Haunted Churches: Bricked Up Heart and a Ghost in Woodford Church

It is often said that the church is the heart of any English village community; and in the case of the church of St. Mary the Virgin in the Northamptonshire village of Woodford, England, never a truer word has been spoken.

In the spring of 1866 it was deemed necessary that much-needed repairs were required to the fabric of the 13th century building and that they should commence without delay. Unaware that they were about to unmask a mystery that had lain hidden for centuries, the builders began their restoration work.

At some point during the process, an old beam supporting a section of an ancient stone archway on the north side of the nave had to be removed. It was then that the builders made a startling discovery.

Removing a piece of broken masonry, brought to light by the removal of the underpinning beam, a small recess was revealed. Reaching inside, one of the men touched something that, from its texture, led him to believe that he had found an old, discarded bird’s nest. Pulling it out he let it fall to the stone floor where it shattered into countless pieces.

On closer inspection of the object it transpired that it was only an outer shell that had shattered, a fragile wicker container, revealing a small bundle wrapped in a length of course cloth. In the hope that they had stumbled upon a hoard of long lost treasure, the cloth was quickly unwrapped.

But it was not a cache of gold and silver coins that the men had unearthed – but a mummified human heart!

News of the gruesome discovery spread like wildfire through the hilltop village and the inhabitants flocked to the church with identical questions in mind. “Whose heart was it?” “Why had it been sealed up inside their church?”

A couple of women however, as the village folklore relates, knew the answers to the questions, and were only too willing to tell their stories to anyone who would listen.  One of the women told how, on one particular occasion, she had a brief encounter with a ghost inside the church. She had been arranging a posy of wild flowers when her attention was drawn, by some slight movement, to the area of the altar.