Affetside is a hill village north of Bury on the old Roman road between Manchester and Ribchester, and the Pack Horse Inn, dated to 1443, served packhorse traffic along it. Above the bar is a brown, aged human skull. The pub's story, as retold by the Lancashire Folk blog, links it to the Civil War.
The tale says the skull belonged to George Whowell, a plain man who witnessed the killing of his wife and children by Royalist soldiers in the Bolton Massacre of 1644. The soldiers were under James Stanley, seventh Earl of Derby. Stanley was captured and sentenced to death after fighting for Charles II, and he was beheaded at Bolton in October 1651. In the legend the executioner was the same George, who had waited seven years for his revenge. Other versions spell the name Whewell.
Nobody can say how the skull came to be kept at the Pack Horse. One idea is a link with the Butterworth family, who later owned the pub. The skull is said to scream if anyone tries to move it, which is the standard rule attached to screaming skulls across Lancashire and Cumbria. Whether the skull is actually the headsman's, or even from the seventeenth century, has not been tested in anything found. It is a documented object with a legend that is traditional rather than proven. The pub is open to the public.
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