Official Laugharne Lines Website

Redford House

This house was built in 1792 and given a Grade 11 listing in 1986. When Caitlin Thomas visited Laugharne for the last time in 1989, she rented a room here for a week from the landlady Mrs Jean Pruden.

In the late 19th century, author Mary Curtis lived here. She wrote the highly respected tome, The Antiquities of Laugharne, Pendine and their Neighbourhoods which was published in 1880. This is a remarkable book, which must have employed a huge amount of research (This site took long enough, and has a fraction of the words of Ms Curtis' book!).

Ms Curtis was a Londoner and moved to Laugharne to work as a governess. Apparently a very small woman, always dressed in black, she took delight in telling ghost stories and collecting shells and wild flowers. This pic shows Redford House in the 1920s.

The house is also said to be haunted by 'The Dripping Boy', the ghost of a small boy who drowned in the Corran which flows behind the house. Small drops of water are often found in the house with no explanation as to how they came to be there. I've seen them.

Laugharne Lines refers to Mary Curtis' book, and in a way, it continues to carry the baton as Ms Curtis refers to Benjamin Heath Malkin's 1803 work, 'Scenery, Antiquities and Biography of South Wales'.

Ms Curtis (below) wrote that, '...the curious tales and peculiar customs of these parts, now fading from the memory of the oldest inhabitants,' was the catalyst for her book. It was her mission to develop, '...a taste for antiquity in those who have no care for the past.'

In 2013, 133 years later, when this project began, we realised that there were many older people who had stories and memories that needed recording. Whilst we live in a time of perpetual stimuli and endless distractions, 24-hour media and breath-taking technological advances, we are inevitably tomorrow's history. As Ms Curtis wrote - 'Surely it must be interesting to compare the past condition of Laugharne with its present condition, and to see at some future day how far may, as history sometimes does, repeat itself.'

And as another celebrated member of the Curtis' clan (Ian, below) sang on Joy Division's 'Heart & Soul', released exactly 100 years after Ms Curtis' book was published - 'The past is now part of my future; the present is well out of hand.'

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