The Horns, Crucifix Lane

Suchards Bar & Thai Restaurant can now be found at 2 Crucifix Lane. Before Suchards it was known the Czar Bar and before that The Horns public house. The Horns dates back to the Victorian era and appears in the 1869 Post Office Directory, but it was in the mid 1960’s that it got a reputation of being haunted.

According to The Haunted Pub Guide by Guy Lyon Playfair ‘Miss Daphne Wright, who ran the pub with her brother until 1970, was one of at least five people who heard the main symptom: sounds of a young girl crying and calling for her mother. These were heard regularly from 1964 onward, and were sometimes accompanied by knocks and movement of furniture. According to a lodger, Mrs Lauren Crutchley, the little voice could be as loud ‘as if someone was shouting at me’.

Canon John Pearce-Higgins (1905-1985), Vice Provost of Southwark Cathedral took an interest in the case following Miss Wright approaching the Bishop for assistance. Higgins believed that some hauntings were the result of the activity of spirits and brought a medium with him to The Horns. The medium made trance contact with the ‘spirit’ after Higgins had performed a religious service. The medium identified the young girl haunting the pub as Mary Isaac. The medium apparently persuaded Mary to leave the building, but supposedly left the mother who was also haunting the pub alone as she was considered harmless.

The apparition of an old lady has apparently been witnessed on the premises though I am unsure when this experience dates from.