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The Real Lives of the Ghosts in my Stories: (3) Ethel at the Gate

13/8/2013

7 Comments

 
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In my short story Confessions of a Teenage Ghost Hunter (This is the Quickest Way Down - 2011 and A Dream of Stone & Other Ghost Stories - 2013) there is the following passage...

And then there was Ethel Preston.”

          “Ethel who?” asks Georgia.

          “Ethel Preston has a spectacular memorial in the Lawnswood Cemetery. It’s from the Edwardian era, well anyway early Twentieth Century. It takes the form a full size house front-door, complete with a few steps leading up to it and is topped by portico. But, the statue’s the thing. At the top of the steps – and standing in front of the partially opened door – is a life-size in white marble statue of Mrs P in her prime. And I can tell you, the first time I saw this statue – in the fading light of a winter’s twilight – I thought it was a ghost.”

          “So who was she,” Georgia asks, “and why such an elaborate memorial?”

Who indeed – and why ?

OK, the facts. When I first visited this monument (over 40 years ago during my real-life ghosthunting trips at Leeds University) in the fading light of a Northern winter's afternoon, the sensation of seeing a woman in white apparently emerging from the entrance to a tomb was a distinctly butt-cheek clenching, cold shivers down the spine experience. Since then, the Lawnswood Cemetery has changed and the Preston Memorial (the statue is known locally as Ethel at the Gate) is now badly water-stained and over-shadowed by vegetation, so it looks a lot less impressive than when I first saw it, when it's appearance had more in common with the photo.


So let's talk about Ethel Preston, she was the wife of a wealthy Leeds manufacturing chemist called Walter Preston and, when she died in 1911 at the relatively young age of 50, the grieving widower commissioned one his nephews, a skilled sculptor, to build the memorial we now see. Constructed in white Italian marble, it shows a life-size Ethel standing at a replica of the front door to the family home of Beeston Grange (now long since demolished).

The project cost £2000 (according to my online calculator about £130,000 today) and when it was formally unveiled, just over 100 years ago in March 1913, it created such a stir that thousands of people took tram and charabanc trips to Lawnswood and paid one penny a time to queue up and see it.

As cemetry memorials go, it is a great example of the period's sentimentality about death, with the door behind Ethel just slightly open to symbolise the way through to the afterlife. However, why does the statue's face have such a sad, mournful expression? In fact the face has given rise to the saying locally "You look so glum, you have a face like Lawnswood Ethel."

It is at this point the official story behind the statue starts to become more controversial. The original explanation was that when Walter had been in Leeds for a long day at the office, Ethel would always be standing on the doorstep of Beeston Grange (as she is depicted in the statue) waiting for him to return home. It was to celebrate Walter's happy memories of this homecoming that the memorial was built. Or was it?

There is another version of the story, which said Walter was a notorious womaniser who frequently vanished for days on end. Not surprisingly, when he did return home, Ethel inevitably looked sad and dejected. In fact it has been suggested that his treatment of her led to her early death - and the statue was carved to reflect Walter's remorse.

I'll leave you to decide which is the real explanation, save only to add that not long after Ethel's death, Walter remarried and did not finally join Ethel beneath the turf at Lawnswood until 1930.

There is incidentally an interesting coda to this story as over the past decade, someone (person or persons unknown) has taken to leaving fresh flowers at the memorial, tucked into the arms of Ethel's statue.

7 Comments
Louise Swanson
3/5/2015 07:20:22

I can tell you with some confidence that the latter story concerning Walter Preston's conduct is the correct one. My grandfather was a chauffeur to some of the grander Leeds families and had personally heard the story of Walter's womanising ways from the Preston's chauffeur. The monument was so grand as it was morivated by a greater degree by remorse. This however did not prevent him from going on to marry his erstwhile housekeeper apparently...

Reply
thomas
6/1/2017 07:15:55

The expression well known in Leeds in my childhood { 1950s 1960s} was " You are stood there like Ethel at Lawnswood' meaning you are neither inside or outside a house door,make your mind up. Are you coming in or not ?
I saw the memorial many years later and thought that the statue was NOT life size. Just under. Strange.

Reply
Gino Feliciello
18/7/2019 10:31:34

I work in the Cemetery as a gardener, and we've just cleared the vegetation around the monument, unfortunately I'm told the water staining of the monument cannot be touched for fear of eroding the marble, further. Indeed, the statue does seem to emanate some kind of presence , but not a forbidding, presence

Reply
Paula Sheldon
13/8/2021 00:28:21

I am a great great descendant of Walter and Ethel Preston.. Only just discovered this.
My mother Judith Preston recently died so on the ancestry path.
Would love to discover who leaves the flowers
Thanks
Paula Sheldon

Reply
Louise Swanson
13/8/2021 14:33:19

I know that many people take a flower out of the bunch intended for their loved ones and give it to Ethel. I've seen this for a long time. On my last visit it was a single white rose. Her look of being utterly forlorn elicits a lot of sympathy I think.

Reply
Charles Christian
15/8/2021 20:58:32

Thank you Louise - it's a long time since I've seen it in the flesh (or at least the marble) but it is a very emotive memorial (and a little spooky on a winter twilight)

Charles Christian
13/8/2021 12:26:21

That's great news Paula - let me know if you do find out about the flowers

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    Charles Christian was an English barrister, Reuters correspondent-turned editor, author, blogger, podcaster, award-winning tech journalist, storyteller, and sometime werewolf hunter, who sadly passed away in 2022.

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