I know there is no place like this in or around my village, and as far as I know never was. The hill in the background doesn’t look like the landscape around here. It could conceivably be Mynydd Llwydiarth, but there are far too many houses on the slope. The National Library of Wales place names database, which lists not only towns, parishes and villages, but also individual farm and field names as shown on the mid-19th century tithe maps, doesn’t show any other Pentraeths in Wales. So where was this? I can’t resist a chance to follow up a historical mystery, so I bid for the postcard and won it for the princely sum of £1.

The first clues are on the back of the postcard. It was published by F. H. May, based on Ata Road in Pwllheli. It was postmarked somewhere in Caernarfonshire (part of the postmark is missing) in 1914 and was sent to a Mr Williams of 15 Hill Street, Gerlan, Bethesda. So it is probably somewhere in North Wales. The writer of the card, who signs off as “Nain”, says “This is my house O Alun how do you like it? Be good you shall come here for your holidays.”

I posted scans of the postcard on my Facebook and Twitter pages, hoping one of my followers might recognize it. Within a couple of hours the mystery of the location had been solved. On Twitter a couple of followers said “Nefyn”, and @dilgriff posted another postcard from F. H. May with a view across the bay at Nefyn, showing this building sitting on top of the cliff. This card seems to come from a page on the Nefyn.com website about the photographer, Fred May. One Facebook follower, Wendy Howard, jumped in with both feet and started researching the recipient family; see her comments on my original post.

So we now know where the mysterious Pentraeth Castle is, lets fill out some of the details about it and the people involved. First, when was it built? The old-maps.co.uk site allows you to explore old Ordnance Survey maps through the years, from the 1st edition in the late 1880s. The one from 1900 shows The Castle on top of the cliff overlooking the bay. In 1889 there was just a small building on this site, labelled “Cliff Cottage”. By 1918 the building was labelled “Castell Pentraeth”.

The census can also provide clues. In 1891 Cliff Cottage was still in existence. It was occupied by Griffith Griffiths, his wife Ellen and their 10 year old niece Jane Evans. Griffith was a settmaker, presumably working at the nearby Gwylwyr Quarry, which produced granite setts for paving roads. So that cottage must have been demolished and the castle built sometime between 1891 and 1900.

Cliff Castle appears in the 1901 census, occupied solely by Ellen Owens. She is listed as a servant and caretaker. In 1911 she is still there as its caretaker, the only occupant. Was this ostentatious castellated building a holiday home for some wealthy person, with Ellen looking after it when the owner was not in residence?

Most UK censuses only list the people who were actually living at a property on the day. But in 1911 they also produced summary books, which for each property gave just the name of the main occupier, along with the total number of males and females living there on census day. For The Castle the occupier is named as Corton Lord, with just a single female (Ellen) actually living there. He presumably is the owner and occasional resident.

So who was Corton Lord? An unusual name like that should be easy to track down, but searching the Ancestry and FamilySearch genealogy databases throws up very little. Beside the entry for the 1911 census, all Ancestry offers that seems to fit is a Frederick Corton Lord, born in 1860 in Salford, Lancashire, who is listed in one person’s family tree as the husband of Katherine Pollitt, with no further information. Searches of the newspaper databases at the National Library of Wales (available online free of charge to any resident of Wales who applies for a reader’s ticket) were also fruitless. The next step after these online resources would be to visit the Gwynedd Archives, but for the moment I’ll need to leave this question aside.

What about the postcard writer and recipient? My Facebook follower Wendy got to this before me and tracked down the 1911 census record for the family living at 15 Hill Street, Bethesda. They were William T Williams, a quarryman at Penrhyn Quarry, his wife Annie and their three children. One was six year old Owen Alun Williams, so this little boy was the “O Alun” to whom this postcard was sent from his Nain (grandmother). He would have been around nine years old when the postcard was sent and she is encouraging him to be good so that he can come visit. It sounds like his parents may have been ill, but are improving.

