Rest in peace? Not quite

I'm the first female guest to spend the night tucked up alone in the carved wooden bed at this B&B in Wirksworth, Derbyshire. Nothing remarkable about that - except the view from the windows is of rows of Gothic headstones, trees, shadows and bats, and my accommodation is a converted chapel of rest. This place may have all the mod-cons of a hotel suite, but the oak pew, wall-mounted psalm board and flock of gilded angels remind you where you really are - and it's spooky.

The only answer is to get up at 10-minute intervals and make coffee, guzzle the complimentary chocolates and fruit, and flip nervously between TV channels (thank God for the Open University and ice hockey from Vancouver.)

I must have dozed off around dawn because my alarm wakes me at breakfast time. In daylight things look much more jolly - I skip outside to read the headstone inscriptions and meet my deceased neighbours.

I barely flinch when I see the graveyard is still in use in the far corner (fresh dates and flowers) but pop next door to my host Dr Wheeler's adjoining Victorian home and extra guest accommodation - the Old Lock-Up, with its walls decorated with truncheons and handcuffs - for a full English fry-up. "How did you get on?" he asks, resplendent in a butcher's apron. "Ladies don't stay in the chapel alone, even some single men and couples won't consider it."

Serving me eggs, bacon and sausages (I decline the black pudding), he tells me the chapel was built in 1812 as the town's overflow church-cum-mortuary. When he and his wife, Vivien, discovered it 10 years ago, it was derelict and vandalised. The local council and Baptist church were happy for him to buy it. Now restored and listed, it hosts holidaymakers from all over the world: "Honeymoon couples are especially keen on it."

But how about the (late) residents of the graveyard? Do their ghosts ever object? "I don't believe in ghosts," says Dr Wheeler, "but I have seen some poltergeists. Some guests say they have seen the ghosts of George Townley, the Whigwell Grange murderer, who stabbed his fiancèe, Bessie, to death near here in 1863. He was kept in a cell upstairs and she is buried next door."

Most guests enjoy a more peaceful stay here, in the foothills of the Peak District. They stroll around the former lead mining town of Wirksworth, visit the heritage centre or drive to nearby Chatsworth or Buxton. They may join one of Dr Wheeler's home history tours. He tells them about DH Lawrence and his wife Frieda who, classed as an alien, had to report to the magistrate here once a week during the First World War.

Above all, guests are fascinated to hear about the window bars in their luxury bedrooms/converted cells, three-feet-thick walls and boulders balanced inside the roof to crush gallows-shy convicts as they attempted to break out.

Lovely breakfast, I tell my host. But I really must catch my train.

The Chapel of Rest and the Old Lock-Up (01629 826272), North End, Wirksworth, Derbyshire. Five en suite rooms in the Old Lock-Up from £40pp a night B&B. Chapel of Rest (double en suite) from £45.