The National Botanic Garden of Wales.

 

A few weeks ago, we visited the National Botanic Garden of Wales. To be frank, on a damp and gloomy day, I wasn’t expecting that much but ended up wanting more and pencilling in further visits, but with the proviso – don’t be suckered by ‘Gift Aid.’ *

The bio dome alone is pretty spectacular, being the largest single spanned glasshouse in the world. The climate within is geared to plants from the Mediterranean, California, Peru, Majorca and Australia. 

Strangely though, I found that less impressive than the 560 acres of parkland surrounding it. Walking through it you seamlessly entered an C18th landscape and the world of  Sir William Paxton. 

The estate was famous for its necklace of engineered lakes, still in evidence today

Present day photos ——and 1815 paintings by Thomas Horner

Meadow land and William Paxton's  three acre double-walled garden 

Before the enterprising William Paxton, the future National Botanic Garden of Wales had been part of the Middleton estate. Their house, Middleton Hall, must have looked quite imposing. It had for example 17 hearths as indicated by the Hearth Tax records of 1670. 

The Middletons, like Paxton who succeeded them, derived much of their wealth from the East India Company and India in general. It is no surprise that in the present climate of self-abnegation this has to be apologised for. The Botanic Garden website is particularly mealy-mouthed going on about the ‘horrendous’ injustices visited upon the innocent. This despite the fact that we merely usurped previous conquerors like the Mughals or equally rapacious indigenous princes. And it was not entirely cost free whether in terms of the humble soldier on both sides, or indeed the three Middleton brothers who died on their way home from India.

 Whether we—or indeed Indians—would now feel more comfortable if the French had beaten us to it is open to debate. 

 

Paxton's new Middleton Hall painted by the artist Thomas Horner

 There are other things that cut across the grain of modern opinion. In the 1802 elections William Paxton spent £15,000 in order to secure his election: a total of 1107 breakfasts, 36,901 dinners, 6842 suppers, 25,275 gallons of ale and porter, 11,074 bottles of spirits, 8879 bottles of porter, 4064 bottles of sherry, 509 bottles of cider, £18. 18 shillings worth of milk punch, £54 worth of mulled wine, and 4,521 instances of horse hire. He lost the election, but the electorate had a bloody good time. A far superior way of doing things in my opinion.

Blasted oak and Paxton's Tower in the far distance 

And again, Paxton Tower can be seen on the horizon

Despite this princely expenditure William Paxton had no trouble finding the money for his 36-foot-high three-sided gothic tower. Such follies built to be seen were then an essential feature of most grand estates, this particular one built in honour of Nelson, killed in the Battle of Trafalgar. Originally called Nelson’s Tower, engraved tables commemorating his victory in English, Welsh and Latin were placed on each side of the tower. 

So much to learn. A single lifespan is not enough; three or four perhaps might fit the bill, then as well as history, I’d be able to study geology, a growing passion but one too late to develop, and botany. The latter exemplified in the final pictures below: a tree covered by fungi and the attendant information that follows.

*And one more thing to learn. On buying an entry ticket you’ll be asked if you want to sign up for ‘Gift Aid’. In Britain this is a way for charities to gain exemption from tax and is normally cost free to the individual ie the government reimburses the charity of any tax due on the transaction. In this case however it’s the individual that pays— a ten percent addition to the original price. If they were honest and asked for a ten percent tip from the start I know what my answer would have been. There are insufficient lifespans to erase my miserly streak.

An Adventurous Twelve-Year Old Boy

 William Paxton (1744-1824,) was the son of a Scottish wine-merchant who spent much of his childhood in London. He enjoyed it so much, that at the age of twelve he joined the Royal Navy as a Captain’s servant, rising through the ranks to become a midshipman and ultimately an officer on a British Merchant ship bound for India. There he made a fateful decision; he trained to become an assayer, analysing minerals and ores to establish their worth. His worth was recognised when he was made assay master at Fort Worth in Bengal from where he went on to form his own company. 

 

Some won great fortunes in India. Most died in action or from tropical disease as the numerous memorial plaques in obscure country churches bear witness.

 

Like many at the time, he made his fortune in India and returned to Britain immensely rich and determined to become a landed gentleman.

In 1789 he purchased Middleton Hall, replacing it with a  brand new and much grander mansion. It even had water closets, with water fed from a rooftop cistern, fed in turn by a small reservoir built in the side of a neighbouring hill. Rural Carmarthenshire had never seen the like. 

 

 

Paxton totally transformed the surrounding parkland. A three acre double-walled garden was built, the double walls of stone and brick creating a milder microclimate, which extended the growing season for vegetables and fruit. Within the garden he built a large greenhouse with underfloor heating which allowed peaches and other more exotic fruit to be grown. 

He developed woodland and a complex necklace of lakes, dams, and waterfalls, and when he discovered the healing properties of the water, piped it into his mansion as well as building a public bathhouse outside the estate for local people. People flocked to sample the healing waters to the great benefit of the immediate community. 

 

The entire neighbourhood benefited from William Paxton, (now a sir). He founded a charity school at Llanarthne, leased land for the building of the Bethlehem Baptist Chapel, and subscribed the then substantial sum of £1000 for a canal as well as improving Kidwelly Harbour.

