The Skirrid Inn

The archaeological work is the firmest ground here: the building you see today is largely of mid-late 17th-century date. Beyond that, the written record thins out quickly. Forde has suggested that an earlier inn stood on the same spot, reasoning that the site lay on a pilgrim trail leading to Llanthony Priory — a plausible idea, but one for which there is no evidence to verify.

A popular local legend, equally unverified, holds that the inn served as a rallying point for supporters of the Glyndŵr Rising against the rule of Henry IV, and that Owain Glyndŵr himself gathered his troops in the cobbled courtyard before raids on nearby settlements sympathetic to the English in the 15th century.

The third and darkest of the undocumented claims is that the first floor was used as a Court of Law, where capital punishment could be imposed for offences including sheep stealing. Legend has it that as many as 180 people were found guilty of crimes judged serious enough to warrant death by hanging, and that the sentences were carried out at the inn itself, from an oak beam over the well of the staircase. Markings on the staircase wood are said to be rope marks. None of this is documented, but if there is any truth in it, these were real lives ended in a building that is now a village pub — a thought worth carrying quietly up those stairs.

The Skirrid's fame as a haunted building has grown out of its legends — the courtroom, the beam, the rallying of Glyndŵr's men — rather than out of a documented body of witness accounts, and no detailed descriptions of individual encounters are recorded. What survives physically is the staircase wood with its markings, said to have been left by rope.

The inn has nonetheless attracted the attention of television paranormal investigators, featuring in series one of Extreme Ghost Stories and in series two of Most Haunted.

The Skirrid Inn is a working public house in Llanvihangel Crucorney, roughly four miles (6 km) north of Abergavenny, and it makes an excellent base for a walking day: the Skirrid Mountain lies to the east, the Black Mountains to the west, and Offa's Dyke Path runs close by, with the Brecon Beacons National Park all around. Do look at the staircase on your way up — the markings in the wood are the one tangible thing in the whole legend.

Organised public ghost hunts are held at the venue, so if you would rather explore the building after hours than simply have a pint beneath the beams, you can book onto one. Either way, treat the hanging stories as the unproven local legends they are, and spare a thought for anyone they might once have described.