Talk:Burleigh House, Enfield

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:41, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

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Burleigh House

• ... that Burleigh House (pictured) in Enfield, near London, was said to have a ghost dressed in a doublet, hose, and ruffle?
  • ALT1:... that ...?

• Reviewed: Trogoderma variabile

Created by Philafrenzy (talk) and Whispyhistory (talk). Nominated by Philafrenzy (talk) at 20:30, 17 November 2019 (UTC).

• Article length okay at 2,629 bytes (460 words) readable prose size. Article creation date and filing date okay. Article neutrality and sourcing good, no evident signs of copyvio. Images are all public domain due to age. QPQ done. Hook is interest is good, book sourcing assumed okay, length okay at 125 characters. I would suggest for parallelism adding a link to Hose (clothing) in the lede of the article, however, I agree with not linking any of these terms in the hook. If people don't know what a doublet is, that'll give them one more reason to click through.

@Philafrenzy: It's beyond the DYK criteria, but I was left wanting more from this article. Why was the house demolished in 1913 – poor condition or uneconomical or something else? Did anyone argue for it being preserved? How is it remembered now – just in a street name or is there a plaque somewhere as well? And who was the doublet, hose, and ruffle figure a ghost of, and what took place to make it want to haunt the house? As one suggestion for further sources, this search in newspapers.com turns up a bunch of stories from 19th and early 20th century British newspapers that might shed further light on the house. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:15, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. I will see what I can find. I can't view those newspapers.com sources however I suspect those results may be for one of the other Burleigh houses or relate partly to Lord Burleigh (unconnected except the likely source of the house name). Give me a few days. Philafrenzy (talk) 08:45, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

@Wasted Time R: Unfortunately all I am finding is false positives that relate to other Burleigh Houses. It doesn't help that even David Pam didn't know what it was called before it became Burleigh House. I don't doubt that sources exist in undigitised old newspapers and elsewhere but none come up in the British Library 19th C newspaper database. I can't justify a visit to the London Met Archives. As for why it was sold, I see the widow of Joseph Withers had died not long before and most likely it was her executors who sold it, the development value exceeding its value as a family home. Philafrenzy (talk) 21:33, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

@Philafrenzy: I agree that most of the newspaper.com search results are for the one on the Strand, or one on Camden Road, or ones elsewhere in England. But there are some for this Burleigh House, for instance this one from The Morning Post on 6 October 1899, in which Mrs Withers places an advert for a house-parlourmaid that describes some of the characteristics of the house and its servants. Anyway, if you don't have access to newspapers.com I would suggest signing up for it at the Wikipedia Library; I've found it very useful on a wide variety of articles. Wasted Time R (talk) 15:43, 24 November 2019 (UTC)