Nearly 200 years ago the land between Stanhope Road and Bondgate was a plantation and in a small clearing in the middle there stood Laurel Cottage.

The North Star newspaper of April 3, 1907 reports how about 50 years earlier a Darlington businessman and his wife were returning home at about midnight and as they crossed what is now Stanhope Green the gentleman looked behind him.

He was startled to see the figure of an old woman in a long dress coming towards him. He was even more startled when the woman passed through a hedge without climbing over it. Being the perfect gentleman he did not want to alarm his dear wife, so he told her nothing, and carried on walking, only at a quicker pace.

The couple were regular late night visitors to their friends in Greenbank Road and on the way home the gentleman often spotted the strange woman who did not need a gate, but never told his wife.

Then one evening his terrified maid rushed into his house and fainted. She had been out courting, and her romantic activities had come to a sudden end when her boyfriend was chased out of Greenbank by the ghostly old woman.

The story spread, and was corroborated by a Methodist preacher who had lived at Laurel Cottage for many years. He said when he prayed in his bedroom he experienced a spooky sensation of someone trying to place a shroud over him.

His niece had also been frightened by a woman wearing a coal-scuttle bonnet who, in the middle of the night, came out from behind the curtains and tried to kiss her as she slept.

A month later he allowed his sister to sleep in the haunted room only to find her packing her bags and leaving the next morning. Sometime later the sister told him she had been approached by an old woman in a quaint bonnet who had tried to kiss her. The sister said: “I would not have slept in that room again for all Darlington. But I did not want to tell you because I knew it would upset your wife.”

The ghostly story was now gaining momentum and letters about it started appearing in the Darlington and Stockton Times. Eventually an acceptable explanation was settled upon. Laurel Cottage was a house of ill-repute kept by an old woman. A well-to-do pedlar used to stay there when he was in the district on business.

One night the old woman murdered him to get her hands on his loot. When she died, such was the enormity of her crime that she was not allowed into the afterlife and so her spirit haunted the cottage and the nearby plantation.

When Laurel Cottage was demolished to make way for Granville Terrace – now Woodland Road – builder John Hindle disturbed a compost heap in the plantation. Underneath he found a skeleton – presumably the remains of the old pedlar.