Aberglasney
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[edit] Aberglasney Mansion and Historic Garden
Spectacularly set in the beautiful Tywi valley of Carmarthenshire, South West Wales, Aberglasney Mansion features one of the finest gardens in Wales. Aberglasney Gardens have been an inspiration to poets since 1477. The story of Aberglasney spans many centuries, but, the house's origins are still shrouded in obscurity. The Mansion and Gardens are open to the public every day of the year (except Christmas Day).
History - The Early Years (before 1600)
Wales was a turbulent place in the Middle Ages. The dramatic ruined castles punctuating the Tywi valley are a reminder of those times, and the country around Aberglasney saw fighting more than once. A bloody battle was fought on its doorstep in 1257, and the fields round about still have names that commemorate the event - Cae Tranc (field of vengeance), Cae'r Ochain (groaning field). Around 1400 the rising of Owain Glyn Dwr again brought bloodshed to the area. The lords of Llangathen who must have been the antecedents of the Tudor owners of Aberglasney were in the thick of things.
Coins dating back to 1288 were found in the Cloister garden. Until the fifteenth century we depend on tradition rehearsed in ancient pedigrees for our knowledge of the people who owned the future Aberglasney. The family claimed descent from Elystan Glodrydd, 'Prince between Wye and Severn' and Gwenllian, granddaughter of Hywel Dda, who lived around AD 1000.
The old genealogies show ten generations of Welshmen before the arrival on the scene of Bishop Rudd brought a change of ownership. A handful of figures in the family tree are distinguished by some brief description - Gruffydd ab Elidir, allegedly 'Knight of Rhodes' in the thirteenth century, and his son Owain, 'Esquire of the body to Edward III'; half a century later came Llywelyn ap Llywelyn Ddu, who for some unknown reason was surnamed 'Foethus' ('the luxurious').
Eventually, around the time that Henry Tudor went into exile before returning to victory at Bosworth Field and English kingship, we find a benchmark, a reference point, thanks to an ode by the bard Lewis Glyn Cothi. As a professional itinerant poet, he enjoyed the hospitality of many patrons and visited a number of houses in the area.
In this ode he singles out the high quality of the husbandry of his Llangathen patron Rhydderch ap Rhys (comparing his skills with those of Adam, the first gardener) - and, incidentally, gives us one of the earliest descriptions of Welsh horticulture in the 'nine green gardens' surrounding Rhydderch's home in the 1470s. The mists of time begin to clear more decisively in the days of Rhydderch's grandson, William ap Thomas or Sir William Thomas - knighted by Henry VIII - who fought in France, served at court, held public office and married a Herbert of Coldbrook, Monmouthshire. The next three generations of what was now the Thomas family are well documented - including Capt. William Thomas, killed at Zutphen in 1586 in the battle in which Sir Philip Sidney was fatally wounded.
He has a proud hall. A fortress made bright with whitewash, And encompassing it all around Nine green gardens. Orchard trees and crooked vines, Young oaks reaching up to the sky. Lewis Glyn Cothi, Ode to Rhydderch ap Rhys
Lewis Glyn Cothi, Ode to Rhydderch ap Rhys (Translation, Dafydd Johnston)
Each successive heir married into a wealthy Caernarfonshire family and held office in North Wales as well as maintaining links with Carmarthen - until Sir William (1572-1633) and his wife Gaenor loosed hold on the Carmarthenshire properties and settled in the north. Marking this move was the datestone 'W.T./G. 1606' on their new house at Coed Helen on the North Wales coast - a house that no longer stands. Meanwhile, Sir William must have sold Aberglasney to Bishop Rudd.
History - The Rudd's (1600's)
Once the original line of the Thomas family had left for North Wales, the fortunes of Aberglasney passed into new hands. With a convenient neatness we find the property being sold to a different family roughly at the start of each new century and a strange see-saw pattern of wealth alternating with misfortune emerging.
Each new family establishes itself with great hopes and ambitions at Aberglasney, but after two or three generations finds itself enmeshed in difficulties and debts, and forced to sell up.
