My mother as a child lived in a terraced house in Hope Street. At one time I knew the house and used to walk past it regularly, and wondered if the owners knew that my mother's younger sister had died at the age of four the 1930s, and been laid out in her coffin in the front room in a beautiful white dress, looking like an angel, and people had come from miles away to see her.
My great aunty lived in (squatted, in fact, in) a beautiful Tudor cottage that was left in a will to my mum and her siblings. When her sister died, in the 1950s, she simply moved in and never moved out. Didn't;t pay rent. Literally squatted in it. She must have been well connected down a local solicitor's because when she died in the 1980s, she willed the house to someone... My mum's cousin. Who promptly sold it to a woman who got it cheap because she gave my "aunty" (second cousin) a sob story.
The person who lives in it now, has no idea he lives in a "stolen" house. To this day I have no idea how my great aunt managed to get herself on the deeds to a house she didn't own.
We drive past her chocolate box cottage most days. And I always give it a rueful look because by rights, it's partly mine! I've spoken to the man who bought it in the early 2000s I think and didn't have the heart to tell him the story. I have my mum's copy of the will that willed it to her. I'm guessing she thought she'd get it back when squatter aunty died but my mum died young and long before the elderly aunt.
Interesting thing is, the house had a toilet in the back garden that was a hole bored into like a cliff face of 20 foot or so of solid rock. The hole was over a stream, a few metres from the river. My brother and I found that toilet endlessly fascinating as kids and would always pretend we needed the toilet just so we could go look down it.
And nobody told me as a kid, I only found out many years later but... the aunty who originally owned the house, she had had a baby around 1915. Her one and only child. When it was tiny, she went out for a while and left someone (I dunno who) babysitting it in that very house. Which I'm guessing my great grandad bought her. She was estranged from her husband - and never lived with him when he came home from WW1. But in 1916, the baby was drowned whilst alone with this now forgotten babysitter. I often wondered if rather than the river, he didn't fall down this toilet...
And my aunty who "borrowed" the house, lived alone in this very old, creepy cottage (I stayed there once and it was extremely creepy but also fascinating). Where her nephew had drowned.
The house had a flight of stairs taken from a ship (well, large vessel). Our ancestors around 1800 lived in the same village and were haulers on a river, and owned a large vessel. I've often wondered if that wasn't the second (third) time our family lived in that house... The stairs, all carved wood I remember, came directly down into the kitchen. In fact, there is an entry for 1820 in the parish record of this same village, where one of mine and great aunt's mutual ancestors was a hauler who drowned in the river. So baby wasn't the first.
This same great aunt used to say, every time she saw George Oldfield, head of the Ripper enquiry on the TV "Oh that's little George! I used to hold him in my arms when he was a baby!" Big, gnarled bruiser of an old copper. But to her, he was still baby George. Luckily, nobody dropped him down the toilet as an infant... That was by no means the only house along that street that's toilet was simply a hole drilled through rock.
The house had a nice atmosphere. It could be a bit creepy but that was more to do with old lady house than the building itself...
ETA: Just checked and George was born 1923 - only a few years after my great aunt lost her baby. Ah, that makes me sad now because if her sister held him in her arms, she probably did, too.