Plas Newydd, Llangollen
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Plas Newydd (English pronunciation: /plas no-with/) ("new hall" or "new home") is a historic house in the town of Llangollen, Denbighshire, Wales, and was the home of the Ladies of Llangollen, Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, for nearly 50 years. Today, it is run as a museum by Denbighshire County Council.
History
Plas Newydd is notable as the home where two Irish ladies, Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, eloped and set up house together in the late eighteenth century, to the scandal of the world. Plas Newydd was originally a five-roomed stone cottage, but over the years it was enlarged to include many Gothic features. Although originally ostracised by their families, the ladies and their strange life style gradually became accepted and their home was visited my many famous people including Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Caroline Lamb and Sir Walter Scott, Duke of Wellington and the industrialist Josiah Wedgwood.[1]
They also expanded and improved the gardens, adding many Gothic features such as a "ruined" archway, rustic bridges over rushing torrents and a temple that included a font removed from the ruined Valle Crucis Abbey. Ornate greenhouses grew exotic fruit and poetic notices were attached to trees.[1]
After their deaths in 1829 and 1831, the property passed through various hands and saw a number of changes. General John Yorke added the black and white features on the exterior and filled the interior with oddities from around the world. In 1932 the house was acquired by Llangollen Urban District Council and is now a museum.[1]
Architecture
The original cottage was expanded by the Ladies, and then again by subsequent owners in the 19th century. It is now returned to essentially the final structure left by the Ladies. Its most unusual feature is the profusion of pieces of reclaimed oak carvings collected by the Ladies and set in patchwork-style over much of the wall areas of the house. These came from broken-up furniture or church fittings and range in date from the medieval to the Baroque, but with folk and "Jacobean" vernacular styles of shallow carved decoration predominating, as well as Gothic-style black-and-white trim and carvings. The ladies also added much stained glass.[1]
Hauntings
Plas Newydd is said to be haunted by former owners, the Ladies of Llangollen; Eleanor and Sarah and has been featured on UK's Most Haunted.[2] Visitors have reported seeing the ladies apparitions in the library, their favorite room, among other rooms in the house, including their master bedroom. There have also been reports of people seeing and hearing footsteps of the spirit of an old woman walking around upstairs, and young boy seen in the drawing room, and in the state guest bedroom, as well as an old malevolent military man who lived here in the mid-1800s after the Ladies deaths.[3]
In the late-1800s, a woman named Mary Gordon is said to have seen both Ladies' apparitions while visiting at Plas Neywedd. On her second visit, she saw the Ladies' spirits in the library, their favorite room. This paranormal encounter inspired her to write about their lives in a "thinly-veiled biographical novel" titled, Chase of the Wild Goose, originally published in 1936.[4]
In popular culture
- The house was used in a 1987 episode of the TV series Treasure Hunt.
- It also appeared in the 1989 BBC adaptation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (one of the Narnia Chronicles written by C. S. Lewis) as the home of the wizard, Coriakin (played by Preston Lockwood).
- In 2003, the home was featured in the TV series Antiques Road Trip.
- It was also featured on a 2008 series 10 episode of the paranormal reality TV series Most Haunted and was believed to be haunted by the Ladies of Llangollen themselves.
References
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Plas Newydd (Llangollen). |
- Plas Newydd – official site at Denbighshire County Council
- IMDb: Most Popular Titles With Location Matching "Plas Newydd, Llangollen, Denbighshire, Wales, UK"
- "Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader" (1989) – Filming locations
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