The Orange Tree occupies ground on King Street that local tradition holds was once a convent burial ground, a genuinely evocative claim that gives the pub's own ghost story a considerably darker religious backdrop than most comparable local hauntings. The story attached to the pub concerns a nun who fell in love, bore a child out of that forbidden attachment, and was subsequently parted from her own baby by the very religious order she had sworn her life to.
Her ghost is said to linger on the premises still, grieving that permanent separation, sometimes felt by staff and visitors as a distinct cold presence rather than ever being seen outright as a fully formed apparition.
As with several of Hereford's other pub ghosts recorded throughout this collection, no primary source actually ties the story to any named individual or firmly dated event, and the convent claim itself is asserted by local tradition rather than genuinely documented by any surviving historical record. It survives today as one of a cluster of haunted-pub stories collected from the city's own ghost walk material, the grieving nun's story offering real emotional weight even without the historical verification that might otherwise confirm it.
Comments