Margam Castle

OVERVIEW

A Tudor Revival mansion built for Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot between 1830 and 1835 on a site occupied for four thousand years, beside the ruins of Margam Abbey and the Talbots' orangery, in a country park owned by Neath Port Talbot council. The earliest Welsh photograph, of 1841, is of this house. The council's own destinations site writes up its ghosts and it has been on Most Haunted (2006), Ghost Hunters International (2010) and Paranormal Lockdown (2018).

HISTORY

The Talbots left after 1941; the house was gutted by fire in 1977 and restored by the council. Robert Scott, a Margam gamekeeper, was shot in the face by a poacher he had caught on the estate in 1898 and died; the murder is in the record.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Scott on the main stairs, and stones thrown at those who address him; children heard in the upper rooms; monks among the abbey ruins in the park. Paranormal groups hire the house by the night and the council sells the tours. Recorded as the site's tradition.

VISITING

The park is open daily (parking charge); the castle's ground floor on set days; ghost hunts by booking with the operators.