On Valentine’s day 2007 my husband John and I had just left Choolo’s Nepalese Restaurant in Warstone Lane at 10.30pm, we were about to get into our car when we heard the distinctive sound of horses hooves. We looked up towards the Chamberlain Clock and saw two horses coming out of Frederick St pulling a large coach complete with top hatted driver.
The coach did not halt at the junction but pulled straight out and turned left down Warstone Lane. What was even more unusual was that there were no lights of any sort on the coach and it was completely black.
John and I got into our car and were less than one minute behind the coach, we went over the Clock and into Warstone Lane but the whole thing had gone. We drove around all the main and side streets for 15 minutes but did not see the coach again. There was not even any ‘evidence’ on the road to suggest horses had passed by!
It was a mystery how could such a big carriage and horses simply disappear? It would have taken some manoeuvring to get it into a yard. Could it have gone through the cemetery lodge into Warstone Cemetery? This entrance is now blocked off and impossible to pass through physically but not spiritually.
HW Evans used to drive a carriage and horses to his Albion St Works from Kings Norton in the early 1900s and he is buried in the cemetery. Could it have been Mr Evans going home, or was it a Valentine’s day ride for a couple in love? Who knows for sure but we definitely saw and heard a big, black, unlit coach and horses perhaps, another of the ghosts of the Jewellery Quarter.
(Mary says this picture reproduced in the ‘The Jewellery Quarter History & Guide’ is almost identical but had two horses, not one).
By Mary – Visitors Kiosk