So was the caretaker of Pentraeth Castle, Ellen Owens, little Alun’s grandmother? Given that she is listed as single in both censuses, that doesn’t seem likely. She was 70 in 1911, so perhaps someone else had taken over as caretaker by 1914, when the card was posted. A concerted effort to track down the Williams family tree would probably help to identify her, but other tasks are calling me now, so I’ll need to set this aside for another time.

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After attending the “Spheres of Influence” day school last month, I decided to finally get myself a copy of this fine book. One of the authors, Richard Suggett of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, gave a talk about “Anglesey’s Plastai”, which whetted my appetite for more details on the ancient manor houses of the Island.

Co-authored with Margaret Dunn of Discovering Old Welsh Houses and published in 2014, this large format and well illustrated book charts the development of gentry houses in North-west Wales through the late medieval and early modern periods. In particular, it places these developments on a firm timeline by using dendrochronology (dating building timber through the growth rings in the wood) to accurately date the main structural elements.

The introduction begins by describing the usual medieval style of house throughout England and Wales, the hall-house. This type of house, built to impress, focused on the large main hall, open to the roof, which was held up by massive curved timber frames called crucks. An open hearth, with no chimney, stood in the middle of the hall, with the smoke rising up to the roof. Portions of the building were partitioned off at either end, with service rooms such as the buttery and pantry at one end, and the owner’s private chamber at the other.

In the first half of the 16th century this house plan began to be modified, initially with the building of fireplaces and chimneys. Existing hall-houses replaced the central hearth with a fireplace, while newly built houses began placing the fireplaces at the end of the hall. Since the chimney took the smoke directly outside the house, the need for a vast open space above the hall, where the smoke dissipated, was eliminated. This space was then used to create a second story of private chambers, increasing the living space.

All these modifications in the house plan lead to the classic Snowdonia-style house. These are two story dwellings with the distinctive feature of an asymmetrically-placed entranceway, positioned one third of the way along the side wall. This formed a passageway through the house to another door on the other side. On one side would be two service rooms, while on the other was the larger main hall, with a fireplace at the far end. Beside the fireplace was usually a spiral staircase leading up to the chambers on the first floor.

The rest of the book describes in detail a number of examples of these ancient houses from around North-west Wales. A brief history of each house is given, along with floor plan diagrams and photographs of key features. This publication being the result of the North-west Wales Dendrochronology Project, the results of the dating of various timbers of the house are also included. A description of the project and the list of the dozens of volunteers involved can be found at the end of the book.

Given the title of the book, it is unsurprising that most of the houses are in Snowdonia. However, two Anglesey houses are featured. I was fortunate to have visited one of them back in 2015 on an Anglesey Antiquarian Society field trip. Gronant was first built around 1540 by Robert Bulkeley, grandson of William Bulkeley, the first of the Bulkeleys to have come from Cheshire and settled in Beaumaris. It remained in the Bulkeley family until 1888.

The main part of the house follows the classic Snowdonia pattern, with a cross passage between the main hall on one side and a parlour on the other. Around 1618 a second house was built at a right angle to the original house, possibly to house one of the newly married sons of the Bulkeley family. In the 19th century the two houses were linked through an extension (to the right in the photo above).

The chamber above the hall in the original building gives us an idea of what it might have looked like at the height of its grandeur. Fragments of wall paintings can be seen, made up of colourful floral and geometric designs. Wall paintings like this would have been very common at the time, but few have survived the elements and centuries of redecoration.

If you find yourself fascinated by the history of these ancient houses, how they developed and were modified, then this is an excellent addition to your library. It is available at Amazon.co.uk or through your local bookshop and other retailers.

Warren Kovach is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

The post Book Review – Darganfod Tai Hanesyddol Eryri: Discovering the Historic Houses of Snowdonia appeared first on Anglesey History.

Yesterday’s ‘Spheres of Influence’ day-conference at Plas Cadnant had a wide ranging cast of characters: the prominent medieval founder of many of Anglesey’s landowning families, the incomer who took on the indigenous families, the bards and musicians who praised and entertained the gentry, the Spanish Armada, and even a very fluffy cat. Also included were tales of feuds and murders, but also of good deeds by social reformers.