The first of our new owners were members of the Rudd family, who rose to landed status thanks to wealth from the Church. The documents are missing, but Bishop Rudd is generally thought to have acquired the Aberglasney estate sometime around 1600 (he was certainly buying other local properties shortly afterwards). He is credited with rebuilding the house he found at Aberglasney - old accounts describe his chapel with a fine pulpit in the south wing.
The bishop's heir was his equally ambitious and successful younger son, a favourite of James I who was made a baronet by Charles I in 1628. Sir Rice Rudd married well and was active in public life, but he met with heavy fines for his royalist sympathies during the Civil War.
A bedstead Tomb in llangathen Parish Church was erected by Bishop Rudd`s Wife in 1616. He was succeeded in 1614 by his grandson, the second Sir Rice (1643-1701) - it's interesting to note that the estate doesn't pass directly from father to eldest son in the normal way. It was under his ownership that Aberglasney was assessed for 'chimney tax' in 1670: at 30 hearths, the house ranked with the most imposing in all Carmarthenshire. However, a downward spiral had already begun: debts accumulated, and the second baronet eventually had to mortgage the estate, which was sold to Robert Dyer in 1710. Two further baronets - a cousin, Sir Anthony, and his son, Sir John - briefly held the title but did not gain possession of Aberglasney, and with them the male line of the Carmarthenshire Rudd's died out.
Bishop Rudd
Anthony Rudd (c. 1548-1614), a Yorkshireman and high-flying cleric, was Dean of Gloucester before being appointed to the wealthy See of St David's in 1594. He was being groomed to succeed Whitgift as archbishop of Canterbury but at Easter 1596 he preached a sermon to Elizabeth I which deeply offended her by alluding to her advanced years, and all hope of further promotion came to an end. Bishop Rudd remains a strong presence in the parish through the splendid 'bedstead' tomb erected to him by his wife in 1616. His choosing burial at Llangathen rather than with his predecessors in St David's Cathedral is also remarkable, suggesting an independence of spirit and a deep affection for the place he made his home.
Ghostly Candles
According to an Aberglasney tradition dating back to the time of the Rudd's, disembodied candle-flames appear to foretell a death. The number of flames corresponds with the numbers of deaths, as when a housekeeper of the 1630s saw five lights in a room where, following some redecoration or building work, five maidservants were found to have died overnight. The tale comes in varying versions. Sometimes the number of maids is different, and sometimes rather than by suffocation (from coal fumes, presumably) the maids die from arsenic poisoning in 'the Blue Room.
History - The Dyer's (1700's)
Robert Dyer, a successful Carmarthen lawyer with family connections in the area, purchased the heavily mortgaged Aberglasney in 1710. The Dyers may already have been renting the place at the time, and legend has it that a 'bloody contest' attended the final transfer of the property, with bullets flying.
According to his son, poet John, his father 'rebuilt' the house; at the very least, he gave it an up-to-the-minute formal façade in the latest Queen Anne style. He died in 1720 before the refurbishment was complete and was succeeded by his eldest son, also Robert, who married Frances Croft of Croft Castle, descended from Owain Glyn Dwr.
Portraits of husband and wife in Croft Castle are thought to be the work of John Dyer; a later description depicts Frances as beautiful, but 'very flighty, almost insane'.
Their son Robert Archer Dyer inherited in 1752: through his commonplace book we get a glimpse of the fruit trees in his garden and of his passion for fishing in the Towy! He and his brother Francis both married Herbert sisters, heiresses of nearby Court Henry, but already Aberglasney was once again, it seems, draining the family coffers. As early as the 1740s parts of the property were being mortgaged; Robert Archer Dyer and his son William Herbert Dyer - the last of the male line - both struggled under insuperable debts, and finally Aberglasney was put up for sale in 1798.
"Dr Foy told me the distemper is brought on by fishing and a sedentary life..."commonplace book of Robert Archer Dyer.
The poet John Dyer (1699-1757) is Aberglasney's most famous son. Rejecting his father's practice at law, he studied painting in London and Rome and worked for a time as an itinerant artist. But it's for the painterly vision expressed in his poetry that he is remembered.
Two poems published in 1726 are of particular interest: in 'The Country Walk' Dyer wrote affectionately of Aberglasney; in 'Grongar Hill' his depiction of the scenery of the Towy valley appealed to a wider audience. It became a sort of touchstone of the picturesque movement, and made a cultural landmark of the eponymous hill, attracting flocks of tourists and aesthetes through the nineteenth century. Even the Rev. Eli Jenkins in Under Milk Wood makes an allusion to 'Golden Grove, 'near Grongar'.
