Ghost
Lord Capel's Headless Walk
Each March a beheaded Royalist roams the park, perhaps seeking his missing heart.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- A large public park; the mansion is gone
- Legend from
- 1649
- Tone
- Eerie
Coming up is Cassiobury Park, where a beheaded Royalist lord is said to walk without his head each March, perhaps still looking for his heart.
Cassiobury Park was once the estate of the Capel family, Earls of Essex. Arthur Capel, a Royalist captured during the Civil War, was beheaded for treason in March 1649. On the scaffold he is said to have asked that his heart be cut out and placed in a silver box at the feet of Charles I in his grave. That wish was never carried out, and the box turned up years later. Legend says the heart was hidden in the park, and Capel's headless ghost is still said to walk there each year around 9 March, the anniversary of his death.