IT’S not the church of St Matthew’s that’s associated with ghosts, but its rectory. One of the most colourful of the ministers of St Matthew’s church over the centuries who is associated with the most widely known story was Reverend Norman Jenkyn, who came in 1906 from a small church in the Illawarra.
Initially Jenkyn was looked after by an elderly housekeeper and then by a Japanese groom and cook. All three grew more and more alarmed in the large old rooms of the rectory, as odd happenings were revealed. Both Rev. Jenkyn and his housekeeper, on separate occasions, heard the noise of someone rummaging in the drawer of the sideboard in the dining room.
The housekeeper was upset but Jenkyn had almost anticipated such happenings when he first saw the rectory and said it was “hoary with age and reeks of tradition, and to the passer-by truly suggests ghosts”.
The minister regarded ghosts as good company and thought of such unseen things as ‘not temporal, but eternal’, but his sister was so disturbed by occurrences during her visit that she left soon after she arrived.
The Japanese cook also left abruptly after one of the sightings on a cold winter’s night. They were sitting by the fire in the dining room and heard footsteps along the back flag-stoned corridor, followed by the sound of bricks being laid.
The suspense after 20 minutes was too much but when they went out to look,nobody was there. On many occasions the reverend found the locked front doors open on his return home.
Footsteps on the stairs were also heard by a later resident in the rectory. Rev. Jenkyn heard them ascending the carved staircase one stair at a time, until they reached the top stair, but when he rushed out of his bedroom no-one was there.
The small daughter of the Freemans Reach School master and his wife who took up a lease of the rectory in 1923 while Rev. Jenkyn was overseas, tells personally of the same experience. She reported lying terrified in her bed and hearing the footsteps coming up the stairs one step at a time on several occasions, and each time when she finally summoned up the courage to open the door and look, no-one was there.
Seventy years later there was another incident. Windsor antique dealer Alex Hendrickson was walking past the building at 10pm one night when at the clump of trees beside the building he saw the ghost of Reverend Samuel Marsden who had died in the eastern front room of the rectory in 1838.
People who saw Hendrickson a few minutes after the sighting said he was white and unable to speak for several minutes.
He told them he knew it was Marsden because of his long black coat, and low-crowned black hat.
