A house on Weathercock Lane, named Woodfield, is under the subject of a rates appeal due to being haunted. This story related to the famous highwayman Dick Turpin as he is part of the lore associated with the tale. There was a very persistent local legend for the past two centuries that the house that was previously on the site had a terrible deed that occurred there. A father, enraged by his daughter’s supposed secret lover, had left her and her lover stuck in a cupboard to die. Horrible way to go, and even if the girl was secretly sneaking in her lover, that seems like an over the top reaction by any stretch.
Some time later, Dick Turpin broke into the house and accidentally discovered the bodies – how is a mystery. Waking up the old man and hearing the story, he blackmailed him into allowing hm to use the house as a hideout in return for keeping the murders quiet. The lovers’ bodies were then buried under the cellar floor.
In Weathercock Lane, people still heard the sound of a galloping horse, believed to be Turpin’s mare, the famous Black Bess. One man reported that he had seen a phantom horseman dismount and hastily enter the grounds, apparently passing through a thick hedge. Apparently on that very spot had been an entrance years past. The ghosts of the doomed lovers, especially the girl, were also said to have been seen about the garden and in the house.
The current owner of Woodfield appealed against his rates assessment twice, arguing that no one would rent the house because it was haunted. In addition to the phantom horseman and the ghostly lovers, he said that a white lady had been seen at the top of an embankment. Although the Bedfordshire Quarter Sessions Appeal Committee dismiss his arguments as ‘without point or substance’, the affair made a sufficient stir for the BBC to announce the failure of his appeal on the News.