Dyer's youthful connection with Aberglasney was not maintained beyond about 1730. After that he farmed in Herefordshire and the Midlands and later became a parson in East Anglia, meanwhile publishing 'The Ruins of Rome' and 'The Fleece', a Georgic that earned him Wordsworth's praise.
See, below, the pleasant dome,
The poet's pride, the poet's home...
See her woods, where Echo talks,
Her gardens trim, her terrace walks,
Her wildernesses, fragrant brakes,
Her gloomy bowers and shining lakes,
Keep, ye gods, this humble seat,
For ever pleasant, private, neat.
John Dyer from 'The Country Walk
History - The Phillips & Walter Philipps (1800's - 1900's)
In 1803 Aberglasney was bought on his retirement by Thomas Phillips, a 'nabob' who during 30 years as surgeon with the East India Company had amassed a healthy fortune (and a consort, Mrs. Moore, who happened to be married to someone else).
His brother John, a lawyer from Llandeilo, acted on his behalf in the purchase, and a stack of surviving bills show how the place was put in apple-pie order for his arrival.
Thomas Phillips died childless in 1824, but was not forgotten. His heirs benefited from his fortune, and his amiable ghost is said to have appeared to a number of gardeners and household staff. Thomas Phillips left Aberglasney to his sister's son John Walters, who tacked on the surname Philipps (choosing the more aristocratic spelling) and made parallel embellishments to his property - adding a portico to the Queen Anne façade, throwing out a bay on the garden front, running an avenue across the fields from the road, having his new coat of arms depicted in a fine painted-glass window that was, sadly, smashed by vandals in the 1970s.
John Walters Philipps held county office and consolidated his inheritance, but was not fortunate enough to found a new Aberglasney dynasty. A son died in infancy; the three Walters Philipps daughters became, respectively, Mrs. Harries, Mrs. Pryse and Mrs. Lloyd-Phillips. Only the middle daughter had issue before dying young, leaving young Mary Anne (or Marianne) heiress - and the lone member of future generations. Her father John Pugh Pryse of Bwlchbychan in Cardiganshire made a second marriage, to Decima Dorothea Rice of Llwynybrain - a connection that became significant for the transfer of the property later on.
Aberglasney in the 1800s basked in the reflected glory of Dyer's 'Grongar Hill'. A young visitor in the 1860s called it 'a curious old fashioned looking place', but by the 1890s the formality of its gardens was again in vogue: a Gardeners Chronicle article about the yew tunnel concluded: 'It requires but little effort on the part of a wanderer in this charming garden of old times to people the place once more with the gentlemen and pretty ladies of Jacobean times.'
Arrived at Aberglasney (a curious old fashioned looking place) ... Mrs. Harries and her father Mr. Philipps received us at the door. We sat down to an elegant cold collation... We played croquet all the afternoon on the lawn. At 7 we left off playing and got ready for dinner. There were 18 at the principal table and 6 at the side table. After dinner we had dancing in the hall which was oak, but we were obliged to dance round the billiard table which was too heavy to be moved...
Journal of Hermione Jennings, 7 August 1866
History - The Twentieth Century
The Mayhews
In 1872 heiress Marianne Pryse married a young soldier, Charles Mayhew. Aberglasney was let out during most of their married life, which they spent in Derbyshire, but they moved here on his retirement in 1902 and set about reforming the place and its inhabitants.
Col Mayhew is said to be responsible for planting some of the rare specimen trees that remain in the grounds. He is better remembered for his fierce addiction to teetotalism. The Mayhews held Temperance rallies, gave Llangathen its Temperance Hall and turned out tenants who declined to sign the Pledge.
The dead hand of the staid Victorian attitudes of this childless couple influenced Aberglasney long after they themselves left the scene. Col Mayhew died suddenly at the end of 1907, having caught cold attending a temperance gathering. A year later Widow Mayhew took off abruptly for London and lived there for the next 30 years, declining to return to (or, indeed, to let anyone else enjoy) her property, which was left in the hands of caretakers and concerned relatives.
