At one time, this was a rest house for Knights Templar on their way to the south. It was rebuilt over 200 years ago on the site of a previous one. The Royal is, for some obscure reason, haunted by two men dressed in the uniform of soldiers of the French Foreign Legion. Then witnesses saw the ghost of a very old man wandering the inn. He is sometimes accompanied by an elderly woman. One account tells of the pub being haunted by the ghosts of three men who had been killed whilst labouring on the Chesterfield Canal in the late 1770s. That canal, the Cuckoo Dyke, dates from to export coal from Chesterfield. It would be usual for men accidentally killed to have been carried to a local pub for the police and a doctor to attend. Frequently, their bodies would have been left in the beer cellar or on coffin shelves for the inquest to be organised.