Ghost
The Phantom Bowls Match
Two long-dead parsons still finish their game on the green behind the inn.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- An old coaching hotel; the green may be gone
- Legend from
- 1700s
- Tone
- Light-hearted
Ahead is the Sun in Hitchin, where two eighteenth-century parsons loved bowls so much they're said to be playing still, long after death.
Not every Hertfordshire ghost is frightening. In the eighteenth century two clergymen, Mark Hildesley and Edward Young, made a habit of playing bowls together on the green behind the Sun Inn in Hitchin. They enjoyed their games so much, the story goes, that death did not stop them. Long after both men were gone, the click of woods on the green and the sound of their voices were said to be heard there from time to time, two old friends still finishing a match. The Sun on Sun Street still trades as a hotel today.