The Evans Interlude
When the inscrutable Mrs. Mayhew died aged 90 in 1939 the property devolved (through her father's second marriage into the Pryse-Rice family) to young Eric Evans, son of Brig.-Gen. L.P. Evans of Lovesgrove, who was thrilled to take up residence with his young bride after the war.
Once again Aberglasney became a lively home, echoing with dance music, bright voices and children's cries. But Eric Evans died in 1950 aged only 30, and his young sons' trustees decided that the property was not viable economically (perhaps even unlucky) and should be sold, ending a succession of owners that began with Thomas Phillips in 1803.
World War Two
Like most big houses, Aberglasney was commandeered for troop occupation. First it became a major mobile laundry for the RAOC. Later American troops from the Deep South arrived. One of them was Top Sergeant Dawson, sparring partner of 'the Brown Bomber', Big Joe Louis - a name familiar from his battle with Welsh boxer Tommy Farr. There was a real bomb, too: a stray from one of the raids on Swansea that fell in a field between Aberglasney and Lanlash.
Three Sales
At the sale of 1955 the estate was split up. Several tenant farmers acquired the land they had formerly rented; David Charles, a Carmarthen lawyer, bought the house and farm. He held occasional events like hunt balls in the house, but it remained unoccupied, and decay that began with damp in Mrs. Mayhew's time accelerated.
A further sale took place in 1977, this time fragmenting still further ownership of the house, gardens and farm complex. Although the new owners, at first tried to repair the house, the task was too great for them. Vandalism, theft and the elements combined to escalate the collapse of built structures and the advance of a sea of vegetation.
The dismantling of the portico was the last straw. When it was offered for sale by Christie's the law stepped in: its removal from a listed building constituted an offence. There was a prosecution; the publicity raised the profile of Aberglasney and its fortunes were reversed with its sale to the Aberglasney Restoration Trust in 1995.
History - The Present Day
[edit] Aberglasney Restoration Trust
While Aberglasney’s very existence was unknown to the world in general (many local people remaining unaware of it), a small band of enthusiasts of historic houses and gardens had long kept an informal watching brief on the property, noting its decline with increasing concern.
Eventually they formed the Trust, and at the eleventh hour realized their ambitions to save Aberglasney when an American benefactor donated the purchase price. This primed the pump for a gruelling series of feasibility studies and grant applications to give Aberglasney a new lease of life.
The ambitious restoration strategy has drawn on the skills of experts in many spheres. All available sources were examined to uncover Aberglasney’s history, but much remained (and still remains) unknown. Only when repairs were well underway and the stone structures made safe could major archaeology begin.
Findings in 1998-1999 proved that the Cloister garden did indeed date from the late Tudor and early Stewart era. The process of discovery continues, just as the exciting new plantings grow into place bringing new life to old spaces.
Aberglasney is changing and growing - a garden lost in time no longer, a garden of past, present and future.
The Gatehouse
Past owners may have regarded it as a folly (and it was certainly 'antiqued' when a decorative stone moulding was added around its outward arch), but its origins are a good deal older.
On either side the stonework bears the scars of missing gables, showing that one-storey roofed buildings once extended in each direction and joined up with other walls and buildings to make an enclosed courtyard.
An archaeologist recording the intricate pattern of the carriage way Similar structures elsewhere are known to date from 1600. The archway's cobbled floor bears the dints of cartwheels.
Yew Tunnel
The Yew Tunnel is thought to have been planted by the Dyer family during the eighteenth century, and it is possibly unique in the U.K. When they had grown tall they were bent over to form an extended arch.
Their trunks have spread and their branches have fused so that today it is hard to count how many separate trees commingle in the vast mass of this venerable growing gallery.
Portico
Now you see it, now you don't. The splendid Ionic portico was added to the north façade around the time Victoria came to the throne. By the time the Aberglasney Restoration Trust was germinating, 150 years later, it had vanished. Someone spotted the columns advertised in a Christie's catalogue, and since Aberglasney was a listed building their removal and sale was illegal. After a court case (which drew public attention to the critical state of Aberglasney, and advanced the cause of rescue and restoration), the columns were retrieved and put into storage pending the full restoration of the portico.
