The Newport Rising was the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in Britain. In the early hours of 4 November 1839, columns of Chartists from the valleys came down through the rain to Newport, meaning to free fellow Chartists they believed were held at the Westgate Hotel. Inside were the mayor, special constables and a small detachment of the 45th Regiment of Foot. The marchers pushed into the front of the building, shots were fired, and within about twenty minutes the square was full of dead and wounded men. The leaders, John Frost, Zephaniah Williams and William Jones, were tried at Monmouth and transported.
The hotel was rebuilt in the 1880s, but on the same spot, and it kept its name and its story. The Great British Ghost Tour records that staff encountered the apparition of a man in black on the upper floors, and that doors opened by themselves.
No one has identified the man. It is tempting to tie him to 1839, but nothing in the reports does so. The hotel closed in the early 2000s and has been used intermittently since. The haunting is recorded from a single source.
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