Trevelyan dates this story to "about seventy years ago", which would place it around the 1830s or 1840s, when Porthcawl was still a small place with a few inns by the shore and the parish church was at Newton Nottage, a little inland.
An old man was sitting one evening in the parlour of one of these inns when, in the twilight, he saw a funeral procession coming towards the house, followed by a crowd of people. The figures were shadowy and he could not make out any of them, with one exception: a man in hunting costume, riding a spirited and restive horse. The old man was astonished, because the inn was out of the way and the church at Newton Nottage lay in the opposite direction. No funeral or wedding party ever passed or stopped there.
He told the landlord, who replied, in Trevelyan's words, that "there will never be a church built beyond this house in my time or anybody else's". The landlord meant that no funeral would ever have reason to come that way.
A few years passed. The landlord died suddenly while in Neath, and his body was brought home by road to the inn, where it rested overnight before burial at Newton Nottage. He had been a keen follower of the hounds, and as a mark of respect a neighbouring gentleman put on his hunting costume and rode out to meet the procession and escort it home. People noticed that he rode a spirited and restive horse.
The inn is not named, so the location here is simply Porthcawl's old seafront.
Comments