Visit to the ancient Town Hall at the Prince of Wales Inn, Kenfig

In September 2016, twenty members of the Cowbridge U3A History Group travelled to Kenfig, a thriving community for two hundred years between its founding around 1140 by Robert Fitzhamon, Earl of Gloucester, and the middle of the fourteenth century. Once, it was probably one of largest towns in Wales. Then the sand started to arrive. By the 1540’s, the village on the east side of the River Kenfig and the castle were both in ruins, almost choked with sand.

The group was welcomed by Gareth Maund, landlord of the “Prince of Wales”, which now incorporates the ancient Town Hall, built adjacent to the “Ty Newydd” tavern around 1550, to replace the one lost beneath the dunes. Seated in the large upstairs room, the party was given an entertaining history of the building by Gareth, who is only the eleventh licensee of the premises since 1816.

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It is likely that the original structure once stood on pillars, with intervening arches, so that the space underneath could serve as a market and community meeting place, or even stabling. Certainly, until more recent times, the only entrance door was accessed by an external stone stairway.

The Town Hall was the venue for both the Borough and Manorial Courts. A worn table, used by the magistrates and over 300 years old, can be seen in the room. There is a possible gallows site in a nearby field, where numerous human remains were found in the late 1940’s.

Inquests were also convened here: Sker Point is a notorious area for shipwrecks and many vessels have come to grief there over the years. The bodies of sailors would often be held here in a makeshift mortuary. In 1947, there was a terrible disaster when the SS Samtampa was wrecked on the Point, with 47 fatalities, 39 from the ship and 8 volunteer crew members of the Mumbles lifeboat, who died attempting to save the ship’s complement.

The Trustees of the Kenfig Corporation Property, who own the building, continue to hold their meetings in the Town Hall. They are the successors to the medieval burgesses of Kenfig, each of whom occupied a smallholding known as a burgage, who administered the rights granted by various Charters.

The room has also served as a Sunday school (in a public house!), where children were taught English. The school was founded by the inn’s landlady in the 1860’s and ran for 130 years. She also held the right to warren rabbits in the nearby dunes; records indicate up to 100,000 rabbits being taken per year.

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There are, of course, ghosts associated with the building – a lot has gone on in 500 years! Music has been heard, but no source found. Mysterious telephone calls have happened recently. A ghostly man in military uniform has been seen in the bar and there have been sightings of a young boy. This latter apparition may be connected with a 9 year old boy, killed in an accident on his way to the Sunday school.

The talk concluded with a short video, one of several available on the history of the pub and the locality.

The New Zealand Rugby team visited the “Prince of Wales” in 2014; the size of the buffet provided for the group after the talk seemed to indicate that a party of All Blacks was being catered for, not U3A members!

Steve Monaghan