In the early hours of Monday July 14th 2025, the unthinkable happened. One of Rhossili’s cultural landmarks, the Worm’s Head Hotel – in the Conservation Area of Rhossili village – was destroyed by fire. In this article, we look back at some of its history.
Worm’s Head Hotel History
There are some excellent sources of information ‘out there’ about Worm’s Head Hotel, not the least the recollections of our ‘golden oldies’ of Roger Button, Pauline Bevan and former resident Mair Williams, and the treasure trove of cuttings held by Nicola Rees. Recollections can vary and there are still gaps, so let us know if you can help fill them!
The hotel began as a row of small terraced cottages in the 1800s, likely 1840. These were developed in stages to become a single cottage – ‘Worm’s Head Cottage’ (Fig 1). By the latter half of the 19th century, the large cottage had become an eight-bedroomed guest house run by Mr & Mrs William Richards. We know that Mrs Richards was advertising rooms for visitors in 1893.
Tourism had already begun in Swansea and Gower in the 1800s, doubtless helped by the opening of Swansea High Street station on June 19th 1850, with the arrival of the railway at Swansea. This linked Swansea directly to Gloucester, London, and the wider Great Western Railway network. By 1897, guests at Worm’s Head Cottage included families from Swansea, Chepstow, and even London, showing its early popularity as a tourist destination. In the late 1890s, the Cunnington family from Devizes were on a walking tour from Post Eynon to Rhossili. They fell in love with Rhossili and booked rooms at Worm’s Head Cottage for the following year. Will Cunnington later complained that “there was an earth closet in the garden; windows which opened but a couple of inches; you went to bed by candlelight; you washed, if at all, in cold water; and the beds were hard as granite.”
We know that the Richards family were still at the Cottage in December 1910, as William Richards was recorded as having sheltered Captain Layec of the French schooner Leonie after it was wrecked near Rhossili. Captain Layec was found unconscious after he had reached the shore and was looked after at the cottage for a week until he was strong enough to travel to Swansea.
A supplement to The Gower Church Magazine notes that in 1916, Robert G Beynon aged 18, was serving as a Gunner in the British Armed Forces during the First World War. He is listed as a resident of Worm’s Head Cottage. We don’t know if he was there as a paying guest or if, by then, the owners had changed hands and Robert was part of the new family who took over from the Richards. Local people are of the view that there was a change of hands before George Thomas (with his wife Alice, née Morgan) took over what had now become the ‘Wormshead Cottage Private Hotel’. We know that he was the owner of the hotel in January 1924 from a legal Indenture drawn up in which he was listed as a Trustee. An advert for the hotel from 1934 (Fig. 2) also named him as Resident Proprietor and boasted that the hotel had ‘every convenience,’ and 20 bedrooms. The accompanying image shows two beautiful bay windows at the pine end of the building. We know that George lived there for at least 22 years – and it is said that he used to keep mink out in the back garden for their fur at one time!
George was one of 11 siblings, six of whom emigrated, four to Australia in the early 1920s. Arthur Richards served in the army there in both world wars. Cyril Jones reveals that George was more commonly known as Dodi and that he played the organ and sang in church. One of his sisters was a teacher at Rhossili School – Miss Ada Thomas (according to Cyril Jones, she had a ‘forceful style’). She went on to become headmistress. George also owned Rhossili Farmhouse and Church Park and during the War had evacuees at his other house in the village – the guest house Broad Park. His brother Sid owned Glebe Farm and the famous Thomas’s Tea Rooms (later to become part of The View).
Mair Williams (née James) was born in the hotel in 1938. Her parents, Sid and Grace James, were living at Rhossili Farmhouse as Sid was the farm manager. Grace worked in the hotel as cook and waitress – and happened to be working in the hotel the day Mair was born. Mair says that the hotel was then known as the Worm’s Head Cottage Hotel, so it had clearly shifted from a private hotel to being a commercial hospitality venue. She and her parents moved from the farmhouse 1943 into Cartref, one of two agricultural cottages in School Lane (the other cottage was Morawel). Mair attended Rhossili School, just a little further up the lane and also joined the local Girl Guides. Grace was one of the Sunday School teachers, along with Roger Button’s mother. The family moved out of Rhossili when Mair was 12, to a smallholding in Overton.
