10 Rillington Place was a Victorian terrace slum house at the
end of a cul-de-sac, hard up against the 20 foot wall of the Bartle
Ironworks (which made many of the coal-hole covers in Notting
Hill), and was occupied by Timothy Evans, hanged in 1949 for
murdering his wife and daughter and hiding their bodies in the
house – mainly on the evidence of a fellow tenant Special Constable
John Christie. In 1953 Christie himself was hanged for murdering at
least 6 women, including his own wife, and hiding their bodies in
the house and garden.
The improbability of their being two serial killers with
the same modus-operandi living in the same house led to a long
campaign to posthumously pardon Timothy Evans and abolish the death
penalty – eventually enacted in 1973.
The whole area was comprehensively redeveloped in 1978 with a
new road in a different position, but the developer, with an eye
for house values, claimed not to have built on the site of 10
Rillington Place, leaving a small communal garden. In fact I have
overlain the two Ordnance Survey maps, and the garden marks the
site of the roadway; the exact site of number 10 and its back
garden is neatly under the block of new maisonettes whose end gable
wall forms the back of the garden. Residents are anxious to
play this down, or even deny it.
You will see some way down the new road a sudden slope – this
marks where the end of Rillington Place was; to the left is the
small railed garden between two modern blocks of flats. The cache
is a 16cm long length of ¾” electrical steel conduit pipe,
precariously ledged on the real horizontal conduit on the back of
the railing plinth wall – it will only balance in the gap between
the conduit and the wall in the exact position chosen. Count 17
spaces (including the small one) to the right, reach through and
down behind the wall, and feel for it. One end unscrews. Please
replace in exactly the same position, ensuring it doesn’t fall off
and drop into the garden, and that the label is concealed.
Quite an exposed position, but actually overlooked by only one
house – danger is from pedestrians, but they will be used to
sightseers.