Heritage of Wales
Episode Five
Episode Five looks at a seventeenth-century mansion that has disappeared at Llandeilo, investigates how Wales was defended against a potential Nazi invasion and searches for a lost castle of the Welsh princes.
You can see the episode on the BBC website .
Newton House
Royal Commission investigator Richard Suggett meets Stephanie Evans of the National Trust to find out about the older mansion encased within the Victorian Newton House and test the authenticity of some historic paintings.
Newton House was thoroughly rebuilt in Victorian baronial style in 1856, but it contains surviving features from the seventeenth century. The double-pile plan, with a spine wall between entrance hall and great stair is characteristic of the Restoration and some spectacular plaster ceilings survive. The great stair is the major architectural feature of the house, rising through three storeys with bulbous balusters, a continuous, broad handrail, thick newel-posts, and carved pendants and finials. Four seventeenth-century paintings survive depicting the house, outbuilding and parkland, and analysis shows that they are reasonably accurate representations. The National Trust and the Royal Commission decided that the only certain way to establish the date of the house was through tree-ring dating. A good sample with complete sapwood from the oak roof-trusses gave a felling date of the summer of 1664. This shows that, even if Newton House was started by Edward Rice, who has traditionally been though to have built it, it can only have been completed by his brother Walter, who inherited the estate in 1664 and lived for another ten years. Recently discovered documents reveal that Walter Rice died in debt owing at least £3,500; his fortune had presumably been squandered on building Newton House.
Look up Newton House on Coflein .
Read more about the early modern period .
Visit Newton House and Dinefwr Park .
World War Two defences
Deanna Groom and Medwyn Parry of the Royal Commission seek out the evidence for how Wales would have fought back against a Nazi invasion from the sea during World War Two.
As the Second World War began the government focused much of its attention on defending the south-east coast of England. However, there was also a danger of invasion from the Irish Republic. If the Nazis used Ireland as a staging point they would require port facilities for unloading troops and supplies. Their prime targets would be the deepwater harbours at Holyhead and Milford Haven. The approaches to the harbour at Holyhead were protected by coastal gun batteries, anti-aircraft guns and minefields. An interlocking system of three concentric rings of machine gun posts and pillboxes was improvised to surround the harbour. The inner ring concentrated on the harbour and nearby beaches while a secondary line guarded the outskirts of the town. The defences of the outer ring faced away from the harbour to counter any outflanking manoeuvre. The majority of the Holyhead pillboxes were of a basic, cylindrical design. The core of the structures was built in reinforced concrete but a shortage of building supplies meant that the outer faces were finished with local rubble. Had the Nazis crossed the Menai, the mountainous terrain of north Wales the mountain passes were defended by pillboxes, tank traps, spigot mortars, petroleum flame positions and roadblocks. Many of these survive today and around two hundred pill boxes are listed in the Commission’s online database, Coflein.
Look up pill boxes on Coflein .
Aber Iâ
Royal Commission investigator Louise Barker accepts a challenge from Professor Beverley Smith to try to find a lost medieval castle amid the gardens of Portmeirion.
Wales is famous for castles, but many of the most prominent today are those of the Anglo-Norman conquerors rather than the Welsh princes. Some of the earlier Welsh castles remain to be identified and investigated. Gerald of Wales described the castle of Deudraeth, site on an estuary, around in 1188. This was one of a small number of stone castles built in Gwynedd at the end of the twelfth century. It was probably at Aber Iâ in Merioneth, now better known by the name that it was given by Clough Williams-Ellis – Portmeirion. Clough built the resort between 1925 and the 1970s as a personal architectural exercise. It included miniatures of Classical mansions, salvaged architectural items like the late-eighteenth-century loggia and focal features like the village’s bronze sculpture of Atlas. Stone was removed from the castle ruins in the past, but parts of the walls and a rock-cut ditch appear to survive on top of a high cliff, in a strong defensive position. Clough created a parapet here to enjoy the view in 1963.
Look up Castell Aber Iâ on Coflein.
Look up other castles on Coflein .
Visit Portmeirion .
Visit castles in the care of Cadw .