Mair recalls her time in Rhossili fondly and makes frequent return visits. She spoke about the kitchen and “the small room where the boys ate” and “the beautiful big lounge in the hotel, with the two big bay windows overlooking a lovely lawn, with views towards the Worm’s Head.” She has a photo of her mother sitting in the garden by the bay windows with two other staff members (Fig 3.) Mair thinks she recalls a large ‘temporary’ structure on the right-hand side of the hotel which served as a cinema once a week (Fig 4). Certainly by the late 1940s, the village hall at Middleton was hosting a mid-week film night.
George sold Worm’s Head Cottage Hotel to Guido Heller and his wife Marjorie in 1946 and George himself moved to Church Park. Guido employed a hotel manager and supervisor, a Mrs Burton, along with her daughter Pippa. Customers sometimes had mixed experiences and a local resident recalls visiting the hotel one evening with his wife soon after moving into the area and being taken aback when at 9pm, Guido started stacking all the chairs around them!
For a long time, the hotel was strictly residents only and although it boasted two television sets in the early 1950s, it did not have a licence to serve alcohol. (The television sets were stolen days before the 1953 coronation, a heinous crime that rocked the village.) In fact, the hotel was not granted a public licence until 1970.
Dylan Thomas was probably the most famous person to be affected by the lack of licensed premises. He visited Rhossili throughout his life with friends, with his wife Caitlin, and his close friend Vernon Watkins. In 1953, just before his final trip to America, he visited old school friend – Guido Heller. Dylan toyed with the possibility of moving to Rhossili (and to buy the Old Rectory) but swiftly dropped the idea when Guido explained that there was not a pub within striking distance!
The hotel underwent many ‘improvements’, from the development of the sloping front porch in the 1930s (Fig 5), to a rather ugly flat roof version of this in the later 1930s (Fig 6). One bay window is still visible on the left-hand side of the pine end in a photograph from the 1960s, but this had disappeared after extensive development in 1977, with a new bar and bedroom extension.
Guido died in June 1989 aged 76 and Marjorie died just 5 days later at the age of 81. Their gravestone can be seen in St Mary’s churchyard (Fig 7). Mrs Burton and Pippa were still in residence and it’s thought that they continued to manage the hotel for a while after the deaths of the Hellers. It’s not clear if that continued up until the big changed for the hotel.
On 3rd November 1992, the hotel was up for sale again by private auction. According to the Estate Agent’s leaflet (JNO Oliver Watkins), it then had “19 letting bedrooms, 5 with en-suite” as well as 7 other bedrooms used for staff and proprietor. They also note that the premises had a large car park at the rear and a Justices “Full On” licence as well as a Supper Hour Certificate (Fig 8).
It’s not clear who bought the hotel (thought to be for £200,000) but it is thought it might have been by a Swansea- based businessman who employed management staff to run it. Chef and food writer Colin Pressdee possibly had some involvement with the hotel, but our searches have not revealed any evidence of it!
What we do know is that Julian, Veronica and Adrian Short bought the Worm’s Head Hotel in 2001. In another article, Adrian Short shares his experiences of the devastating night in 2025 when the hotel was destroyed by fire and reminisces about how his family came to buy the Worm’s Head Hotel and looking forward to its restoration.
Sources
History Points – The Worm’s Head Hotel, Rhossili https://historypoints.org/index.php?page=the-worm-s-head-hotel-rhossili
Cyril Jones Musings of a Middleton Boy. 2007 iUniverse Books
Dylan Thomas Centre (www.dylanthomas.com/dylan-thomas-trails/mumbles-gower/rhossili/)
Jack Bevan Reminiscences of Pre War Gower. 2008 Gomer Press
Leonard Beynon Rhossili: The land, landscape and people. 2008 West Glamorgan Archive Service
The Swansea History Society: Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/580254599178060)
With special thanks to Nicola Rees, Mair Williams and Jeff Stewart.