Organised by the Institute for the Study of Welsh Estates (ISWE) at Bangor University, the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, and the Anglesey Antiquarian Society, the conference aimed to explore the impacts of the estates of Anglesey on the history, culture and landscapes of the island, from the medieval period to the present day. Very well attended, with a packed house of well over 100 history enthusiasts, it was an enjoyable and interesting day.

The day kicked off with a brief welcome from Shaun Evans of the ISWE, who introduced the first speaker, Prof. A.D. Carr. The esteemed author of the book Medieval Anglesey, the definitive study of the society and communities of Anglesey in the Middle Ages, Prof. Carr spoke on “The emergence of the gentry and estates of Anglesey in the later middle ages”. He began by pointing out that the early emergence of the estates on Anglesey was well documented through the Extents of Anglesey in 1284 and 1352. These documents recorded all the landowners on the island and how much was owed to them by their tenants, either in money or in goods such as grain, fish and hens, or time working for the lord. The 1284 extent was produced immediately after Edward I’s conquest of Wales and shows the land ownership patterns that existed during the Welsh Princes’ time. The more extensive and detailed Extent of 1352 can then be compared to the earlier one to see how land ownership patterns had changed through the decades.

During this time Welsh law decreed that inherited lands couldn’t be sold; they had to remain in the family. However, post-Conquest, clever ways were found around these rules, so the more ambitious landowners began accumulating larger estates, either through the land market or through marriage. Prof. Carr described the development of two estates, Penrhyn and Bulkeley. Although we now know the Penrhyn estate as the one outside Bangor, the family estate was first developed by Gwilym ap Gruffudd, a descendent of the founder of one of the first hereditary estates on Anglesey, Ednyfed Fychan (seneschal to the Prince of Wales, Llewelyn ap Iorwerth), through acquisition of lands in the northeast of Anglesey. His descendants, now known as the Griffith family, crossed the strait to develop the current Penrhyn estate. The development of the estate is well documented through extensive estate papers now held by Bangor University Archives.

The second example Prof. Carr gave was the development of the Bulkeley estate. The family were incomers, originating from near Cheadle in Cheshire. William Bulkeley arrived in Anglesey in the 15th century and married another descendent of Ednyfed Fychan. They first settled in the town house of Henblas in Beaumaris (which has now disappeared, but once stood near the church), but soon set about acquiring land in the area. Archives hold at least 45 deeds showing land purchases by Bulkeley between 1450 and 1490.

The next speaker was Prof. Robin Grove-White, speaking on “Politics and precedence: Power struggles and estate owners in late-Tudor Anglesey”. He began his talk with the shadow of the Spanish Armada hovering over Anglesey. In 1588 no one knew where the Spanish were planning on invading, so an edict went out to all coastal communities to prepare defences and imprison any possible collaborators. Richard Bulkeley, who had good connections with the Royal Court, was appointed deputy lieutenant of the island in charge of these defences. However, he was accused of using his position to favour his friends and punish his enemies. Feuds broke out with other Anglesey landowners, particularly Sir William Owen of Bodeon, near Bodorgan. The feud led to both men being imprisoned at different times, and with Bulkeley even being accused of murder. The feud was more or less over by 1590, with Bulkeley emerging as one of the most powerful men on the island. Of course struggles for power are part of the human condition, not just restricted to 16th century Anglesey, and Prof. Grove-White gave other examples of political wrangles through the ages.

After a few questions to the first two speakers, the doors opened for the first coffee break. In walked the next character, the very fluffy Plas Cadnant cat, who wandered around the room making sure everyone was welcome.

After the break Andrew Davidson from the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust spoke about church architecture and patronage of the local land owners. He noted that there was a hiatus in the building or extension of churches in northwest Wales during the late 13th and 14th centuries. This can be attributed to the turmoils of the Edwardian conquest of North Wales, the plague years, and the Glyndŵr revolt. After these were over, the political stability allowed the estate owners to look towards using their patronage to build and enhance the churches on their lands. Davidson gave many examples of churches in the area, particularly focusing on the development of Gothic style windows with tracery and trefoils, allowing much more light into the church. He also described some low relief slabs with images of saints, and the rare alabaster tombs such as the Gronw Fychan tomb at St. Gredifael church, Penmynydd, with stylistic elements that indicate the patronage of the local lords.

