Between St Athan and the airfield there were once two manors, West Orchard and East Orchard, both held in the Middle Ages by knightly families under the Lords of Glamorgan. East Orchard still has substantial ruins. West Orchard has almost vanished, but it has kept its ghost.
The story, as Marie Trevelyan gave it from the Iolo manuscripts, begins with a marriage. A daughter of the powerful de Clares married Sir Jasper Berkerolles of West Orchard. When Sir Jasper came home from the Second Crusade, his enemies whispered that his wife had been unfaithful with Sir Gilbert d'Umphraville of East Orchard. She protested her innocence and he would not believe her.
His sentence was a slow, public death. In a field near the castle he had a hole dug and his wife placed in it up to her neck, and she was to be left there to starve. No one was to give her a crumb of food or a drop of water. Her sister begged to be allowed to see her once a day, and Sir Jasper agreed, as long as she took nothing with her. So every morning at dawn the sister came in long silk robes and walked up and down beside the buried woman, trailing her skirts through the wet grass, so that Lady Berkerolles could suck the dew from the silk. This kept her alive for ten days, but no more. Afterwards, the story says, Sir Jasper discovered that his wife had been innocent all along, and went raving mad.
The haunting belongs to the sister's walk. The white lady of West Orchard only ever appeared in the early morning, soon after dawn in the summer months, a slim figure with white silk robes trailing in the dew. As late as 1863, women who went out early to milk the ewes said they often saw a beautiful lady in white going "round and round" one spot in the field, and could not understand why. Old people still spoke of the starvation of a Countess and the faithful Ladi Wen, and a lane, a stile and a grassy hillock near the site all carried the name Iarlles, the Countess. In one version she guarded treasure under the hillock, but whenever she tried to lead anyone to it a white dog with red eyes rushed at her.
Wikipedia's article on St Athan notes that the village is "said to be haunted by a lady in white". The exact field is not known, so the pin is approximate.
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