GhostHidden
The White Horse
A war-horse with no rider.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Parkland and fields at Whiston
- Legend from
- Whiston tradition (Blinkhorn, 1990)
- Best time
- Dusk
- Tone
- Eerie
A white war-horse gallops across Halsnead Park, a ghost from some ancient battle.
Knowsley Archives tell of the White Horse of Whiston, a story the local historian Bill Blinkhorn heard many years ago from a Mr Horn of Rainhill. According to the legend, a ghostly white battle charger gallops across Halsnead Park. Blinkhorn's verse in his 1990 guide to Whiston calls it a Saxon white horse ghost, once a leader in battle. It frightens the village maidens, spoils the milk, misleads people walking at night and laughs at their harm. At dawn it speeds away to rest with the sprites of Lickers Fold. The archives say tales like this were passed down by storytelling and rarely written down.
One sourceOnly one written account of this legend has been found so far.