On today’s stop on our literary journey through my novels we find ourselves outside the house in Liverpool where my novel writing journey began. It was here that I started writing The Silver Locket. Built in 1911, the house was pretty run down when we moved there in November 2000. It didn’t even have a kitchen, although it did have a ghost.
It had been rather a grand house in its time, owned by a widow of the Irish Free State and then by a master mariner, prior to the family we bought it from purchasing it in the 1950s. It even had a flagpole out the back. One of the upstairs rooms still had a push-bell to summon the housekeeper. She would, no doubt, have lived in, and the attic rooms at the top of the house would have been the servants’ quarters at one time.
I believe our ghost was that of the former housekeeper.
There was no ghostly apparition, but there was definitely a presence; a warm, benevolent presence that I would sense when the house was quiet and I was upstairs, usually in the day-time. She’d descend from the attic, traverse the landing, passing the two front bedrooms, then turn to go downstairs, at which point the feeling of someone being there would evaporate. The cats were aware of her too. If one of them was in the bedroom with me, they’d look up and follow her progress. Even my husband couldn’t deny that there was ‘something’.
Over time, I came to think of her as Hodge the Housekeeper, who graced the pages of The Silver Locket. Subsequently, as a younger women at an earlier time, she turned up as the housekeeper in Following the Green Rabbit (you can’t waste a good character).
We spent several years doing up the house, finishing with the little attic room with the dormer window (top left in the photo), which had a little white-painted fireplace, very like this one. It was this old, untouched room that I translocated to the house, 20 miles away in Rufford, which Laura inherits at the start of The Silver Locket.
The Prologue begins:
“The silver locket hides beneath the loose floorboard in a small attic room. Sunlight streams through the window pointing towards the tarnished trinket which waits patiently for its secrets to be unlocked.”
There was, indeed, a loose floorboard by the little fire place, but sadly there was no tarnished trinket to be found in that hidey-hole. I was so disappointed! But where my locket came from is a different story.
Now, let us join Laura who, having settled back in the old leather armchair and closed her eyes, has the first of her mysterious dreams, which seem to be connected to a little locket she’s found.
Excerpt from ‘The Silver Locket’
Laura is in the little attic room. Sunlight and birdsong stream through the open window. She looks around. The room is simply furnished, with a table and chair in one corner and an overstuffed couch facing the window. A large chest has been placed under the window and a small silver framed mirror is propped against the wall on the mantelshelf over the fireplace.
She approaches the fireplace, intrigued by the metal fire surround. Someone has started to decorate the raised sunflower pattern in yellow and green paint. Then she notices that she has a paint brush in her hand. It is she who has been carefully painting in the flowers on the dull metal.
She looks in the little mirror and is surprised to see another face reflected in the glass, the face of a young girl, her long dark hair drawn back in a thick plait. She is wearing a white cotton pinafore and the front of it is stained with yellow and green paint.
“Miss Cathy! Miss Cathy! Are you up here? What are you doing?”
The face looks guilty and turns toward the door.
The woman appears in the doorway, her face flushed from climbing the stairs.
“There you are… and look at the state of you,” she says. There is an Irish lilt to her voice and although she is frowning, she doesn’t seem cross.
Laura feels the girl’s guilt and puts the paint brushes in their water jar, which is balancing on the narrow mantelshelf.
The woman is well-built and dressed in a stiff white blouse and long black skirt, Laura judges her to be in her thirties. She advances into the room and stands next to her, viewing the newly-decorated fireplace.
“That looks much more cheerful, so it does. This little sitting room of mine could do with a spruce up, not that I have time to use it.” The woman turns and smiles. “Now come and get cleaned up. Your mother’s ready for her afternoon tea.”
As she is gently escorted from the room, Laura catches sight of her reflection in the little mirror. The face looks pleased, but her eyes look sad.
Obediently she follows the woman down the narrow stairs onto the landing. The house is familiar, but the furnishings are different and the layout wrong in some way, which Laura can’t identify. The woman takes her into a bedroom and pours water from a heavy-looking jug decorated with dark blue roses into a matching porcelain bowl.
“Now wash those hands while I find you a clean pinafore. You know how a mess upsets your mother.”
Psst! – Fancy a look inside my old house? This site still has the photos from when were selling it.
luna's on line 
What a cool story! When I first moved into the house I’m currently living in, I could hear music at night. It was very faint and sounded like it was really old. It lasted a few years then just stopped. Or maybe I just got used to it.
I love the view from the dining area! The garden is so pretty!
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I’ve lived in a few old houses and I’ve often sensed echoes of the past lives who stayed there. Maybe they just move on after a while like we do.
I’m pleased you like the garden, Michelle, that was a major project too. It, like the house, had been neglected for many years but there are were apple, pear and plum trees growing and that was what I fell in love with when I first saw the house. An unexpected bonus were the tiles on the floor of the dining area. They were covered with a hideous green carpet, which we lived with for a year or two, but when we lifted it we found those original quarry tiles almost untouched!
