The Market Harborough Building Society has been housed here for nearly forty years. Welland House, as it is known, has been a family home, an apothecary, and the town library, before it became derelict and threatened with demolition. The exterior of the building is said to be faced with stone from the town's original church of St. Mary-in-Arden now a ruin in what is now Great Bowden, the town's original centre.
We approached the building society to investigate a rumour concerning a typewriter that seems to have a 'life of it's own'.
Apparently, cleaners have heard the sound of a typewriter in operation in the General Manager's office late at night - despite the fact that all the typewriter keyboards have been covered up!
Julie Archer, an employee, was startled during one working day by the typewriter next to her desk suddenly bursting into life. She say's, "At first I thought it was a joke, but I could see the keys moving - the thing was typing on it's own!"
The typewriter in question - although electronic, was not capable of being programmed. At the time there was no paper in the machine but the society's staff were able to read the message it had written by the imprint left on it's ribbon.
The message reads;
'...the head and in frontal attack on an english writer, that the character of this point is therefore another method that the time for whoever told the problem for the unexpected."
Although the message seems to make some sort of sense, it doesn't really mean anything and appears to be a section of a larger work. Could it really be a message from beyond the grave- or just an electronic glitch?
