Mum Rebecca Koncienzcy watched her current home on BBC's Homes Under the Hammer last year, but now she has uncovered a shocking part of its past...
Last year I watched Homes Under the Hammer presenter Dion Dublin stroll up my street in Wallasey, Wirral, and take a look round my new home before I even had the keys. I wrote about the sadness I felt when I saw ex-footballer Dion kick a football through a serving hatch that had been filled in.
My landlord, Andreas Wagner, had told Dion he had always intended to get rid of it and if it wasn't for the show, I would have never known the house's secret, but it seems it had some more for me to discover. As it turns out, I am renting a house once owned and lived in by my great-great-grandmother who went mad and died at the age of 46. What are the chances?
READ MORE: Mum spots unwelcome change to her house on Homes Under the Hammer
I'll admit, it sounds like the opening premise to a horror movie and yes, my son's wind-up music box did turn on by itself one day but I fear the story may be filled with sorrow rather than anything sinister. I had started researching part of my family tree and came across my great-great-grandmother Charlotte Beatrice Jones.
Charlotte was born in 1887 in Chester and married at 24 to Arthur Smith, 21, in Bath before moving back to Cheshire after the birth of her son (Arthur, my great-grandfather). In the national Index of Wills and Administrations, I saw her address at the time of her death was the very same house I was now renting which sent a chill down my spine.
I was a little creeped out by the discovery and the entry also included details of her death, it said: "SMITH Charlotte Beatrice (wife of Arthur Smith) died October 19, 1933, at the County Mental Hospital Upton." In the 1930s many women were still being locked away for 'nervous complaints' and electroshock therapy and lobotomies were still common treatments for a range of mental health issues from schizophrenia to depression and anxiety.
It is thought Charlotte was admitted to the hospital with a nervous disposition and many recognise that mental health care was in its infancy at the time. There are newspaper reports from the 1930s of patients escaping, the mysterious death of a staff member, Jim Morris in 1939 and a patient who died after eating a number of tablets unsupervised.
Very few records from within places like this survive today but I will be looking to find out what happened to Charlotte. After she died, all of Charlotte's remaining assets went to her father James Parker Jones and she is buried with her mother and father in Overleigh Old Cemetery in Chester.
While I may only be renting this home, it brings me some comfort to know I might be sipping tea in the same rooms Charlotte may have once been happy in.
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