Wester Drumlins
Wester Drumlins was an old house in London. (TV: Blink) It had a reputation for strange events, including a series of notorious disappearances. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters) Prior to purchase by a Mr Flint in 2021, (PROSE: A Warning to the Incurious) the last known occupants to reside in the house were the Satchwells, who both disappeared in the late 1960s, leaving the house to fall into dereliction. It became a notorious 'Ghost House' and was therefore locally nicknamed "the Scooby Doo House". (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
After the disappearance of Kathy Nightingale in the 2000s,[nb 1] Kathy's friend Sally Sparrow, and brother Larry Nightingale, discovered that the house was in fact the dwelling place of four Weeping Angels. (TV: Blink) Following the discovery, Larry attempted to keep others away from the house, (PROSE: A Warning to the Incurious) though he too disappeared in 2021, along with his wife Natasha Nightingale. (PROSE: There's a storm coming: 19 March, The Angels Are Coming)
History
In the 1930s, Wester Drumlins was home to Casey and Marie Ward; the demise of the couple was recited in the famous tale: "As Long as You Both Shall Live". The were married in 1937, and after the wedding they returned home for a low-key reception. They were reported in the local press as having danced the night away. They were still dancing weeks later, with the tale depicting a scene of their shoes worn away and their raw, bloodied soles shuffling around the floor. They both wore the same smiles on their faces, but there was madness in their eyes. They were both admitted to the London County Mental Hospital where they both died on the same day, exactly one year after their wedding. Rani Chandra theorised that a curse on the house caused them to repeat the wedding reception for a whole year, before their death.
By 1939, the property had been bought by a Ms A Bashara.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, there were various legends surrounding the property, though none could be proven. Urban legends from this period included "The Battle of Wester Drumlins", which shared a number of similarities with Cavalcanti’s Went the Day Well?, and "Wester Drumlins and the Smiling Hangman".
In 1957 Ealing Studios announced a sequel to their 1955 classic, The Ladykillers. Director Alexander Mackendrick intended to shoot on location at Wester Drumlins, which would stand-in as Mrs Wilberforce’s new home. However, a number of tragedies befell the production before principal shooting began. Location managers vanished and a lighting rig exploded and fell from the ceiling in the living room, badly injuring two crew members. Insurance companies became jittery about covering the production. Mackendrick and Alec Guinness were visited by a softly spoken man who urged them to abandon the movie, or shoot it elsewhere, citing killer statues as the reason behind the recent tragedies. By late 1957, the project was officially scrapped. (PROSE: The Very Real Mystery of Wester Drumlins)
In the late 1960s, it was again in the news for the disappearance of residents Mr and Mrs Satchwell. After the Satchwells' disappearance, Wester Drumlins remained uninhabited and the grounds became overgrown and derelict. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
In 1969, a WPC was dispatched to Wester Drumlins after a stranger was spotting vandalising the property. The log claimed that WPC Monaghan apprehended the vandal, who proceeded to take her out for dinner and drinks in Fitzrovia. (PROSE: The Very Real Mystery of Wester Drumlins)
The house was the dwelling place of four Weeping Angels. They fed off of the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones's potential energy, among other people, sending them back in time. (TV: Blink) The Doctor and Martha had arrived to investigate these disappearances. (COMIC: A Little Help from My Friends)
The police found and retrieved empty cars and the Doctor's TARDIS from each of these occurences. (TV: Blink) Among the disappeared were Andy Kenyon and Carol Martindale, two nineteen-year-olds who failed to return from a night out, only for Kenyon's car to be found near the house. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters) In the 2000s,[nb 1] photographer Sally Sparrow found a message from the Doctor inside, written under the wallpaper and addressed to her, which dated from 1969. On a second visit, Sally's friend, Kathy Nightingale, was taken by the Angels to 1920. Shortly after, Kathy's grandson, Malcolm Wainwright, sent a letter from Kathy to Sally, written shortly before her death in 1987, explaining what had happened. After following the Doctor's DVD Easter egg, Sally returned with Larry Nightingale and helped activate the Doctor's trap, permanently freezing the Weeping Angels in place in the cellar by making them stare at each other. (TV: Blink) Following this, the cellar was boarded up. (GAME: The Lonely Assassins [+]Loading...["The Lonely Assassins (video game)"])
Thomas Flyte included a newspaper article on the Wester Drumlins disappearances in a collection of papers relating to Weeping Angels. (PROSE: Living History)
The Thirteenth Doctor later recalled this building as having been a "haunted house". She remembered getting sent back by a Weeping Angel, as the Tenth Doctor. (COMIC: A Little Help from My Friends)
In 2021, Maxwell Grey became intrigued by the mysteries surrounding Wester Drumlins after taking over Into The Unknown. (PROSE: Wester Drumlins - can you help?) He was contacted by Larry Nightingale and Rani Chandra about it, (PROSE: Life is strange... and precious., Wester Drumlins, here we come...) with Rani authoring an article for Into The Unknown about it. She concluded there was real evil there, and it was ongoing. (PROSE: The Very Real Mystery of Wester Drumlins) At this time Mr Flint was planning to renovate Wester Drumlins, despite Larry trying to persuade him to stop for fear of what he might unleash. (PROSE: A Warning to the Incurious) Flint renovated much of the house, including the conservatory. (GAME: The Lonely Assassins [+]Loading...["The Lonely Assassins (video game)"]) After Larry and his wife Natasha disappeared, Maxwell and Rani became convinced there would be a major event at Wester Drumlins on 19 March. (PROSE: There's a storm coming: 19 March, The Angels Are Coming)
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 While Blink itself uncontroversially sets its main setting in 2007 and "twenty minutes to Red Hatching" a year later in 2008—as Kathy Nightingale's letter describes taking "one breath in 2007 and the next in 1920", and the Tenth Doctor's side of his conversation with Sally Sparrow in 1969 happens 38 years before Sally says hers—these are contradicted by heavily conflicting dates in the Redacted audio series later on regarding both Kathy's disappearance and the Red Hatching. In Angels, Abby McPhail identifies 2008 as the year of Kathy's disappearance, which suggests 2009 as the year of the Red Hatching. In Salvation, the Thirteenth Doctor recognises the Red Hatching as the cause of death of Andy Proctor, who was last seen by his daughter Cleo "nearly 20 years" before 2022 according to Recruits.
