Margam

Deer Park and Family Adventures

Fallow and red deer graze the open parkland at Margam, along with a herd of Père David's deer, the rarest of the three, introduced via a breeding programme at Whipsnade. They roam free across roughly 850 acres of grass, woods and hillside, and they do not move for you. This is the centre of the place. Margam has no shopping street to speak of — the everyday errands happen in Port Talbot and Taibach next door — but it has the country park, and the park is the reason to come.

The park has a visitor centre with a café, a gift shop and toilets, which handles the practical side of a day here. For children there is the Fairytale Village, a cluster of miniature Tudor houses and an adventure castle for the under-tens, an adventure playground for slightly older ones, a farm trail with ponies, pigs, goats and rare breeds, and a narrow-gauge railway. Go Ape runs a high-ropes course within the park, a short walk from the abbey. The ornamental gardens sit below the hill.

Tables, Tombs and Parish History

For eating, the Margam Deer Carvery serves a carvery seven days a week alongside mixed grill, roast beef, lasagne, burgers and meat-free dishes, with sundaes, cheesecakes and sticky toffee pudding after. It has a sunny beer garden with a toddler and play area, welcomes dogs, and is ranked fourth of the 232 restaurants in Neath Port Talbot. The Twelve Knights, a Marston's pub, restaurant and inn on Margam Road, does a carvery and Sunday lunch and keeps cask ales. Its name comes from the twelve knights of Glamorgan.

The Abbey Church of St Mary the Virgin is the surviving nave of a Cistercian abbey founded in 1147, and it is the only Cistercian abbey nave in Wales still used as a parish church. Inside are Renaissance tombs of the Mansel family, William Morris stained glass, and a rare pipe organ by Augustus Gern. Ordinary Margam people were not admitted here; they worshipped up the hill at Capel Mair, whose fourteenth-century ruin you can still walk to for a view down over the castle, abbey and Orangery.

The Orangery, Castle and Mountain

The Orangery, built by Anthony Keck between 1787 and 1793 to house inherited citrus trees, runs to 327 feet, which makes it the longest orangery in Britain. Margam Castle above it is a Tudor-Gothic mansion by Thomas Hopper, built in the 1830s for Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot, whose family gave Port Talbot its name. In June 1898 a gamekeeper, Robert Scott, was shot and killed by a poacher on the grounds; he is now the castle's most-reported ghost, said to climb the main staircase, and the park runs paranormal ghost-hunt evenings on the strength of it.

The walking ranges from short waymarked park trails of two or three miles to the Mynydd Margam Circular, a little over seven miles with a good climb, and shorter scrambles up to the Iron Age hillfort at Mynydd-y-Castell. Port Talbot Parkway station is a short way north, and the M4 comes off at junction 39 right beside the park.

Industry Beyond the Deer Park

Behind the deer and the mountain, on the far skyline, sits one of Britain's largest steelworks. Both have been here a long time. The deer keep grazing regardless.