Next up was Richard Suggett of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Entitled “From Hafoty to Plas Coch: Anglesey’s Plastai”, he took us on a tour of his favourite country manor homes on Anglesey among the many he has visited through his career. He started off noting that, while Ireland is well known among country house enthusiasts for its fine manor houses, Anglesey is its equal for the quality and variety. “Why go to Ireland when you can go to Anglesey?” he quoted as the feeling among many of his colleagues. His tour started with Plas Llanidan,  which he visited in the 1980s when it was encased in scaffolding and being repaired, through Trefadog, Hafoty, the Tudor Rose shop and Henblas town house (now demolished) in Beaumaris, Gronant, Plas Coch, Henblas in Llangristiolus and Baron Hill.

Our kind host at Plas Cadnant, Anthony Tavernor, gave us a talk about the history of his house and estate. Originally a dairy farmer in the English midlands, his interests in history, gardens and landscapes led him to use the proceeds of a land sale to purchase the Plas Cadnant estate. The estate was founded in the 18th century by John Price, originally of Wern Farm, who was a land agent for the Marquess of Anglesey. His marriage to a local heiress and subsequent land purchases allowed him to develop the estate. His admiration of the work of the landscape designer Humphry Repton led him to begin laying out the grand landscape and gardens of the estate, which was continued by his descendants. The last Price died in 1928 and the estate was bought by the Fanning-Evans family. They modernised the house with electricity and central heating, but the family was often not there, and it was rented out. The estate declined and eventually was sold in 1993, with the new owner planning on developing an equestrian centre. However, these plans (which included demolishing many of the outbuildings) never came to fruition, and in 1996 it was sold to Tavernor. He took us on a photographic tour of his journey of clearing the overgrown walled garden and rescuing the outbuildings buried deep in the surrounding vegetation, creating the beautiful gardens and woodland walks that we can now enjoy.

After lunch Ann Parry Owen, of the Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth, talked to us about “Guto’r Glyn (c.1412-93) and bardic patronage in Anglesey”. The tradition of bardic poetry praising the patrons of the bards thrived in the 12th through 15th centuries. Owen pointed out that in England estate owners would display maps of their estates on the wall to impress their visitors, but in Wales the lords would have their bards recite their verses describing the estate. By the 15th century the bards would also be praising the quality of the food on their patrons’ tables and describing their impressive furniture and decorations in detail. She then went on to talk about the great bard Guto’r Glyn, who travelled all over Wales, but particularly wrote warmly about Anglesey, and spent much time here. She also gave us a tour of the gutorglyn.net web site that she and her colleagues have put together, which brings together all his poems, their translations, and other details about his work and life.

A musical interlude followed as Stephen Rees, of the ISWE in Bangor, was joined by Huw Roberts, both with fiddles, to play a song that was found in the journals of Richard Morris, one of the famous 18th century Morris brothers of Anglesey. In between performing some other 18th century songs, Rees described how many old Welsh folk tunes were preserved in manuscripts of the time.

Richard Morris recorded the words of many songs, but the famous diarist William Bulkeley of Brynddu, a great music enthusiast, also recorded the tunes, as shown in the page shown here from Bangor University’s website of his diaries. However, the greatest source of 18th century folk tunes is the manuscript by Morris Edwards, which contained a large number of variations on old tunes, oral tradition and dance tunes of the time, and some songs that are very likely to be his own compositions. Little is known of him, but his manuscript preserves a great tradition of Welsh folks tunes.

