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Open verdict on journalist found dead at foot of cliffs

An open verdict has been recorded into the death of a regional newspaper journalist found dead at the foot of cliffs in Wales.

Robert House, (51), had worked at newspapers including Wales on Sunday, the South Wales Echo and the South Wales Evening Post.

The inquest into his January 2005 death heard how he had suffered with severe depression which he had called “screaming dog” ever since he was a child. The court heard that as a schoolboy he was referred to a psychiatrist after “planning his own death” in a shed.

He later confessed that when he was a news reporter covering inquests he would secretly plan his own death. His preferred method was to fall into the sea hoping his body would be taken away by the tide and that it would become a “big mystery”.

He confessed to his partner, Jane Thomas, that he had a spot on Rhossili Cliffs known as Castle Point or Castle Head where he planned to commit suicide “if he could not cope”. He had a painting of the spot in his house.

He was known to have financial, relationship and work problems, and found his work for a publishing company in the years leading up to his death stressful.

On a Friday night in January 2005, he drank double whiskies at a pub close to his home on the Gower.

He then went to the Worm’s Head Hotel, situated high above Rhossili Beach, where owner Veronica Short noticed he had difficulty in speaking.

He was last seen sitting in his car in the pub car park and the following day, on January 29, his body was found on the beach beneath 200ft cliffs. He died from multiple injuries consistent with a fall.

Tests found he had drunk around four times the legal limit for driving and the alcohol would have had a “significant” effect.

The inquest was told he had threatened suicide on several previous occasions and two months before he died he was charged with being drunk in charge of a vehicle at Rhossili car park.

No suicide note was found and coroner Philip Rogers said, “On very few occasions do I come across a person so literate and able to express himself as Mr House.

“But while there is evidence he had harboured suicidal thoughts for many years, I cannot be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt this was suicide because no one saw him after he left his car and because of the amount he had to drink.”