👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº9475 ACTIVE

Shard End Lake

Name: Shard End Lake
Address: Birmingham, England, GB

Shard End Lake is a location reputed to be haunted in Birmingham, England, GB. Its reputation comes from reported apparitions, unexplained phenomena and eyewitness accounts gathered over time.

Where is Shard End Lake?

Location: Birmingham, England, GB
Type: Park
Coordinates: 52.492, -1.772
Testimonies: 0
Last updated: 2026-10-06

LOCATION

Why is Shard End Lake said to be haunted?

Shard End Lake is a flooded gravel quarry on the eastern edge of Birmingham, inside the Kingfisher Local Nature Reserve, ringed by the post-war council estate that gave it its neighbours. Its reputation rests on a single newspaper column: on 11 February 2024 Birmingham Live sent Harry Leach to look for a ghost in a top hat and black-tailed coat, said to walk the streets between the water and All Saints Church. The only named witness, Stacey Coleman, had seen the figure on Ownall Road in 1991, three times, "always in a hurry". Leach found nobody else. Library staff with nineteen years behind the desk had never heard of it, and doors closed in his face along the bank. English Wikipedia listed the lake as haunted for the first time on 1 July 2025, in one edit that added a sentence and a category. No death, no victim and no date before 1991 attaches to the story, and this entry sets out what the archive does hold instead.

Shard End Lake, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom — Image: Sean C Sweetman · CC0

What is the history of Shard End Lake?

Shard End Lake sits on the eastern edge of Birmingham. Packington Avenue runs along one side of it and the Norman Chamberlain playing fields along another, and it exists because a gravel quarry stopped working and filled with water. Natural England's register of Local Nature Reserves says so in its entry for the Kingfisher reserve: "The lake at Shard End has been created in the remains of an old gravel quarry, whilst Babbs Mill Lake in Kingshurst was formed as a balancing feature in times of flood." The same record gives the reserve's "Year of Declaration" as 2004 and names Birmingham City Council as the declaring authority and as the body that owns and manages the ground. The reserve follows the River Cole, and the same record notes that "kingfishers and herons are a common sight, feeding on fish in the river", with otters logged more recently on its lower reaches. The houses that ring the lake came after the Second World War, and the parish church dates the estate better than any deed. All Saints, on Ownall Road, is the building the ghost story circles, and its own history recalls that "Christian worship on the site began in the canteen hut, by kind permission of Bryant the builders" while the estate was still a building site; the first members "got the hut ready on Saturday evening, and put it back to its canteen layout at the end of Sunday", and the base of the first font was "a drainpipe covered in concrete". Building work on the church began in 1954 and finished the following year to a design by F J Osbourne, and the parish claims it as "the first new church to be built in Birmingham after the Second World War". Leonard Wilson, Lord Bishop of Birmingham, consecrated it on 1 November 1955; Queen Elizabeth II came two days after that, "in pouring rain!". Nikolaus Pevsner called the result "a very ugly church". In June 1993 the cupola and tower roof were in danger of collapse because the uprights were twisting, and when the repair was finished the tower stood three feet lower than when it was built. Everything published about the apparition comes from one newspaper column, printed by Birmingham Live at 05:30 on 11 February 2024 under the byline of Harry Leach. Leach had been emailed by Francis Wilde of the West Midlands Ghost Club, who wrote: "Back in 2003, I happened to speak to two - completely unrelated - people who, strangely, mentioned a particular ghost being seen in the Shard End area. Neither person knew the other." Wilde added that he did not know the district and "had simply allowed it to slip to the back of my mind" until he came across a post on a Shard End Facebook page. The woman who wrote it, Stacey Coleman, told Leach that she had seen a man in a top hat and black-tailed coat "walking down the middle of Ownall Road back in 1991, three times in total, and always in a hurry", and that "when I spoke to neighbours about it they all seemed to have heard about this man...but had not seen him". Wilde sent the reporter to five streets: Shustoke Road, Shard End Crescent, Packington Avenue, Kitsland Road and Ownall Road, the last of them the church's own road, from which the figure was said to walk.

Timeline: the documented record of Shard End Lake

27 May 1817 Mary Ashford, described in the writ as "late of Langley, in the parish of Sutton Coldfield", is found drowned in a water-filled pit almost six kilometres from the site of the future lake. Abraham Thornton, "of Castle Bromwich, in the parish of Aston", is charged and later acquitted.
22 June 1819 Parliament abolishes appeals of murder and trial by battle, reciting that "the Trial by Battel in any Suit, is a Mode of Trial unfit to be used".
1954 Building work starts on All Saints Church, Ownall Road, to a design by F J Osbourne, after several years of worship in a builders' canteen hut on the site.
1 and 3 November 1955 Leonard Wilson, Lord Bishop of Birmingham, consecrates All Saints; Queen Elizabeth II visits two days later, "in pouring rain!".
1991 Stacey Coleman sees a man in a top hat and black-tailed coat walking down the middle of Ownall Road on three occasions, "always in a hurry". Hers is the only first-hand account ever published.
2003 Francis Wilde, of the West Midlands Ghost Club, hears of the figure from "two - completely unrelated - people" and files it away without investigating.
2004 Birmingham City Council declares the Kingfisher Local Nature Reserve along the River Cole, with the lake inside it; the council is recorded as owner and manager.
28-29 August 2018 A man is seen entering the lake and does not reappear; a body is recovered just before midday the following day, West Midlands Police stating "There is no identification yet."
11 February 2024 Birmingham Live publishes Harry Leach's search for the figure. Library staff, a shopkeeper and the residents along the bank have never heard of it.
1 July 2025 A single Wikipedia edit adds the ghost sentence and the category "Reportedly haunted locations in the United Kingdom" to an article that had carried neither since 2006.