Dinah Evans, of the Bangor University history department, next took the stage to tell us about “Cecilia Constance Irby, Lady Boston”. Evans has been interested in looking at the experiences of women in Wales from various social classes during World War I. One aristocratic woman with an interesting story and an Anglesey connection was Cecilia Constance Irby. She married George Florance Irby, 6th Baron Boston, who had an Anglesey seat at Plas Lligwy, near Moelfre. Evans discovered that during the war Cecilia was working as a nurse for the Canadian Red Cross military hospital on the Astor family’s Clivedon estate in Buckinghamshire. Digging into her life further, she discovered an upper class woman who showed great concern for the plight of the working classes, and was involved in many philanthropic organizations, such as the Welsh Industries Committee, which aimed to develop industries in Wales to provide work for Welsh workers who otherwise might head to the big cities in England. She also wrote a prize-winning essay for the Anglesey Eisteddfod titled “Anglesey Industries”, an extensive and well researched academic work describing all aspects of the island, including agriculture, geology and natural resources.

To round off the day, George Meyrick, owner of the Bodorgan estate and new chancellor of Bangor University, gave us a unique insight on “Inheriting Bodorgan: the influences of the past on the present”. He spoke of the long history of the family and estate, and of the many tasks the current owner/custodian of the land had, such as managing the estate and agricultural holdings, attending to property ownership and access rights issues, and pursuing new ventures to ensure the survival of the estate. He noted that many of the Welsh gentry are “now nearly extinct”, so as one of the remaining estate owning families he is pursuing a strategy of diversifying the estate and looking after its natural environment.

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Yesterday I went from Anglesey to Bodelwyddan Castle in Denbighshire. Nothing unusual there; I often drive by it, promising myself that I will one day stop to have a closer look, but never managing it. So, I made a special trip out there. As I toured around and looked at the story of its various owners I discovered that the connections between Anglesey and Bodelwyddan run through its history.

The original manor house at Bodelwyddan came about because of an eviction. A man with the long genealogical name of Thomas ap Wmffre ap Thomas ap Rhys ap Benet ap Ieuan ap Deikws ap Ieuan Ddu ap Trahaiarn was the owner of Henllys, near Beaumaris. But, Edward IV decided that it was ideal for his Deputy Governor of Beaumaris Castle, so poor Thomas was dispossessed of it. He was given the land at Bodelwyddan instead, where he built a manor house around 1460. He also decided at the time to take the family surname of Humphreys (from his father’s name, Wmffre).

The house and lands remained with the Humphreys family for 230 years until it was purchased by Sir William Williams, who was Speaker in the House of Commons from 1680–1681. Sir William was also an Anglesey boy, son of Hugh Williams, rector of Llantrisant and Llanrhuddlad parish. A fine memorial to Hugh can be found in his old parish church of Llantrisant.

William became a lawyer, after attending Jesus College, Oxford, and Gray’s Inn. He later entered politics, become MP, first for Chester, then Beaumaris. He purchased Bodelwyddan for the use of his son, but it was never the family’s main residence until Sir William’s great-great grandson John was made a baronet in 1798.

He decided that the simple 15th century manor house wasn’t fitting for a man of his stature, and commenced extending and altering the building in the Greek Revival style. His son continued the work, adding Gothic Style towers to give it its current castle-like appearance. Throughout the house the family’s crest of the cross foxes appears in tiles, ceiling bosses and stained glass windows. The same crest can be seen in their ancestor Rev. Hugh’s memorial at Llantrisant Church (see picture above).

Sir John, the 1st Baronet of Bodelwyddan, also has two other Anglesey connections. He married Margaret Williams, the heiress of the Ty Fry estate near Pentraeth. His parents had given him land near Beaumaris, which was passed on to his son, Sir John Hay Williams. As a gift to his wife, Lady Sarah, he began building a fairy-tale style castle overlooking the Menai Strait. This building is now the luxury hotel, Chateau Rhianfa, situated on the Menai Bridge to Beaumaris road.

During the First World War the house was taken over to be a recuperation hospital for wounded soldiers, associated with the nearby Kinmel training camp. After that it was leased to Lowther College girl’s school, until 1982. It was then bought by Clwyd County Council to develop as a visitor attraction, with part of the site converted to a luxury hotel. Until recently it served as home to a large number of paintings from the National Portrait Gallery, but now the walls are full of the Bodelwyddan Castle Trust’s own collections of Welsh art, including an excellent Snowdonia landscape by another Anglesey boy, Kyffin Williams.

