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.