Our local antiquary, by common consent, is Mr John Storrie, the former curator of the Cardiff Museum. Last Saturday he was describing to a deeply-interested audience the archaeological features of the Welsh Metropolis and its immediate district. He took his hearers back to the time of Fitzhamon, into that dim and misty past, to the days of the Romans, who camped where the Castle now stands – and further back still into that shadowy and uncertain period when there existed the Marsh village on what is now the site of Ely Racecourse. Much of the matter was quite now, because the investigations at Ely were carried out by Mr Storrie himself.
I see that to-morrow he will tell the tale of his discoveries on Barry Island, where he has unearthed the ancient cell or chapel with adjacent burial ground. Doubtless he will have much to say of the Healing Spring – the Pin Well – and will perhaps solve the mystery of the subterranean tappings which caused the superstitious and the curious to visit Barry Island and to listen to the fabled underground workings of mysterious beings by placing the ear to the ground. Barry Island has had a Cock Lane Ghost all to itself for generations, which might have lasted so long as the Island remained intact, but Railwyas and Docks are materialistic things which interefere with folk lore.
Whilst the progress of docks and railways has obliterated the old island, the scientist has “scotched the ghost”. The tappings of the Cock Lane ghost were discovered to be produced by a girl who took a board to bed with her for the purpose, and on which she rapped in the night. The Barry Island mystery was solved by the Scientist explaining it away. The “tappings” of “underground spirits” were only the vibrations of the sea waves in the fissures of the limestone rock!
South Wales Echo, 20th March 1896.