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This is another fantastic book Chris. Love how you incorporated the real into the fiction.
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Thanks, Sadje! A lot of my writing stems from past experiences although I don’t always realise it at the time.
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You’re welcome. 😍🥰
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This is wonderful. I’ve been in places where you can hear the past. Bizarrely I once stayed a night in one of Britain’s most haunted pubs. Not a thing…..
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I stayed in a haunted hotel in Hastings, but not a whiff of a phantom there either!
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Wow the inside of your old house is so cool! So fun that the website still has the photos. Are those mosaic pieces on the sides of the fireplaces?🤔
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I was quite surprised to find the website, and so weird to see the house as it was when we lived there (well, it’s actually quite a bit tidier). The tiles aren’t mosaics. They’re the original ceramic tiles, which decorated the fire surrounds. It’s quite unusual to find the fireplaces intact. The one in the front room worked and we had a wood-burning stove installed, which was nice and cosy in the winter.
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It’s always helpful to know the background of the writer’s inspiration. Thanks for sharing..
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I’m pleased you enjoyed the post!
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Ooh, a house with a ghost! Perfect inspiration for a novel. I did take a peek inside your old house. The view of the back garden is lovely.
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She was so useful and so… I’m searching for the word… comforting. It was almost as if she was keeping an eye on the house. I wonder if she’s still there. It was a lovely house and garden once we’d fixed it all up – wouldn’t have the energy for such a big project now!
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I got the sense from the blog post that she was a comforting presence. My husband and I did the home renovation thing in multiple houses, but when we were looking for our current house, the word was never again! I will never again strip wallpaper that someone has painted over.
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Oh yes, that’s not fun! Better with an electric stripper if you don’t mind hot sticky water dripping down your arm. In our first house, after we were a few layers down, we discovered in one room where they’d papered the walls with squares from sample books!
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The sample book squares must have made for an odd-looking room.
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From what we uncovered, it certainly would have done. It wasn’t subtle either: vibrant shades of orange and violet so far as I can remember. Very 1970s… but why?
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Hmm, was there the carpet sample squares floor covering to match?
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Not quite, but there was the most hideous purple carpet in the other bedroom 😉
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What a fantastic ghost story for you to have experienced. You’re right, you could waste that character…
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Good old Hodge! A very reliable character.
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The Silver Locket sounds quite interesting!
And a ghost? In your house. Lucky it was a benevolent one 🙂
I don’t know, if in reality, and even with a sense of benevolence, that I could handle living somewhere with a ghostly presence, lol. Sounds cool, but my imagination would be conjuring too many “good gone bad” scenarios!.
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My first novel and I’m still proud of it!
I do have a bit of a track record with ‘presences’. There was definitely something in one of the student houses I shared. Whoever it was used to come through my bedroom door, stand by the wardrobe for a few minutes, then disappear. This one was always arrived in the middle of the night. Not frightening, I found. It went away after one of my housemates left. He was a troubled young man so I assumed it was something to do with his unhappiness. Maybe there’s another story there too 🙂
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very well written Chris … love the bright colours in your house and the stained glass windows! I can see how it would inspire you to write such a novel … hope your current home is just as conducive 🙂
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Thanks, Kate! My house in South Africa doesn’t have quite the age or depth of character, but the landscape certainly does.
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ah that’s good, we can usually find inspiration somewhere. That’s a massive relocation or was it originally home for you or hubby?
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We’d been coming to SA since the dawn of democracy here; initially only in search of some winter sun. But we fell in love with the place and after a few years we bought a little holiday home. A couple of years later, both of us disillusioned with our jobs, we decided to make the move. Neither of us regret having done so; for all its problems, it’s a beautiful country 🙂
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I’m sure it is, from what I hear the terrain and foliage are very similar to Australia … were you able to get work there?
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My husband is a teacher with experience of the UK Curriculum so he had no difficulty getting work in a private school. I’ve been working freelance at social media stuff, though most of the work has dried up since covid.
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glad one of you have a job, and hopefully your work will pick up again once covid is under control … it seems to be hear, our restrictions have eased 🙂
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Friendly ghosts are a pleasure to have around, Chris! I have a visitor here at the Mansion who likes my music system. She switches it on more than I do! I’ve called her Dot, although I think she may have told me that. She said ‘hello’ to me once, sounding not dissimilar to Joanna Lumley. A disembodied hello would normally be scary, but this wasn’t! 🙂
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How delightful, Tom! Especially the voice of the wonderful Ms Lumley 🙂
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I know… but strangely odd!
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Our middle names!!
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Shhh… everyone will want one.
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😀
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[…] a large architectural antiques retailers, which we visited several times when we were renovating our last house in Liverpool. One time, we were looking for some quarry tiles to replace the broken ones we found under the […]
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