Openreach Bring FTTP Broadband to Most Haunted Village in Britain

Given that today is Halloween, it seems only fitting for Openreach (BT) to announce that they’ve just deployed their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to the village of Pluckley in Kent (England), which has been named by the Guinness World Records as the most haunted village in Britain.

The village’s official website notes that the community plays host to “12 official ghosts,” although the party pooping scientist inside me would like to highlight the lack of any solid empirical evidence for them to actually exist. But while ghosts such as “The Screaming Man”, “The Red Lady” and a phantom horse-drawn carriage (probably just an Uber) have allegedly been spooking people in Pluckley for decades, one thing no longer horrifying locals is the slow broadband speeds (caveat: only if locals actually upgrade to it).

Locals used the UK Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, alongside a contribution from Openreach, to help fund the village’s fibre upgrade – benefitting around 600 homes and businesses. But no details on the cost of this project have been revealed, which would have been useful to know.

Andy Whale, Openreach’s Chief Engineer, said:

“We’re really pleased with the result we’ve been able to get for Pluckley. Our engineers, local residents and highways authorities worked together to overcome many challenges and it’s a tremendous example of what can be achieved when communities come together for the benefit of everyone.

Building Full Fibre in rural locations poses a complex engineering challenge, but the residents will benefit for generations to come.

It’s been one of the biggest Fibre Community Partnerships we’ve done and I’m very proud of what my team has achieved. Pluckley now joins the one million homes and businesses in the South East which can upgrade to Full Fibre; I’d encourage anyone who wants better broadband to check their postcode on our website or look at a Fibre Community Partnership.”

Just for a bit of fun, here’s a list of the village’s “official” ghosts, none of which will be able to enjoy the new fibre optic connectivity. But to be fair, most of them sound like a typical Friday night at 2am, potentially occurring anywhere in the UK.

• The spectre of the highwayman hid in a tree at the Pinnock
• A phantom coach and horses has been seen in several locations around the village
• The ghost of a Gypsy woman who drowned in a stream at the Pinnock
• The miller has been seen at Mill Hill
• The hanging body of a schoolmaster in Dicky Buss’s Lane
• A colonel who hanged himself in Park Wood
• A man smothered by a wall of clay who drowned at the brickworks
• The Lady of Rose Court, who is said to have poisoned herself in despair over a love triangle
• The White Lady, a young woman apparently buried inside 7 coffins and an oak sarcophagus who haunts St Nicholas’s Church
• The Red Lady, reputedly a member of the Dering family who haunts the churchyard of St Nicholas’s Church. A small white dog has also been reported in the same location.