Sally in the bottle, and Prior Cuthbert

Ahead is Dunstable Priory, where a ghostly prior sits in the choir and a witch is said to be corked in a bottle somewhere in the churchyard.

Dunstable's Priory Church of St Peter was founded by Henry I in 1131, and it was here that the annulment of Henry VIII's marriage to Katherine of Aragon was confirmed. Its ghost stories include Prior Cuthbert, said to appear in the choir stalls, and Sally the witch. Sally began as a comic ballad written in 1875 by the schoolmaster Alfred Wire to shame the rector into tidying the overgrown churchyard. In it Sally is burnt in the Square, haunts the priory, and is trapped by a passing pilgrim in a bottle buried somewhere in the churchyard, where breaking it would set her free. The poem was forgotten, rediscovered in 2002, and Sally has haunted the town ever since.