The White Hart on Holywell Hill is one of the older surviving buildings in St Albans, with parts dating back to the early sixteenth century. Its most notable historical guest was Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, the Jacobite rebel captured after the defeat of the Highland army at Culloden, who stayed a night here in 1746 on his way to the Tower of London and subsequent execution, the distinction of being the last man in England to be beheaded.
The hotel's ghost tradition is more often tied to a different, later event. In 1820, as the Northampton coach turned off Holywell Hill and passed under the archway leading to the stable yard, a woman named Elizabeth Wilson, riding on the roof, failed to duck in time and was struck and fatally injured. She is one candidate for the female apparition that staff and guests have reported over the years, seen and felt in various parts of the old coaching inn, alongside a small girl seen standing by the fireplace in the main bar and in an upstairs room. A former cellar man claimed that heavy beer barrels would move by themselves overnight, and there are further reports of doors opening and closing unaided and room lights switching on and off.
More recent write-ups add further detail that is harder to verify against any specific historical event, including a coach said to appear outside drawn by headless horses, a headless woman said to walk the halls with her daughter whispering from the stairs, and poltergeist-style activity in Room 8 involving mirror writing, thrown towels and a silent male figure at the foot of the bed. These later additions read as an accumulation of embellishment on top of the older, better anchored story of the 1820 accident, and are recorded here as part of the hotel's current reputation rather than as independently verified events.
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