Crossroads in Britain have traditionally been used as burial grounds for suicides and criminals; those deemed by the church to be unworthy for burial in consecrated ground, and as such have attracted many a ghost story. Four Lane Ends, just beyond the station, marks the intersection of Broadoak Lane, Smith Lane, and Pepper Street, and according to William Norbury is a “ghost-haunted place.”
Writing in his column, Commons and Commoners in the Alderley & Wilmslow Advertiser in 1883, Norbury describes an incident where an old coffin was exposed here when workers were digging earth while building the nearby Vardon Bridge. The coffin was covered over, but at a later date, this coffin or one like it was dug up again.
Norbury goes on to say;
“Without doubt this had been a place for the interment of persons who had committed felo de se; a custom prevailing of interring such at a place where four lane ends met, as being the next holy place to consecrated ground, from which they were, by the church’s law, excluded. Such being the case, it is not strange that this place should be considered a place for ghosts; and that when the belated school-boy was passing here he hastened his step, and “whistled to keep his courage up.”
