Welsh Journals

A HISTORY OF TAN-Y-BWLCH ESTATE, ABERYSTWYTH Tan-y-bwlch Mansion, although today very much obscured by its surrounding trees, occupies a commanding position overlooking the broad flats through which the Ystwyth river meanders towards the sea. Immediately below the house is a pond, once a public watering place on the way to the beach. Its north-east facing outlook surveys the coast and the shipping approaching Aberystwyth harbour from the south. The relative sunlessness of this position was formerly somewhat relieved by the clearings or 'lights'which descended the wooded slopes behind the Mansion. A short distance to the east, and nicely framed by the view from the front door, is the mounded hilltop which still bears traces of the ring and bailey castle which was built by Gilbert Fitzrichard de Clare in the eleventh century. The house has been much enlarged in the 1890s, and since the sale of the estate in 1936 has served a series of institutional uses: hospital, hos- tel for the Welsh College of Librarianship, Coleg Ceredigion Catering College, before returning, in 1998 to private ownership. Many people claim at least a fleeting occupancy of the house, and some have remarked upon the evidence of quality in its interior features: the Greek revival mouldings on ceilings and cornices, the stone cantilevered stair top lit by a glazed octago- nal lantern, the Greek Doric pillars in the hall. These features have resulted in the house being listed Grade II by CADW in 1998. Many others, how- ever, have been put off by the grey Victorian rock-dressed stone exterior, and dismissed the house as a hideous hulk. The purpose of this article is to pull together the strands of history of this small estate, a task which culminated in a lecture to the Ceredigion Antiquarians on 22 May 1999. As a result of that lecture, it was revealed that there had remained in the National Library of Wales for some 30 years a large collection of documents relating to the late nineteenth-century enlargement and alteration of the house. This archive had been deposited in 1966 and 1969 by Dafydd Morris Jones, whose late father practiced as Architect and Surveyor in Aberystwyth from 1924-1950. In 1938 Mr D. T. Jones, had been engaged by Mr W. H. Craven, first purchaser of the Tan-y-bwlch estate, to draw plans relating to the old house, the extension wing, and parts of the estate, kennels, stables, woodland and fields. Mr D. T. Jones had also worked in 1934 for the former owner, Lord Ystwyth, and on 19 January 1938, he received settlement of an outstanding bill of £ 3 3s. As a small creditor of the now bankrupt estate, he was fortunate to be paid