John or Thomas Roberts...

THere's more to tell you about just who did die in 1853 in Flint Mountain on this misty cold December morning and there's much more to tell you about the rather insignificant looking murky piece of water at Flint Mountain known as Pwll-yr-Wrach - The Witch's Pool (sometimes Pwll Y Wrach (The Witches Pool)), which will always be locally associated with sorcery and enchantment. .

My dad grew up in and around Flint Mountain, living with his grandparents John and Sarah-Jane Williams (nee Owens) at their tiny cottage on Pentre Hill (‘the back hill’) but for generations prior to that the family lived at Waen-Y-Balls, a location just along from there.

Dad told me many tales about The Witch’s Pool – a place he was told to avoid as a child but which he nevertheless frequented, climbing the huge oak tree which overhangs the pond to this day and catching tadpoles and frogs… which he told me he always released back into the pool at the end of the day.

Of course, he was told not to go there because of the danger of drowning, but he also told me that locals spoke of the ethereal Ellyllon who frequented there. The old folk of the village would talk of otherworldly entities who gathered at the mystical Pwll-y-Wrach once the sun had set. Old wives’ tales or not, dad was told to beware of the pool as Welsh fairy apparitions and other odd happenings took place there…  it was an eerie site where mortals should steer clear of.

The tale told by Melville Richards in his 1969 book ‘The Supernatural in Welsh Place Names’  told the tale of John Roberts who was purported to have died as a result of a visit there in 1853.

What makes this story intriguing is the fact that there is actual historical evidence of a ‘Thomas Roberts’ (not a John Roberts) who met his demise in May of 1853 tragically, aged 40 years, so this is likely to be the Roberts referred to by Melville Richards. Whether it was due to some shoddy wall construction or the mischievous intervention of a malevolent creature, the circumstances surrounding Thomas' untimely death are certainly very spooky.

By chance, the farmstead of Waen-Y-Balls in Flint Mountain, where Thomas Roberts resided, happens to be the very spot where my family then lived and farmed. It is quite certain that my ancestors must have worked alongside and been acquainted with Thomas Roberts. How eerie is that!

Melville Richards is known to have taken his story from an earlier account written around 1910 by one Gwilym Bellys which was part of a reading at Aberystwyth University. 

There are a many other stories in the area as to why the pool gained its name and I'll tell you more about this in the coming weeks, especially as regards The Hanging Oak and The Ellyllon.

#sorcery #enchantment #witchcraft #ellyllon #flintmountain #The WitchesPool #Hangingoak #PwllYWrach