FOR THE CHOP

Perhaps the most famous person to be beheaded was Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII. He accused her of witchcraft and adultery and sent her to the block in 1536. It’s said that every year at nightfall on 19 May, the anniversary of her gruesome death, a ghostly horse-drawn coach drives up to Blickling Hall, Norfolk, where Anne was born. Sitting in the coach is Anne, dressed all in white, and holding her head in her lap. Legend has it that she steps out of the coach, which disappears. She then roams the rooms of her former childhood home until the sun comes up.

Anne’s brother George, beheaded for treason after being accused of incest with Anne, also appears on the same night. His ghostly decapitated corpse has been sighted being dragged around the countryside by four headless horses.