Lynwood

In the Summer of 1994, workmen began renovating Lynwood House, an imposing listed building opposite the Royal Hallamshire Hospital on Clarkehouse Road in Broomhall, Sheffield, Lynwood was originally built for South Yorkshire businessman Henry Wilson Lofthouse around 1888, and was fortified during the Second World War when its cellar was made into an air-raid shelter with concrete walls nearly twenty inches thick. When it was purchased by the pub group Tom Cobleigh in early 1994, entry to the cellar of the building was only accessible through a solid steel door in the hillside. The workmen who broke through this

barricade were amazed to find a room 12 feet by 20 feet in size, which appeared not to have been touched for many years. Although a blazing hot day, the temperature in the cellar was noted at a mere eight degrees Celsius, and the workmen looked around in amazement to see a variety of what they assumed to be witchcraft symbols daubed on the walls. Letters later identified as those of the Theban alphabet (used by Wiccans) incribed a message on one wall, and on the floor was an enormous triple circle with a pentacle, the witches’ five pointed star, in its centre. Another message reading ‘The Horned God is the True God’ was found on a vertical girder.

The workmen left the cellar in fear, and refused to return unless the place was exorcised, although several modern practitioners of the Wiccan religion assured the Tom Cobleigh Group that no evil was intended in the symbols. Beth Gurevitch, a Birmingham witch, said of the find: ‘Wicca is a beautiful religion where karma is important to us. I think it is rather sad to wipe out a good presence... religious discrimina tion is silly in this day and age.’ And local witch Morgaine Bailey, high priestess of the Stannington-based Coven of Annis, added: ‘I am not convinced there is an evil presence in the house. All the signs indicate the coven worshipped a fertility god and goddess, so there’s nothing to fear.’

The cellar was eventually blessed by a member of the Chesterfield Paranormal Research Bureau, Linda Hicklin, who commented after wards: ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of; I’ve done a blessing and made it peaceful... if there had been anything down there, there would have been activity. Bricks would have been flying around, and people would have had accidents.’ Whatever the intent of the inscriptions in the cellar, the new tenants can rest in peace that all has been done to ensure the building’s future prosperity!

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