According to an old story, in the 1870s an old lady on Annesley Street asked some children playing near her house to move to the far end of the field. They went to a building site where a frame supporting a pile of bricks gave way. Two children were killed and others were hurt. The old lady felt responsible and died not long after.
A young family who took her house saw her ghost, and their youngest child refused to enter certain rooms. A later tenant noticed curtains twitching. A workman who saw an old lady standing in the middle of a nearby building site fell and needed hospital treatment, and none of his colleagues had seen her.
After Annesley Street was almost destroyed in the air raid of 1941, an old woman was seen standing in the ruins of one house and vanished as people approached. In 1942 a couple saw her at a function, and an elderly man warned them she was a harbinger of misfortune. The tale says they were struck by a bus that evening and the young woman later died.
The story as told has the shape of a cautionary legend, and nothing independent confirms the details.
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