Our visit on the way back from Cardiff was to Tredegar House, a National Trust property located near to Newport. The current property dates to the 1670s, although there are some Tudor bits still standing, paid for by the wealthy Morgan family. The Morgan family began as landowners and managed to also benefit from the industrial revolution and got themselves involved in politics as well.
The property ceased to be used as a family mansion in the early 1950s, when it became a Catholic girls school. A new school was built in the 1970s, so Newport Council ended up buying it, hence the reference to the most expensive council house in Britain. By 2012, this house was a little bit of a faff for the council, so a decision was made to lease the property to the National Trust.
I thought that the layout was a bit bodged (by that I mean that we went the wrong way) and so we missed some of the route, but here’s the orangery.
These might look like rickety pipes, but they’re the remains of hothouses which once stood here.
A tree. This isn’t a blog about trees though, so I’ll limited myself to that description.
This is the side of the house, and that large section to the right is the former Tudor house owned by John Morgan that never quite got demolished.
The formal gardens.