httpd dead but subsys locked

While firing up apache this morning I got nothing. A quick "httpd status" returned an interesting message :

httpd dead but subsys locked

I have no idea when the lock got created. I assume it was the last time I ran apache. I don't use it as a daemon.

The solution was simply to delete the lock :

sudo rm /var/lock/subsys/httpd

All was well after that.