Nanteos Mansion and its ghosts

Hello lovelies -

I hope you're staying well and surviving the enforced 'staying at home' and 'social distancing'.

Nanteos Mansion

Although I've lived in a small village in England since my marriage, my heart is still in my homeland and I cherish the times when I've been able to go back to visit my family and my old haunts, and long for the time when I'll be able to do so again.

One of my favourite places is Nanteos Mansion, set in about thirty acres of land near where I used to live. I used to keep my horses at the beautiful old stables and spent many a happy hour soaking up the atmosphere of this historic house. Nanteos is a Grade I listed, early Georgian country house situated just outside Aberystwyth, on Wales’s west coast. The house was built in 1738 by William Powell, and it remained the Powell family home for over 200 years, until the 1950s, when Lady Powell, the last of the family, died without children and the Mansion fell into the hands of a distant relative.

Horses in front of the mansion

Nanteos Mansion is also reputed to be home to a number of ghosts. These include the spirit of Elizabeth Powell, the late wife of William Powell, who wanders the hallways looking for her lost jewels; a phantom horse and carriage that pulls up to the front entrance in the middle of the night; and the ghost of harpist Gruffydd Evan, who played for the Powell family in the music room every Christmas for 69 years and whose music can still be heard in the woods around the house. My favourite story is a rather sad one. One of the windows on the bottom storey has been boarded up for many, many years. The story goes that the lady of the house was watching her husband ride up the drive towards her, when the horse spooked and threw him, killing him instantly. She could not bear to look out of that window again and ordered it to be boarded over and so it remains to this day. I have to say I never saw a ghost there myself, and always felt the house was a friendly place, rather than a sinister one, but sometimes, late at night the stables would ring with unearthly screeches, like souls in torment. Actually it was nothing more sinister than a colony of screech owls nesting nearby.

The Mansion itself was slowly decaying when I had my horses there, the stables having been sold several years before. Now the stables and Mansion are in the hands of a consortium who have renovated the mansion and use it for functions such as weddings and conferences. At least the house is now restored to its former glory and put to use.

Entrance to the old stable yard

Sadly, last time I visited, I found the elegant, roomy looseboxes changed into holiday apartments. No horses looking over the half doors, no stamping hooves or soft welcoming whinnies.
I closed my eyes and imagined my three horses, now gone over the Rainbow Bridge,
Flikka, Sally and Star, as I often used to see them in the early morning, next to each other with their heads over the doors in that lovely old stable range, overlooking the cobbled yard, reminiscent of days long gone by.

Apologies -  I promised I'd tell you about Merlin's Oak, in Carmarthen. I forgot! I'll tell you next time - It's not exactly a ghost story, but it is interesting - and some of it, at least, is true.

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