Ghost · Datchworth
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Something heavy rumbles up the dark lane toward the churchyard, but nothing passes.
Stand where it happened
A narrow lane with no pavement. Take care if you're on foot.
This is Rectory Lane, where an unseen cart is said to rumble past at night, carrying paupers to their graves.
Rectory Lane winds through the fields up to Datchworth's All Saints church with its witch's-hat spire, and it has an uneasy reputation. A ghostly cart is said to trundle along it after dark, carrying paupers' bodies up to the burial pit in the churchyard. The ghost writer Ruth Stratton, exploring as a teenager, heard a rushing sound behind her on the unlit lane at night, as if a car were coming up fast; another woman told her she had felt something like a big vehicle with horses pass her. Hertfordshire's folklore records also tell of a plague cart driving around Datchworth Green as an omen of death.