IT’S not so much a summer of love as a summer of sickness and death.

York Dungeon’s seasonal treat will run until the end of this month, when every Friday it will transport visitors back to the plague-ridden year of 1551.

Visitors will receive flower posies to ward off “foul smells” believed to cause the plague to spread.

They will have a chance to meet the plague doctor and his eager assistant, who will share gruesome tales of how desperate victims of the plague tried to rid themselves of this horrifying disease.

Also doing their rounds will be the plague nurse, plague victims and a plague grave pit digger, each with their own grisly plague tales to tell.

Less squeamish visitors will come face to face with live leeches, an old medieval cure for many ills, including draining out the “bad blood” of the plague.