The Hanburys built Pontypool's fortune on iron and japanned tinware, and their park still spreads across the valley side above the town, with the mansion (now a school), a shell grotto and a folly tower on the ridge.
The ghost story is recent and simple. According to the Great British Ghost Tour, a man was walking his dog in the park in the early 2000s when he noticed a man ahead of him dressed in old-fashioned clothes. His dog reacted badly, cowering down, and he bent to comfort it. When he looked up a second later, the figure was gone. There was nowhere nearby he could have gone.
The same page records other Pontypool stories, including a museum with an unexplained figure and footsteps, and a council house in James Street, Penygarn, in the mid 1980s with noises, cold, smashed crockery and a shadowy figure. This record keeps to the park.
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