DO you believe in ghosts?

I am not sure I do, but I certainly enjoy reading stories about them.

From Dickens to Lord Halifax, my favourite writer on all things haunted is that late author/countryman and master of the Essex scene, a man who knew Maldon (and my own family) well, James Wentworth Day.

He wrote four books on the subject – Ghosts and Witches (Batsford 1954), A Ghost Hunter’s Game Book (1958), In Search of Ghosts (Muller 1969) and my favourite of them all, Essex Ghosts (Spur 1973).

In chapter two he recounts the persistent tale of the Roman ghost of Mersea Island and quotes as his source one-time landlady of that historic, characterful inn, the Peldon Rose.

He was harping back to the 1920s and 30s, but 80 to 90 years on I re-read the piece to a friend of mine.

He was fascinated and suggested that we visit the Rose and, to keep it in period, we should journey there in his 1936 Austin 7 Ruby.

So, a few months back, that’s exactly what we did. We set off from Maldon, drove down Market Hill, passed along the Causeway, through Heybridge Street and headed out on the winding coast road that skirts the north bank of the River Blackwater.

Our route took us along the B1026, via the villages of Goldhanger (the Domesday Book’s “land of golden flowers”), Tolleshunt D’Arcy (one-time home to both Dr Salter and Margery Allingham), the conjoined marshland settlements of Salcott-cum-Virley, off to Great and Little Wigborough (of First World War Zeppelin crash fame) and finally into Peldon, with its church tower still leaning as a result of subsidence exacerbated by the Essex earthquake of 1884.

Out of the village and at the junction of the roads from Colchester and Maldon, hard by the Strood to Mersea (a key feature of this story) we pulled into the car park of the Rose.

Writing in 1963, pub historian Glyn Morgan described it as “one of the loveliest inns in Essex, with the loveliest name”.

In his day you entered the building “through an arch of roses” and once inside you were “back in the days of the smugglers of yesteryear”.

Indeed, there is a legend that contraband was once hidden in sunken kegs in the adjacent pond.

It is all a bit different now – a place of modern dining that attracts guests from across the whole of East Anglia and beyond.

But it is still full of ancient pub charm, not surprising given that it is thought to be early 15th century.

Once we had taken in the ambiance of the place, we ordered two pints of real ale and sat down at one of the tables.

I got out my copy of Essex Ghosts to remind us of the reason for our visit.

Wentworth Day knew Jane Pullen, who ran the pub from about 1910 into the late 1930s.

She told him that, walking home from Mersea across the Strood one moonlit night, she had been “followed by the ghost of a Roman soldier”.

Although she couldn’t see him, she could hear the steady tramp and clank of his marching feet “so close beside me, as near as I could have touched him”, she said.

But for all her “Dresden china elegance”, Jane Pullen was tough and told a fellow, very frightened traveller “keep all along of me and no harm will come to you. ‘Tis only one of those owd Romans come out of the barrows to take his walk”.

And that’s where fact and (potential) fiction meet head on. Mrs Pullen would have been referring to Grim’s Hoe, a burial mound just up the East Mersea road.

It was excavated during her time, in 1912, and sure enough turned out to be Roman.

Dating to around 100-120 AD, at its centre was a mysterious lead box with a wooden lid. When it was opened, inside was a clear green glass urn containing cremated human remains.

In 2013 these were analysed and identified as belonging to a male aged between 35 and 45.

Having been displayed for many years in Colchester Castle, those finds are now back home and can be seen in Mersea Museum.

We drank up, bid a fond farewell to the Rose and drove over the Strood to take a look at the mound.

It is still very prominent and you can imagine why it gave birth to so many local legends. We parked alongside it and reflected on the strange story.

But as the tide was rising we were quite anxious to get back over the Strood, for fear that salt water would get into the precious Ruby.

Thankfully, as it turned out, it didn’t, but I have to say that the low gear climb on our return journey up Market Hill was quite an experience!

When it was first published, Essex Ghosts was billed as detailing “rare and unnatural happenings”.

“The reader”, it said, “may or may not believe in ghosts” and that “some things are better imagined than described… providing it is only in the imagination and not something else…”

It makes you think, doesn’t it?