The college on Lodge Road trained generations of Welsh teachers. It had long corridors, a tall stairwell and, by the later 20th century, a ghost with a name.
According to the South Wales Argus, as quoted by the Great British Ghost Tour, the ghost of a six-foot-tall matron had been a familiar sight to staff at the University of Wales College Newport's Caerleon campus since her death in 1962. She was named as Bertha Ramsey and known as Big Bertha. She appeared in a brown overall with her hair pulled back in a bun. Security staff making their rounds at night reported strange noises and pictures knocked crooked. The Argus story was prompted by a new book about her.
Later ghost sites add that she died after falling from the top of the stairwell two storeys to the ground floor, and some speculate that she was pushed. Those details are not in the Argus extract and should be treated as later embroidery. The same campus is said to have ghostly Roman centurions, a natural addition for a town built on a legionary fortress.
A real death in 1962 appears to lie behind the story, so the details should be handled with care. The haunting itself rests on staff lore reported in one newspaper piece.
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