'A smartly dressed ghost'
This busy high street store is situated on Hereford's Widemarsh Street and the store itself has crowds of customers in and out of its doors daily, but for a building that as such a up to date appearance it really is surprising to find a ghost story and so much history here. The building is known to stand on the site of where the Black Swan hotel previously was this was a small, old and black wooden building that was a popular public inn to many locals.
There is quite a creepy known belief and that is that a graveyard previously occupied the site before the Black Swan was built. The store itself is of a very large size and the front of the shop is said to be the oldest part, the old co- op store was previously at this part of the store, above is the stock room and cash office and it is in these two rooms that the ghost of a well kept and smartly dressed man as been seen wandering around on numerous occasions, the staff have given him the name Freddie and he as been sighted wearing a blue shirt and trousers, one member of staff who had a first hand account of the ghost was so upset and traumatised by her encounter that she left her job altogether, it is also believed that this ghostly man travels through the shops next to Primark, the Paperway shop which is one shop down also has a ghostly man in their shop who occasionally visits and he is seen wearing the same clothing.
The man could be from the old co-op store as the staff uniform was blue. The dress shop one door away from Primark on the left also has a ghost of a man in the basement so it could more than likely be the same ghost travelling in between all three of these shops. When the site was the Black Swan hotel it had a reputation of being one of the City's best pubs and coaches left the inn daily travelling to Liverpool in 1834, the inn had many landlord's over duration, Thomas Jones was victualler in 1822 and in 1909 a Thomas Owen was head of the inn, the Black Swan also had air raid shelters provided in the basement.
The Black Swan was unfortunately demolished in the 1970's, this was such a shame and a sad loss for a building that dates back to the early 1600's,sadly nothing is now left of the inn, there is no trace that it was ever there at all.