coming from the Vicar's Room on the first floor. Everyone sitting in the glow of the fire put their drinks down and asked "What was that?"

I told the story of Hetty Slack and that she might be on one of her wanders looking for her fiancé in a casual and maybe even flippant way which did come back and haunt me.

"Absolute tosh" said one customer.

The banging happened again.

"It must be the wind" one customer said.

"It can't be" said another.

The banging happened again.

The customers all stood up abruptly and scrambled towards the small door way leading on to the High Street. The manager was at the back of the scramble, tossed the keys to me.

"I checked all the other doors and windows earlier...if you could check upstairs before you go?"

"Thanks" I thought.

It became a case of:

"Fear knocked at the door, the faithless answered and left a trainee manager to lock up."

I did go upstairs and checked the Royal Room. All the windows were secure. Then, with my heart pounding and my stomach somewhere near my mouth, I went to the Vicar's Room. It felt cold but all the windows were closed. Then I looked up toward the loft flap and there it was hanging open. It was enough to make me scramble out of the place as quick as I could.

The next morning the manager and I looked at the flap and had the maintenance man nail it shut. He even put battens across it just in case there was a strong wind. A few weeks later when we were setting up the Vicar's Room for service one of the team looked up to where the loft flap is.

"I thought that had been boarded up once."

* Photograph supplied by the Hinds Head.