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Bank of England

For almost 200 years Britain's famous Guardsmen patrolled the corridors of the Bank of England in the City of London.

Their nightly vigil was to protect the gold in the Bank's vaults and started back in the 17803 at the time of the Gordon Riots in the capital. The patrol ended in 1973 - but the Bank's other nightly visitor still makes her rounds of the Threadneedle Street buildings and gardens, searching for a lost loved one. She's the Black Nun - so called by those who have seen her because of her thick black clothes and the dark veil which hides her face. The apparition is supposed to be the ghost of Sarah Whitehead who roams the building looking for her brother Philip. At one time Philip worked as a clerk in the Bank but in 1811 he was arrested and charged with forgery. He was convicted and hanged - the punishment in those days for such a crime.

When Sarah didn't hear from her brother for some time she went to the Bank to look for him. The news that Philip had ended up on the gallows sent Sarah out of her mind. The next morning she was back at the bank, dressed in mourning clothes and a thick black veil, asking if anyone had seen her brother. For the next 25 years she would walk up and down Threadneedle Street looking for Philip, stopping passers by and going into the Bank itself. But her lonely search didn't end with her death. Shortly after she was buried in the graveyard of the City church of St Christopher-le-Stocks, which later became part of the Bank's gardens, the lady in black was seen again.

The Black Nun, as she was then christened became a legend among the clerks who worked in the Bank at the turn of the century. Many of them claimed to have seen the desperate woman as she searched for her long-lost brother. One man claimed to have seen her in the old graveyard gardens, sobbing and pounding a stone slab with her hands. The Guards and the gold may be long gone from the Bank, but Sarah Whitehead still keeps up her search for the brother who never came home.