Haunted Gower

Europe is a colourful counterpane of quilted states distinguished by language and history. Always at the fluid borders of these great and little nations, fossilised in everlasting debate, have lain wide frontier lands of empty, mournful beauty celebrated in countless strange stories of the supernatural, of chivalry, and other honours better and baser.

Tiny as it is, The "English" Gower Peninsular in South Wales is one of these haunted hinterlands.

By a deserted sandy bay, my Wife Jana and I slept in a caravan, sheltered in the South by a steep oak-clad slope. This thickly-wooded acclivity was guarded by a single owl. One Sunday night there was a force-nine gale that roared and whistled through the bare trees, as the owl maintained a constant hooting of admonition to the careless storm. The succeeding nights were calm and silent until three busloads of ladies opened the neighbouring hotel with a raucous hen-night disco. Our friend the owl hooted his complaints and congratulations until they left, when he too retired.

The nearest neighbour on the other side of the hotel was a bashful centaur. If he had gate-crashed the party, surely he would have stolen the limelight from the male strippers?

Oxwich Church

Numerous ghosts loiter their churchyard keeping the builders company as they restore St Illtyd's tiny Norman tower. But the real hero is a centaur who lives in the thick woods above the tiny fane, descending at midnight for a quick dip in the bay below. He does not like to bathe in the daytime, for lack of a swimming costume.

Arthur's Stone

A Neolithic dolmen with dramatic views from Gower's hogback summit Cefn Bryn. King Arthur and his army made a long detour to this spot to worship before marching East to defeat invaders.

Pennard Castle

Cursed by a 13th Century witch, Pennard was overwhelmed by migrating sand-dunes from the sea, and has been deserted ever since. It is said that ghostly custodians supervise modern-day visitors, who must never stay in hours of darkness.

Rhosilli Old Rectory

The 1887 wreck of the sailing ship Helvetia dominates this view of the distant white vicarage isolated behind the breath-taking sweep of Rhosilli Sands.

The Rhosilli Old Rectory is the Welsh answer to Borley Rectory, with revenants crowding every corner. Like Borley, it burnt down, but Rhosilli was restored by The National Trust as a holiday cottage. Archaeologists have found the remains of old Rhosilli and its Dark Ages graveyard around and beneath the Victorian building. On stormy nights a horrific shadowy entity emerges from the foam briefly to view the exterior. He ( She? It? ) may be acting for the late Dylan Thomas, who considered purchasing the house in 1946.

The Brandy Cove

During much of the Twentieth Century, visitors and locals returned from the cove with lurid tales of blood-curdling female screams. These sounds ceased when in 1962 the murdered remains of Maisie Stuart were located in a disused lead mine at the cove, and buried in Bishopston Churchyard.

The Brandy Cove is one of two or three wild places where I have sensed some cold, malign ambiance in bright sunlight. I did of course hear and see nothing.

Burry Holm Oratory

This tiny prayer-cell is almost the last vestige of St Cenydd's ( Kenneth's ) monastery. Cenydd was born out of wedlock to a princess of Carmarthen and consigned aboard a wicker basket by the king to the waves of The Loughor Estuary.

Thirty seagulls rescued the babe and raised him to Christian manhood on their little island, Burry Holm, from which the saint strode forth to convert Glamorgan.

The Haunted Gower Photograph Gallery


Oxwich Church	Arthur's Stone	Pennard Castle

Rhossilli Old Rectory	The Brandy Cove	Burry Holm Oratory