Is there a rational explanation for Shard End Lake?

The column that made the lake famous is also the column that empties the story out, because Leach went to Shard End and asked. Two staff at Shard End Library with "a combined 19 years" behind the desk had never heard of the figure; the shopkeeper at the Post Office across the road, in Leach's telling, "eventually looked up, probably wishing he hadn't" and gave a one-word answer; and along the lake itself, in the reporter's words, "not one person living along the stretch knew what I was talking about. Front doors closed in my face almost as quickly as they had opened." The one lead a search engine gave him was a forum post from 2007 about a man "running around biting people", which he put down to a confusion with Ward End. The date at which this lake became a haunted place can be fixed to the minute, and it is recent. The English Wikipedia article on Shard End Lake was created on 5 March 2006 and carried a maintenance tag flagging it as unreferenced, dated December 2009; across nineteen years and some thirty edits it never mentioned a ghost. On 1 July 2025 at 15:34 UTC the editor Nayyn added, in a single edit summarised "add citations #JUN25", both the sentence about the West Midlands Ghost Club and the category "Reportedly haunted locations in the United Kingdom". The article grew from 1,289 to 2,069 bytes. That category is how this lake reached the present catalogue, and the entry first loaded here reproduced the stub sentence for sentence, fish weights included, at a moment when Wikipedia itself had tagged those weights "citation needed". The story supplies neither a death nor a victim nor any date earlier than 1991, and the archive supplies none of them either. The nearest documented death of a young woman in this corner of Warwickshire belongs to somebody else's parish and to another century. Fairburn's 1818 edition of the appeal proceedings names her in the writ as "Mary Ashford, late of Langley, in the parish of Sutton Coldfield, in your county, spinster, deceased", and the man her brother William pursued as "Abraham Thornton, of Castle Bromwich, in the parish of Aston, near Birmingham, in the said county, labourer". The indictment charged that Thornton did "cast, throw, and push the said Mary Ashford, into a certain pit of water", where she "was then and there choaked, suffocated, and drowned", on the morning of Tuesday 27 May 1817. The pamphlet's own cover sold it as the tale of "A Beautiful Young Virgin, was diabolically ravished, murdered, and thrown into a Pit, as she returning from a Dance". Thornton was acquitted, claimed the wager of battle when the appeal came to the King's Bench, and Parliament answered in 1819 with an Act reciting that "the Trial by Battel in any Suit, is a Mode of Trial unfit to be used". None of that happened here. Langley and Erdington lie almost six kilometres away; the pit was a different hole in different ground, and the quarry that became Shard End Lake was not dug until more than a century later. One death is on record at this water, and it postdates the sighting by twenty-seven years. No published source connects it to any apparition, and this entry does not either.

Can you visit Shard End Lake?

Shard End Lake is open public ground without gate, ticket or visitor centre, and Birmingham City Council owns and manages it. Natural England's register entry for the Kingfisher reserve gives the ways in: "Access is via either Packington Avenue leading into Lea ford Road within the Country Park to the North West, or at the Sports Pavilion, Kenrick Avenue to the North East." Under visitor facilities the same record lists only "Foot and Cycle Paths. Leaflet availiable from Rangers. The Rangers hold a variety of evensts throughout the year", misspellings and all. That record was last updated on 7 May 2013 and its host has since been withdrawn, so it now reads only in the Internet Archive; the ranger telephone number and address it prints have gone thirteen years without revision. All Saints Church stands about four hundred metres north-west of the water. The Church of England's directory gives its address as Ownall Road, Shard End, Birmingham, B34 7AJ, a mobile contact on 07598 122307 and a "10am Wednesday Holy Communion" lasting forty-five minutes. The reporter who tried the door in February 2024 found it shut: "I wanted to go inside but alas it was closed and no-one picked up the phone when I called." The parish's old domain at allsaintschurch-shardend.co.uk has passed out of the church's hands and now serves unrelated commercial pages; the church's own history and photographs survive only as Internet Archive captures. The bank is unfenced and the water is deep. On the evening of 28 August 2018 West Midlands Fire Service reported that "a man had been seen entering the lake and going under the water, but did not reappear", and firefighters, the ambulance service's Hazardous Area Response Team and a police helicopter searched into the night. Police divers from Nottinghamshire resumed the following morning, and West Midlands Police confirmed that a body was recovered just before midday on 29 August, adding: "There is no identification yet." The lake has no ghost walk and no paranormal event on its calendar, and nothing on the ground mentions the top-hatted man.

Sources consulted

Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-09-07 · How we verify our content

Shard End Lake

Where is Shard End Lake?

Why is Shard End Lake said to be haunted?

What is the history of Shard End Lake?

Timeline: the documented record of Shard End Lake

Is there a rational explanation for Shard End Lake?

Can you visit Shard End Lake?

Sources consulted

💬 Field testimonies (0)

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Shard End Lake

Where is Shard End Lake?

Why is Shard End Lake said to be haunted?

What is the history of Shard End Lake?

Timeline: the documented record of Shard End Lake

Is there a rational explanation for Shard End Lake?

Can you visit Shard End Lake?

Sources consulted

💬 Field testimonies (0)

Add your testimony

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