Home page for Plas Newydd, Llangollen and its inhabitants Portraits of Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby and their housekeeper Mary Carryl Butler and Ponsonby are said to have forbidden anyone from taking their portraits but at least six originals of them survive. The best known was based on drawings of their heads secretly sketched in … Continue reading Ladies of Llangollen – portraits

Home page for Plas Newydd and its inhabitants This page includes Introduction Doctors Dentists References to their medical treatment and dentists in various documents Introduction Initially, it seems, Butler and Ponsonby were fit and mostly healthy. They got up early, often at six or seven a.m. and were ashamed if they didn’t rise till 9: … Continue reading Ladies of Llangollen, health

link to Home page for Plas Newydd and its inhabitants Income and Expenditure see details of the account books This page includes: Introduction Income Pensions and other regular income Eleanor Butler’s income Sarah Ponsonby’s income The Civil list pensions loans sale of produce from the garden and farm analysis of all income year by year … Continue reading Ladies of Llangollen finances

Home page for Plas Newydd and its inhabitants Page in progress 21 March 2020

Plas Newydd by W. Crane, 1830s link to Home page for Plas Newydd and its inhabitants This page includes extracts from: diaries and journals written by travellers in Wales 1780 – 1932 guidebooks 1780 – 1932 letters to and from Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby INTRODUCTION Lady Eleanor Butler (1739 – 2.6.1829) and Sarah Ponsonby … Continue reading descriptions of Plas Newydd and the Ladies of Llangollen

                  One of a pair of stereographs of Plas Newydd, Llangollen by Francis Bedford, early 1860s. The woman in the foreground is probably Bedford’s wife. (Michael Freeman collection) (Not to be confused with Plas Newydd in Anglesey, the home of the Earl of Uxbridge and Marquesses of … Continue reading The Ladies of Llangollen

The ruins of this castle overlook Llangollen, Denbighshire References to the provision of services to tourists at Dinas Bran. Although there are about 50 accounts of climbing Castell Dinas Bran by tourists only a few mention the shelter / shop at the summit. The entry for 1816 mentions the cottage at or near the bottom … Continue reading Castell Dinas Bran

This page includes about 65 references to bonfires lit in Wales, 1630s to 1900, mostly on Calan Gaeaf  (All Saints Eve, Halloween, 31st October), but occasionally on Midsummers Eve and Guy Fawkes night (5th November) and other celebrations. Most are general descriptions of the custom and associated practices: only 17 are first-hand accounts or childhood … Continue reading bonfires

This page includes a full transcription of the volume (as far as the hand writing allows, except for poems previously published, for which the first and last quoted lines only are included). This foolscap volume was probably originally intended as an account book: there are three vertical lines in red ink on the left and … Continue reading Devil’s Bridge visitors’ book

Holyhead, published by Newman and Co., 1850s Map of the route from Chester to Holyhead and a chart of Holyhead. from ‘A Short Account of Holyhead in the Isle of Anglesea’ 1783 (below) Arrival of the Express Boat at Holyhead Welsh Pictures (edited by Richard Lovett, London: The Religious Tract Society, [1891], p. 56 Holyhead … Continue reading Holyhead and the Irish Sea