 

His greatest contribution to the area was perhaps the regeneration of the then run down town of Tenby. Recognising the growing demand for the sea-side holiday when much of Europe was being trampled by the Napoleonic wars, Paxton developed a prestigious bathhouse in Tenby which attracted a steady influx of visitors. He built lodging houses for the new ‘tourists,’ provided fresh drinking water, widened streets, built new roads and a brand-new theatre for the town. Similarly, he improved the water supply for the county town of Carmarthen, replacing leaky wooden pipes with new iron pipes.

And his relevance today? The Middleton Hall estate along with his pioneering work in agriculture and landscaping provided the basis for today’s prestigious National Botanical Garden of Wales. 

Not bad for a boy who went to sea at the age of twelve.

Every house has a story

 

 The house I was born in was the family home and had been since the early 1920s, the Keyton family the first and only owners until 1994 when our mother died. 

I remember buying my first house, a Wimpey semi-detached with not a stick of furniture but for a bed and a rocking chair. The house was only five years old, and I was its second owner. I remember buying our second house, a large redbrick Edwardian semi-detached. It had everything in terms of position and potential, but my goodness, it was hard work. Built in 1906 it had been owned by many before us, including more recently a dynasty of Catholic teachers. But overlaying everything was an overpowering sense of tragedy. Its previous occupants were a young married couple, the husband a hard drinking soldier serving in Northern Ireland.  After one tour too many, he committed suicide, his distraught wife took to the bottle and the house fell into dirt and decay. When we moved in the task at first seemed overwhelming, the challenge of restoring the house to what it could be, a joyous and satisfying challenge. 

All of these things came to mind when we stayed for a night at the Mansion House, Llanseffan and spent some time exploring its history. 

It was originally a much smaller house owned by a reverend John Morris but everything changed in 1888, when James Richards bought the surrounding Pantyrathro estate with a newly built Mansion House at its centre.

James was a self-made businessman and owner of Royal Dairies Hampstead. Between 1832 and 1888 he amassed a fortune, had a fine London residence in Belsize, business premises in Hampstead, and had even made the 1893 edition of ‘Illustrated London’ under the heading of ‘Cowkeeper and Dairyman.’ Money is money, but such a sobriquet was unlikely to see him admitted into London’s high society, so in 1888 he retired and devoted the rest of his life to developing his fine new estate and Mansion House. 

When he died, his widow Anne inherited and from that point things slowly went downhill. She died in 1919. His eldest son would have inherited but for his death in World War I, and so the estate went to the younger son, John Llwellyn Richards, known as Jack. 

In 1936 however, Jack was accused of watering down his milk, his court date set for March. Unfortunately for all concerned, Jack never got to enjoy his day in court. He hanged himself in one of the farm buildings just before his appearance. The question is why. To the modern mind, watering down milk is hardly up there with child abuse. Different times, different standards? A strong sense of shame, perhaps, something alien to today’s politicians and bureaucrats where accountability is as alien as Egyptian hieroglyphics before the Rosetta Stone. 

After Jack’s death, the estate was split and sold, and over the years the Mansion House had several owners and lost much of its former grandeur. One couple having bought the house bred pedigree pigs there until 1953 when the house was again sold to pay off gambling debts.

Ted Mallia, a fish and chip shop owner in Carmarthen bought the house for £2000. He and his family lived on the top floors of the house, the ground floor being used as a barn!  Pigs were kept where the bar now stands, wild game hung in what is now the restaurant and chickens enjoyed the entire lounge area and stairs. Local accounts describe the entire mansion surrounded by mounds of pig and chicken slurry.

Once smelling of pig slurry and later a mini golfing green.

In 1966 the house was purchased by Major John Buckley for £6000 who went on to purchase much of the estate. Restoration followed. Things appeared to be on the up again. But when his application to turn it into a hotel was rejected, John Buckley sold it all to the investment company, Slater Walker for £50,000. 

Unlike the Buckleys, they experienced no trouble gaining planning permission. In 1974 part of the estate was turned into a Chalet Park, farm buildings into a swish country club, and the Mansion House…. into a hotel. Ensuite bedrooms occupied the grand Victorian spaces Major Buckley had so lovingly restored. 

In 1978 the house was sold to another investment company who in turn sold it to the Barney family who turned the front into a mini golfing green.

And so, we come to the present. Between 1982 and 2012 the house was run by John Parry and his two successive wives. John Parry, known as ‘Jovial’ John, died in 2010 perhaps from an excess of joviality and two years later his widow sold it to the present owners who have transformed the ]Mansion House into the hotel it is now. 

A glimpse of the sea from the front lawn. No whiff of chicken or pig

A view over the estuary from the front lawn. Two pictures because I couldn't decide whether the tree 'framing' worked or not. Visual FOMO

As to why Carmarthenshire? The simple reason is that though close, we’d never been there before, but it is a beautiful county and the ‘Mansion  House’ was a beautiful hotel. Not only did it come with its own story, it’s become one of many precious memories being stored before such small luxuries become a thing of the past.