Laugharne Castle

Laugharne Castle in South Wales was originally founded in 1116 A.D. and formed part of the chain of Norman coastal castles stretching between Chepstow and Pembroke, built in order to control the Welsh chieftains. Today, the roofless castle at Laugharne has a few ghostly stories connected with it – the sound of fabric rustling but nothing is visible in the castle’s Great Hall, eerie footsteps belonging to nobody (or as locals believe, Tudor courtiers dancing?), noises similar to whispers round a corner but nobody is there, and the standard ‘sudden drop in temperature’ for no apparent reason, as well as a feeling of ‘being watched’. The main ghostly story concerning the castle is that of a figure dressed in ‘Tudor clothes’ seemingly gazing out from the top of the battlements across the Taf Estuary. Suddenly the spectral figure disappears. It is believed the ‘ghost’ is the restless, fiery-tempered Sir John Perrot a local nobleman who owned the estate and castle. Born in 1528, and rumoured to be the bastard son of King Henry VIII, he became the President of Munster in Ireland in 1571, when he was sent to suppress an uprising. He decided to impose English rule on the Irish clans, by violently suppressing dissent or using diplomacy in roughly equal measure. He returned in 1584 as Lord Deputy to suppress another uprising. Perrot was accused of plotting treason against Queen Elizabeth I in 1591 and incarcerated in the Tower of London, where he awaited his fate. Some historians believe the accusations were created by his rivals in Elizabeth I’s court, jealous of Perrot being a Privy Councillor with the ear of the queen. However, he died from poison before his execution in November 1592 – suicide, revenge for the brutal way he acted in Ireland, or a convenient way to deal with him by his rivals? Why does his ghost wander along the battlements? Can his soul not find solace? In 1644 during the English Civil War, an Iron Age Fort near to where Dylan Thomas’s wooden shed overlooks the same estuary (see other story of a ghostly haunting) was used as a position from which the Parliamentarian forces, under Colonel Rowland Laugharne fired cannons at Laugharne Castle, focussing on the outer gatehouse. From the estuary, four ships fired broadsides at the walls. After the outer defences were breached the Royalists retreated into the internal Keep but the surviving defenders surrendered after a week. Rear-Admiral Laugharne (1745-1819), it is said, appears each St. John’s Eve (the Feast Day of John the Baptist, 23 June), ferrying himself across the river in a coracle, bailing water out with a cocked hat. His spirit is also connected to Laugharne’s St. Martin’s Church, where a monument to him is dedicated. It is claimed that Laugharne Castle is visited occasionally by the ghost of Colonel Richard Isaac Starke who was in the Life Guards at the beginning of 19th century. He was a colonel in a Carmarthen Militia unit and he later became High Sheriff of Carmarthen in 1809.