The Skirrid Mountain Inn, Wales
One public house that is still in use and older than the Ancient Ram is the Skirrid Mountain Inn. Situated in the village of Llanvihangel Crucorney, in Wales’s Brecon Beacons, the Inn takes its name from the remote, cone-shaped mountain, which dominates the area. Legend tells how lightning struck the Skirrid at the very moment of Christ’s crucifixion. The inn’s spooky reputation, however, is all its own.
The original inn was built over 900 years ago in 1110, although the outer shell today is from the seventeenth century, making the Inn the oldest in Wales. It has a reputation for ghosts, which is unsurprising given its history. In the Middle Ages, Pilgrims flocked to the nearby Skirrid Hill, (which is also known as ‘The Holy Mountain’) every Michaelmas Eve, to bring away soil from the mount as a relic. So the inn would have been a natural stop off point for these religious comings and goings.
However, the Skirrid Mountain inn’s history became more colourful in the fifteenth century. It is credited as being one of the rallying points for Welsh hero Owain Glyndwr who led the Welsh revolt against the English between 1400 and 1415. Locals joining the rebellion gathered at the inn courtyard, where Glyndwr himself was said to have made an appearance and rallied the troops. In the seventeenth century, Judge Jefferies, ‘the hanging judge’ was reputed to have presided over trials held in the inn in the aftermath of the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685. There is, however no reliable documentary evidence for this.
What is certain however is that the inn acted as a court- and people were executed on the premises. The first floor of the Inn served as a courtroom and what is now a storeroom was used as a holding cell. Those convicted of capital crimes were hung from an oak beam over the staircase just outside the courtroom. Markings from the ropes biting into the wood of the beam are still visible today. Reputedly 180-200 people were convicted and hung on the inn’s premises.
So it’s unsurprising the Skirrid Inn is haunted. Ghosts include at least one of those convicted on the premises, a John Crowther who was hung for sheep stealing. Felons aside, the inn still hosts the spirit of a former hangman, the friendly spectre of a former local clergyman, Henry Vaughn and Fanny Price, an eighteenth-century servant who died of consumption on the premises when she was 35. The spirits manifest in sudden bursts of perfume, rustles of clothing, shadowy sightings- and flying glasses. Some visitors complain that they feel as though they are being strangled and feel nauseous and dizzy just being in the inn.