For two centuries Shire Hall was where Monmouthshire tried its most serious cases. The courtroom upstairs saw the county assizes, and in the winter of 1839 to 1840 it hosted the special commission that tried John Frost, Zephaniah Williams and William Jones for high treason after the Newport Rising. They were the last men in Britain sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, though the sentence was changed to transportation to Van Diemen's Land. The building is now a museum and visitor centre, and the court and the cells beneath it can be visited.
It would be strange if a courthouse with that history had no ghost stories. The ones told about Shire Hall are brief. There Be Ghosts describes a judge in full wig and robes, seen in the building, and a lady who wanders the halls, noticed as much by her scent as by sight. Visitors and staff speak of being watched.
The same site adds two claims that are harder to accept: the spirits of an executed family and of three accused witches. No names, dates or cases are given for either, and nothing was found in the historical record to support them. They are recorded here only as part of the building's modern reputation.
The judge is the one element that fits the building's past, though no account links him to a particular judge or trial. With no dated sightings, the haunting stands as a single-source modern tradition.
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