The Skirrid Mountain Inn
Llanvihangel Crucorney
Abergavenny, Monmouthshire NP7 8DH Wales
Tel: 44 (0) 1873-890258
Website : myweb.tiscali.co.uk/skirrid/
Welsh locals say that at the exact moment of Jesus' death on the cross, a bolt of lightning came down and split the 1,600-foot-tall peak of a Monmouthshire mountain in two. Today the mountain is called Skirrid Mountain, and at its base lies the Skirrid Mountain Inn—which also has its share of legends. The inn also boasts one of the oldest pubs in all of the United Kingdom. There is written record of the building as far back as 1104 c.e., though it may be even older than that. Due to its remote location, the public house was used for many civic events beyond a drink and a meal—the building has also served as the place for town meetings, a courthouse— where judges would preside over local cases—and even the site of execution. A worn beam by the stairwell bares witness to where the hangman's rope brought 182 people to their deaths over the centuries. The unlucky person would stand on a lower step as the rope was tightened around his neck. Because there isn't much clearance below, the victim wasn't as lucky as those who were hung by a gallows where the fall itself might snap the neck, offering an instant death. The many people executed at this inn slowly suffocated to death as their windpipes were crushed. It's no surprise that the Skirrid Mountain Inn is not only old, it's also quite haunted. But ironically, the most dominant presence is not one of the many who met their end in the stairwell, it's the spirits of Landlady Fanny Price, who died of consumption in the smallest bedroom in the inn in the early 1800s, and her immediate family, who owned the property during that time. The Price family's mortal remains lay in the churchyard a short distance away from the inn.
"She walks the pub at night," Daryl Hardy, the inn's current coowner said. "Apparently, one of the other major characters in the pub—we can't tell whether it was her father or her husband—but he's called Henry Price, he pretends to be a soldier marching up and down outside on the cobbles. You can hear sort of horses' hooves outside on the cobbles. Or he'll be up in the loft banging on the chimney breasts, trying to scare the guests."
Glasses continually fly off the shelves behind the bar. Hardy claims they lose about 10 to 15 glasses per week this way. Another supernatural event witnessed by eight people in the pub one night happened when a small stack of money— paper bills with coins on top—traveled down the entire length of the bar, hovered in mid-air for a moment, then dropped to the floor as the witnesses watched in stunned silence.
The three upstairs guest rooms also have their share of activity. One of the more humorous anomalies occurred when a guest complained he couldn't sleep because some unseen force was spinning the toilet paper roll in the bathroom all night. Not unfurling the paper, just playfully spinning it and keeping the poor man awake.
Many strange and misty photos have been taken by the bar and in the stairwell where so many met their doom.