Skirrid Mountain Inn

OVERVIEW

A stone inn at Llanvihangel Crucorney, north of Abergavenny, under the split hill of Ysgyryd Fawr, the Skirrid. The inn's own account claims a first record in 1110, a role as a court under the Marcher lords, some 180 hangings from the beam above the stairs (the rope marks are shown), Owain Glyndŵr rallying men in its yard around 1400, and Judge Jeffreys sitting there; historians have found no documents for most of this and the building is largely seventeenth-century.

HISTORY

What is established is an old coaching inn on the road up the Monnow valley, a church across the lane older than any of it, and the hill above, which legend says was split by the Crucifixion. The rest is the inn's tradition, told in the bar for a long time.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

A figure in the upper corridor taken to be John Crowther, hanged for sheep-stealing; glasses and tables moving; the sense of a rope at the throat on the stairs; a woman in one of the bedrooms. The inn hosts ghost hunts and is in every list of haunted Welsh pubs. The entry records the inn's story as the inn's.

VISITING

A working pub with rooms; open daily. The Skirrid summit is a public walk from the lane.