At the end of the nineteenth century people claimed to have seen a headless horseman on the Upper Icknield Way between the drive to Chequers and the entrance to Wellwick Farm along the road from Ellesborough to Butlers Cross.

We are not quite sure about this one as part of it does not make a lot of sense. If you look at the map on the right you will see that Chequers lies south of Butler’s Cross and to go by road to Wellwick Farm would not have taken you along the road from Ellesborough to Butlers Cross (roads are yellow on the map). The modern entrance to Chequers lies along a tree-lined driveway to the south at ‘A’ but at the end of the 1800s the entrance was to the east (right on the map) at ‘B’. The Icknield Way is given in green on the map and it passes very close to ‘A’ but not to ‘B, on a map of 1883 there is not even a path to point ’A’ from Chequers Court. For the sighting to have taken place between the drive to Chequers and Wellwick Farm would have meant the horseman riding north to Butler’s Green then turning right along the Wendover Road. Another possibility is that the rider was going up Lodge Hill directly opposite the entrance to Chequers at ‘B’ then along the Ridgeway Path, coloured in blue on the map. The only problem with this is that the road up Lodge Hill is very steep and the Ridgeway Path runs along the ridge of the hill, past the entrance to Wellwick Farm, and with a very steep drop on the Wellwick side (on the 1885 map there is also a road along the ridge). So which way did the rider go?

The final clue comes from the 1885 map where you will find that the Wendover Road is actually labelled Upper Icknield Way and comes from well south of the area before turning east at Ellesborough. The confusion arises because it was said that the haunting took place along the road from Ellesborough to Butler’s Cross, which is still the Upper Icknield way but the wrong part of it. All told it looks most likely that the path taken by the headless horseman runs from what was Home Lodge (the original Chequers Court entrance) at SP847057 to SP840070 (the crossroads in Butler’s Cross) then turns east along the Wendover Road to SP856874, the entrance to Wellwick Farm.

To view a map of the area click on the button below