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One of my favourite nearby places for a short walk is Cors Bodeilio. This National Nature Reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest lies between Pentraeth and Talwrn. It is a nationally important nature site as it is an uncommon lime-rich fenland supporting rare plant life, including a variety of sedges, rushes and reeds, as well as a number of orchid species. The pools contain medicinal leeches, and many species of rare flies, aquatic beetles and moths make their home throughout the area. It is also the home of some Welsh Mountain ponies, whose grazing helps maintain the fenland.

The boardwalk through the marsh eventually takes you to a slightly raised and dry spot. Disappearing into the trees at the edge of a meadow is a long abandoned house. It is named on the maps as Ynys. Welsh for “island”, Ynys might seem an odd name for a house, but closer inspection of the maps and surrounding topography shows that it is indeed an island of dry land in the middle of marshes.

The house and surrounding nature reserve are now owned by Natural Resources Wales, but the mid 19th century tithe maps that have been digitised by the Cynefin project show that this, and much of the land around it, was ultimately owned by the Right Honourable Lord Vivian of the Plas Gwyn estate in Pentraeth. It was leased to Evan Rice Thomas as part of the nearby Bodeilio estate. The parcel of land called Ynys is listed in the 1841 tithe apportionments books as just 9 acres of pasture land, with no hint of there being a house, and indeed no house is shown on the map itself.

Also, Ynys does not appear in 1841 or 1851 censuses, but it is listed in 1861, suggesting it was built sometime in the 1850s. The first record of it is in August 1853, when labourer Hugh Williams, who was living at Ynys, married Margaret Griffith. They had a daughter there, Elizabeth, a few months later. By 1861 they had moved to another property in Talwrn

The tenants of Ynys in 1861 are Thomas Hughes and his family, wife Jane and sons William and Owen. As might be expected in a small cottage in the middle of pastures and marshlands, Thomas was an agricultural labourer, as was his 14 year old son William. Eight year old Owen was not yet old enough to be working and was listed as a scholar, so was attending school.

In the 1871 census the house name Ynys isn’t found in this part of the Llanddyfnan parish. But, among the houses nearby to Ynys is one called “California”, occupied by one Thomas Hughes. The name California doesn’t appear in any other censuses in this area. For some reason, Thomas decided to start calling the house California instead.

This time Thomas is listed as widowed, a farmer of 8 acres and a labourer, and living with his 13 year old son John and a servant named Elizabeth Owen. In 1874 he married Elizabeth, who was a young 23 to his 56 years. By the 1881 census they had produced five children aged 1-9. He had also gone back to calling the house Ynys.

By 1891 the tenancy of Ynys had changed hands to William Williams, and he was living there with his wife Ann and daughter Margaret, who was a domestic servant. William was listed as a labourer in this census, but in the previous census in 1881, when he was living at nearby Heulog, he was a shoemaker. He again gave his occupation as shoemaker in 1901, when he is listed as living with his wife Ann and son William.

Curiously, his son William is listed as a copper miner. Copper mining on Anglesey usually means Parys Mountain, but that is a long way from Ynys, probably about a four hour walk. Also, by this time the copper there was almost worked out, and there were just 141 copper miners, down from thousands at its height. As he was still single at the age of 33, perhaps he usually lived near the mine, but happened to be at home visiting his parents on census day.

The elder William died in August 1906 and his wife Ann a few months later, in May 1907. She died at Cerrigceinwen, perhaps at the house of one of their children. The two of them lie together in the churchyard in Llanddyfnan. Their son William had married Catherine shortly after the 1901 census and was living in nearby Marian Bach, working as a miner, when their eldest son William David Williams was born. The family moved to Merthyr Vale, Glamorgan for a couple of years, but returned to Ynys around the time of his father’s death, where their daughter Blodwen was born. They moved into Talwrn village sometime before 1911.

