Swanswell Gate, built in the late fourteenth century, is one of only two surviving gatehouses from Coventry's medieval city wall and now stands somewhat incongruously among later twentieth-century development on Hales Street, a genuine piece of medieval defensive architecture stranded within an otherwise thoroughly modern streetscape.
In June 2003 three men spent a night inside the gate as a sponsored charity stunt, expecting little more than a cold and physically uncomfortable evening spent for a good cause, when they reported watching a dustpan unhook itself from where it hung on the wall and fly unaided across the room in front of them, a startling and entirely unplanned interruption to what had begun as a straightforward fundraising challenge.
The incident is well remembered locally precisely because it happened to ordinary volunteers on a charity dare rather than to a dedicated paranormal investigation team actively looking for something unusual to find, which gives it a slightly different flavour of credibility than most single-witness poltergeist reports tend to carry. It remains, however, uncorroborated by any independent witness or recording beyond the three men's own shared account of that night.
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