Britain’s potentially “most haunted house” – a mediaeval prison for witches – is for sale.

The property listing, marketed by Home Domus 360, said owner Vanessa Mitchel was seeking offers in excess of 240,000 pounds ($440,000) for the two-bedroom cottage.

Real estate website Right Move described the cottage as the “most haunted house in Essex and possibly England”.

“The Cage was a mediaeval prison where 13 witches were kept in 1582 while awaiting trial. They became known as the Witches of St Osyth, and among them was the notorious Ursula Kemp,” Home Domus 360 writes in its advertisement.

“At the end of the trial, three were found guilty, including Ursula, and were sentenced to death by hanging.”

Kemp was a midwife accused of witchcraft after young children became sick or died in her neighbourhood in St Osyth in the 16th century.

The house was used to detain men, women and children up until 1908.

“Many of the subsequent owners could not handle the paranormal activities and sold on quickly,” Home Domus 360 said.

Ms Mitchell has owned the property, dubbed The Cage, since 2004.

But Home Domus 360 said she had lived there only briefly “because of the relentless paranormal activity”.

According to the Clacton Gazette, she fled the house because she was “physically attacked by spirits” while pregnant, “witnessed mysterious blood spatters appear” and “even alleges she was spanked on the bottom by a demonic entity”.

The paper said Ms Mitchell has repeatedly tried to sell the dwelling.

It added that a walled courtyard outside the cottage leads to “Coffin Alley” – a passageway “where the bodies of the dead were carried en route to the cemetery”.

The house has also been the subject of a docudrama and Ms Mitchell co-wrote a book, called Spirits of the Cage, about the “paranormal nightmare” of living there.

“The house has now been cleared of the many evil residents encountered over the years: a vision of a satanic-looking goat, growling moving shadows, violent rattles, drops in temperature, and visions of ghostly [figures] quite often trying to push the living down the steep staircase,” according to Right Move.

“All of this seems to have gone, it is still haunted but there seems to be a certain newly found harmony within.”