The house Ynys is not listed in the 1911 census. Perhaps it was unoccupied then, although usually even unoccupied houses will be listed in the census. Maybe the census-taker missed this remote house on his route through the parish. But, in 1921 it does appear to be in use again; a house called ‘Rynys was occupied by Owen Williams, a farm labourer working for the Bodeilio estate and his wife Lizzie. Their daughter Kitty was there with her husband George Smith, a Liverpudlian watchmaker who was working in Llangefni. Owen is the same age as William and Ann WIlliams’ son Owen, who was living with them are Heulog in 1871 and 1881, but in the absence of a marriage record for Owen and Lizzie it’s hard to be sure.

As the house disappears into the vegetation, its abandonment becomes poignant. What was it like in the late 19th century when occupied by the Hughes and Williams families? Did Thomas’ five children play games in the meadow and go searching for frogs in the surrounding bogs? My favourite time to visit is in the autumn, when the plum trees behind the house are bearing delicious fruit. Perhaps these were planted by Thomas Hughes. Did they also have a garden patch somewhere around the house? In the absence of a time machine I can only guess.

This blog was first published in 2016 and modified in June 2023 and November 2024 to add some more information uncovered in subsequent research.

The post History of the House in the Marsh appeared first on Anglesey History.

It’s bigger on the inside than it appears from outside, and it lets you travel back in time, like Dr. Who’s Tardis. That was my first thought when I ducked through the low entrance into the high-ceilinged space of the reconstructed Bryn Eryr roundhouses at St. Fagans open air history museum.

I’ve been wanting to visit St. Fagans for quite a while, and I finally managed to extend a trip south to spend the day there. It is a wonderful place for anyone with an interest in the past. You can wander through historic buildings, brought here and rebuilt from all over Wales, experiencing the way people lived, worked and worshipped through time.

The most recently rebuilt house is also the oldest. Bryn Eryr is a reconstruction of what archaeologists think an Iron Age house would have looked like. It is based on the excavation of a farmstead on Anglesey, at Bryn Eryr farm, which lies halfway between Menai Bridge and Pentraeth, just off the A5025. Between 1985 and 1987 the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust excavated a site on the farm where early archaeologists had noted the faint rectangular outline of an enclosure wall and found pieces of Roman pottery in what was otherwise a flat and unremarkable field.

The excavation revealed the walls of two roundhouses, built right next to each other, as well as pits, post holes, grinding stones and animal bones. It appears that the site initially had one roundhouse, built in the Earlier Iron Age (about 800-400 BC), with the walls made of clay quarried from the pits. It was partially enclosed by a wooden fence.

A second phase of building occurred in the Middle Iron Age (400-100 BC), when the defensive rectangular bank and ditch was built around the settlement. A second somewhat smaller roundhouse was built right next to the original one, most likely with a passage between them, much as a modern bungalow might have an extension built to accommodate a growing family.

The reconstruction at St. Fagans represents the houses as they were during this period. Excavations of the original site also uncovered a third roundhouse, somewhat separate from the other two, where numerous pieces of Roman pottery were found. These have been dated to the 2nd-4th century AD, thus showing that this site was occupied for over 1000 years.

Although archaeological excavation can tell you about the walls of these ancient houses, it doesn’t tell you much about how the roof was built, nor how it was furnished. Particularly, there was much puzzlement about how the roof was constructed once the second roundhouse had been added.

A single round house would have a conical roof, but what about two? Did it have some type of roof that spanned both circular areas? Or did it just have two conical roofs next to each other? In the later case there would be a risk of rainwater draining off both roofs between the two houses, which could water-log that area and damage the walls. In the end it was decided to reconstruct this with two conical roofs with a lower ridged roof over the passageway between the two.

The next question was what to use to do the thatching and how to construct it. Some earlier roundhouse reconstructions have used straw from the same varieties of wheat that are used today by thatchers. But these varieties didn’t exist back in the Iron Age, so wouldn’t be authentic. The original excavation of the site turned up spelt as the main grain used by the occupants, so it makes sense that the straw from that would have been used for the thatch. A field near St. Fagans was planted with spelt, which was then used to thatch the houses.

