Chepstow Castle sits on a cliff above the Wye, begun within a year or two of the Norman Conquest and extended for five hundred years afterwards. Its most famous prisoner arrived in 1668. Henry Marten was a republican, a wit and a notorious womaniser who had sat as one of the judges of Charles I and signed his death warrant. When the monarchy returned in 1660 most of his fellow regicides were executed. Marten was spared the scaffold but not prison.
His confinement at Chepstow was not a dungeon. He had a suite of rooms in the great south east tower, then called Bigod's Tower, with his own servants and, according to most accounts, visits from his common-law wife. He lived there about twelve years and died on 9 September 1680, having choked while eating. He was buried in Chepstow parish church, and the tower has been called Marten's Tower since.
The stories that he never left are told on most ghost sites that cover the castle. Visitors and staff are said to hear footsteps on the stone floors of the tower, doors that slam with no draught, and cold spots in his rooms, and some describe a dark figure. There Be Ghosts adds phantom knocks, cooking smells and chess pieces moving on their own. The Great British Ghost Tour does not list the castle at all, and none of the accounts give a date or name a witness.
Marten is an unusual ghost in that the historical man is well documented and his death was neither violent nor tragic. The haunting is best read as the castle's most famous resident being given a place in its stories, rather than a case with any evidence behind it.
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