Ghost · Woolmer Green / Datchworth
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Dogs and horses still refuse the lane where a headless white horse gallops.
Stand where it happened
A narrow country lane with no pavement. Best experienced driving through; take care if you stop.
This is White Horse Lane, where a headless white horse is said to gallop, and where dogs and horses still refuse to go.
White Horse Lane runs along the border between Welwyn and Datchworth parishes and is said to be regularly haunted by a headless white horse. In one version it carries the ghosts of Danes killed in the St Brice's Day massacre of 1002, ordered by King Ethelred the Unready, in which Welwyn is said to have been involved. In another, it is the horse of Edward Pennyfather, a Royalist farmer cut down with his mount by Roundhead soldiers during the Civil War. Either way, horses and dogs are said to shy from entering the lane, and Datchworth is often called the most haunted village in Hertfordshire.