Once the roofing was complete the interior needed to be fitted out to show how it might have appeared when occupied. This again involves a lot of conjecture, as the Bryn Eryr archaeological excavation didn’t give much evidence as to what the furniture and contents might have looked like. However, artefacts from other similar aged sites from elsewhere around Wales and Britain, many of which are housed in the National Museum of Wales collections, can act as templates for producing replicas to be displayed in the roundhouses.

The centrepiece of the smaller roundhouse is the fireplace with a fine bronze cauldron hanging over it. It is similar to one found at Llyn Cerrig Bach, near Valley on Anglesey and was made by Hector Cole.

The shelves along the walls contain wood bowls, modelled on ones found in Wales and Somerset and made by Robin Wood, plus various tools that have been found in Iron Age and Roman era sites in North Wales and produced by the St. Fagans blacksmith, Andrew Murphy. Baskets, leather bags and even a child’s doll join these objects.

St Fagan’s previously had a Celtic Village, built in the 1990s, that Bryn Eryr has replaced. An excellent article about lessons learned from that exhibition and how that informed the decisions about how to reconstruct Bryn Eryr can be found at the Exarc (Experimental Archaeology) Journal site.

In addition to this new feature, St. Fagan’s has an ambitious building program going on, with not one but two new visitor centres being erected. Another new feature being developed is Llys Llywelyn, a medieval Prince’s court, based on Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and Llywelyn ap Grufydd’s court at Llys Rhosyr, near Newborough, Anglesey. I was only able to get a tantalising glimpse of it through the construction site fences, but I look forward to seeing it when I next visit St. Fagans.

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We visited Bodior House near Rhoscolyn on a blustery, soft rain type of day. We were glad to get in out of the rain, into the main sitting room, where our guides Robin Grove-White and Andrew Davidson introduced us to the house.

This is a gentry house, first built in the 16th century. A tablet over one of the windows bears the date 1529, and another below that window has the initials J.O.O., for the estate owner John Owen. The Owen family were descendants of a Welsh clan leader, Llywelyn Aurdorchog, who was from Denbighshire but also owned land around Rhoscolyn. The house and estate passed down through the family, often through the female line, who married other local landowners, with the result that land holdings were combined. The estate eventually passed to the Lewis family of Plas Llanfigael, and a later marriage to the Hampton family of Henllys, near Beaumaris, resulted in the owners being known as the Hampton-Lewis family. It is now owned by the Bulmer family, of cider-making fame, who use it as a summer retreat.

Although built in the 16th century, the house has been modified and extended many times through the centuries. It would have originally consisted of the main sitting room, just inside the main entrance, with a room on either side, and additional rooms on the story above. It has been extended a couple of times at one end with a service wing with kitchen and utilities rooms, plus numerous bedrooms and baths.The last remodelling took place in 1848 (commemorated by another dated plaque above the main entrance), so the house retains its 19th century character, including the carved main staircase in the sitting room, and the early Victorian fire surrounds in many of the bedrooms, some decorated with enamelled slate.

After the brief introduction by Robin and Andrew the group were given free rein to explore the house, with no areas off limits, before regrouping in the sitting room to discuss the features of interest that were spotted. We looked for evidence of the differing periods of extension and remodelling, as shown by variations in the timber & stone flooring and styles of doorways and windows. There were some interesting and intricately carved furnishings and some period pieces, like the wind-up gramophone.

A particularly fun aspect of the exploration was looking for evidence of the vocation of the current owners. Books about the Bulmer family and cider-making were in many rooms, apple-shaped cutting boards were in the kitchen alongside bottles of Bulmer’s cider, ready for the next cider casserole, and crates marked “Bulmer’s Hereford” were in some of the unused rooms. The many objects on shelves and walls throughout the house included an inordinate number of green woodpecker items: paintings, carved wooden figures and taxidermy specimens. It seemed curious until I remembered that the green woodpecker was the symbol of Bulmer’s Woodpecker Cider!

After the debriefing sessions some of us went on to explore a nearby tidal mill, the subject of my next blog.

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