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General
Newport Pagnell is located at the confluence of two rivers, the Ouse and the Ousel (or Lovat). It is a busy market town with an ancient history dating back to Roman times though the history of the area dates back even further to the Iron Age. The positioning of the town was strategically very significant, commanding the bridges over the two rivers. During the civil war it was occupied and fortified by the parliamentary forces as it guarded a principal supply route to London. For many centuries after this it was an important staging post for coaches.
The town name comes from the Old English words niwe and port meaning ‘new market town’. The Pagnell aspect of the name is derived from the manorial family of Paynel who were influential there during the twelfth century.
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Cemetery Bridge
To get to the new cemetery from the church of St. Peter and St. Paul you cross over the road via a footbridge. This bridge is said to be haunted, with one witness seeing the ghost staring down at her as she drove under the bridge.
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King’s Arms
Graham Dodds, the landlord of the King’s Arms, decided to ask a local photographer, Peter Cole, to take a picture of the new menu board that had been installed over the bar. When the photograph was developed it revealed something that neither Graham nor Peter had seen at the time. At the end of the bar there was a monk with his hand outstretched. The pub stands near to the site where a priory was founded in the twelfth century.
Once, when Graham was sitting upstairs in the pub, he saw a shadowy figure pass along the hall. Several times he has caught sight of something moving out of the corner of his eye, but each time he turned to look there was nothing there. One time a friend of Graham’s pulled into the car park and noticed someone upstairs in the office. She thought nothing of it until she entered the pub and found Graham downstairs. She remarked about how quickly he had got down the stairs but he said he hadn’t been up them in the first place. He went upstairs to check but found the office door locked and there was no one there. This happened a second time when the friend saw the office light on. Graham went to check and sure enough it was on, but the door was locked. He was sure he had turned the light off before he locked the door.
Later managers at the pub saw nothing but their German Shepherd dogs would walk across the bar and stand stock still staring at the pool table for no apparent reason.
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Odells Restaurant
Odells restaurant is said to be haunted by the ghost of an old woman who died in a fire.
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Old Telephone Exchange
In early 1971 the old manual exchange at Newport Pagnell was updated to an automatic one. Before this happened the last all-night duty telephonist was a man called Eric who had a number of strange experiences when he was there on his own. The first of these events took place at around 05:00 when he heard the sounds of hobnailed boots, or possibly clogs, on the cobbles beneath the window. He could also hear the sounds of men talking as if on their way to work. Only problem was that there were no cobblestones beneath the windows and the road in question was a cul-de-sac that went nowhere.
The next minute he heard the voices getting closer as if they were coming up the stairs. But how did they get in as the front door was bolted? The next instant the voices were in the switch room with Eric, but there was no one there. Thinking they may be behind a screen in front of the door he got up to have a look. The moment he got up the voices stopped and, of course, there was no one behind the screen.
During the three and a half years that Eric manned the switchboard these events occurred about a dozen times.
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