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General
As the name implies the village of Woughton was once built around a green but is now part of the vast urbanisation known as Milton Keynes. The name is believed to derive from an Old English personal name and tun and means ‘farmstead of a man called Weoca’. At the time of the Domesday Survey of 1086 the village was named Ulchestone.
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Bury Lane
A ghostly figure has been seen on an ancient path called Bury Lane near Woughton on the Green. The figure is believed to be that of Dick Turpin who regularly called at the Old Swan Inn at Woughton. Most of the time witnesses caught a glimpse of a dark horse and a man clad in dark clothes, wearing a tri-corner hat. Little else is seen as the apparition disappears quickly from sight. In the mid 1980s one witness got a better look and described the man as being dressed in a cloak over a fancy waistcoat and wearing thigh high leather top boots. Some people who have seen the ghost say that it is pacing back and forth as if it is waiting for someone.
Tradition has it that Turpin visited the Swan Inn and paid a blacksmith to reverse his horse’s shoes. This was a clever trick as he was about to pull a daring robbery and the shoes would make it look as if the marks left as he escaped were going towards the crime scene and not away from it. The landlord of the Swan seemed to have some sympathy towards people like Turpin to whom the inn was a safe house.
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