Punters have enjoyed drinking at Elstree's Waggon and Horses pub for more than 600 years, with tales of strange deaths, murders and ghosts livening up its history.

In 1471, when the Watling Street pub started life as an alehouse, King Edward IV was on the throne, and England was in the midst of The Wars of the Roses, with battles fought nearby in St Albans in 1461 and Barnet in 1471.

Alehouses, between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, were largely people's homes, where the owner brewed ale or in later centuries may have bought it from a brewery and provided a drinking room, as well as selling ale and beer for people to take home.

Basic foods, like bread, buns and cakes, were also provided, and some alehouses had lodging rooms.

Borehamwood and Elstree historian Lesley Davies said: "Everybody used to drink beer, even children. They could not drink anything else because the water had not been treated and was dirty, and where people lived inland they may not have had any access to water. People were generally a little drunk for most of the day."

The first official recording is of a cottage in 1636, where Edward Wray lived. The first recorded licence was in 1803, with William Brooks, although it is believed it probably had a license from around 1770. The records indicate there may have been a lapse in its licensing before 1851, when it was the home of agricultural labourer John Austin and there were attempts to reopen it. There was no licence to sell spirits until the 1950s, when electricity was also installed.

Olive Hasler, landlady from 1976 to 1990, said the smaller of the pub's two front rooms, the oldest part, was at one time the alehouse-keeper's living quarters, with stairs leading to the three bedrooms upstairs, while the larger front room was for drinking. The existing wooden beams in the smaller room are believed to be original. The alehouse was only one-room deep, and led onto a back garden, with a well and pond.

In 1978, Olive and her husband Tom, who now live in Markyate, discovered the brick inglenook fireplace, complete with baking-ovens, when they knocked down panelling which had been put up during the war to preserve fuel.

According to Olive and present landlord Mark Latham, there has never been a cellar, and barrels, covered with damp sacks to stop their contents going off, were piled on shelves behind the bar, which would have been added in a later century.

Watling Street, built by the Romans, was an important route and the pub served wagoners on their way to London markets.

Olive said: "The Hollybush in Elstree, 50 years older than the Waggon and Horses, was the coaching place. The Waggon had the farmers and workers from the Aldenham Estate, who still came in while we were there."

The pub's history includes reports of a woman drowning in the pond in around 1850, a murder between 1900 and 1906 and ghosts.

Anyone with historical photographs or information on Elstree and Radlett pubs is asked to call the Borehamwood Times on 020 8953 3391.