Six minutes up the valley stands the fairy-tale silhouette of Craig-y-Nos — the castle Adelina Patti, the highest-paid opera singer on earth, bought in 1878 and made her home for forty years.
Patti was the Beyoncé of the Victorian age: paid $5,000 a night in gold, praised by Verdi as perhaps the finest singer who ever lived, and summoned to sing for the Lincolns at the White House. At Craig-y-Nos she built her own miniature opera house — part La Scala, part Bayreuth — which survives intact as one of the very few Grade I listed theatres in Wales.
Today the castle is a hotel and wedding venue (ceremonies happen in the theatre itself), while Patti’s former pleasure grounds are Craig-y-Nos Country Park: forty acres of free-to-enter lakes, meadows and riverside paths along the young River Tawe, managed by the national park. It’s the loveliest gentle stroll in the valley — and where our lakeside-coffee photo was taken.
Coming to a wedding at the castle? The Old Exchange is one of the closest characterful places to stay — you can be back at your own quiet retreat minutes after the last dance.
Worth knowing
- Adelina Patti bought the castle in 1878 for £3,500 — and is believed to have made it the first privately electrified home in Wales.
- Her private theatre, opened in 1891, is Grade I listed with its original Victorian stage machinery.
- She funded her own railway station on the Neath & Brecon line, complete with private waiting room.
- Some of the earliest recordings of a world-famous singer were made here in 1905–06, when Patti was in her sixties.
- From 1922 to 1986 the castle served as a TB sanatorium — the source of its famously haunted reputation and today’s ghost tours.