A side-benefit of the unlawful dismantling of the structure was to reveal a handsome roundel hidden behind the pediment. Only then were buildings historians able to appreciate the high quality of the Queen Anne architecture commissioned by Robert Dyer, the new owner between 1710 and 1720.
The sight gave some pause to regret the fact that by law this must disappear once again behind an ostentatious Victorian addition.
The North Lawn
The approach to the house has seen the passing of many generations. No one knows what the house looked like in its early days, but it was graced with a smart new Queen Anne façade in 1710-15, and aggrandized with a portico around 1840. Its windows gazed out over archery butts and croquet lawns in Victoria's reign, Nissen huts in World War II, a building site in the 1990s.
Cloister Garden
From the North Lawn the land slopes gently away and the house looks westwards out towards Grongaer Hill. The courtyard we find here is Aberglasney's most extraordinary and legendary feature. On three sides vast arcaded stone structures support a broad parapet walkway. The house itself stands a little apart as the fourth side, loosely closing off the rectangle. For a long time the vegetation here was so dense and the stonework in such decay that it was almost impossible to see exactly what the structures consisted of - let alone to guess their purpose.
Opposite the house the western range shelters a long arcaded walkway - the cloister or cryptoporticus - but the two side ranges are solid, pierced by deep archways. Visitors were invariably puzzled.
Almost every instance of the formal raised terraces that we know were popular in this period has since disappeared, having succumbed to Civil War depredations or to the eighteenth-century Landscape Movement, when formal enclosures beside the house were often swept away to make room for a more open parkland setting.
Amazingly, investigation in the late 1990s revealed that Aberglasney's parapet walkway was indeed a unique survivor of a style of garden architecture that is now found only in records of lost gardens.
During the 1990s, once rampant vegetation was cleared, the sifting of layers of soil and debris began to reveal this enclosure in its true colours.
Pool Garden
Every garden of any antiquity had its ponds - originally for breeding or stocking fish, later for ornamental purposes. Aberglasney has probably always had a pool of some kind at this spot, where water collects in a natural dip enhanced by banking up the western edge of the garden to form a dam.
No one knows when Aberglasney's pool was given its present shape. Theseverely formal rectangle is in keeping with Jacobean garden fashion. The pool is fed by rills from hidden watercourses, one of them channelled beneath the house itself.
The parapet walk dividing the two gardens gives a fine view down over the pool.
To the north the high wall separating the Pool Garden from the farm buildings once supported a 20ft by 40ft Victorian vinehouse. All traces of the superstructure have disappeared, but hidden in the ground are the row of brick arches marking its front foundations. The roots of vines were planted in the soil outside the glasshouse and the stems passed through these arches to be trained and tended in the warmth inside. A colourful border rich in burgundy-reds and an arbour sheltered by a claret vine has taken its place in the new incarnation.
One of Aberglasney's legends is that the contents of the house well-stocked wine-cellar were emptied into the pool when the teetotaller Mayhews came into the property around 1900. Later owners dredging or mending the pool claim to have found a handful of bottles, mostly empty but (they say) one or two corked and intact, to lend credence to the story.
Stream Garden and Pigeon House Wood
These gardens occupy the sock-shaped area to the west of the regular walled enclosures and offer a contrasting 'garden' experience. Outside the geometry of walls and straight lines, beds and borders, here a more natural atmosphere holds sway, as the undulating character of the surrounding landscape imposes itself on the terrain and influences what will grow.
Pigeon House Wood
In the first area the damp ground beside the outflow from the Pool Garden widens into a small pond and is planted with the moisture-loving perennials from all around the world which thrive in such conditions in Britain's climate.
Further down, as the contours dip to Aberglasney's lowest point, the stream carves a dingle through a vestige of native woodland before the land rises again in the upward sweep of the saddle that leads to Grongaer Hill. Here the ground is carpeted in spring by shade-loving woodlanders like bluebells, ramsons and wood anemones. In the upper part of the wood exciting new understorey shrubs such as species rhododendrons with large felty leaves have been introduced to create special interest here for visiting plantspeople. This area is enclosed by ancient hedgebanks dotted by sprawling oaks, but also by the functional deer-fences that delineate the extent of Aberglasney's present territory. Once, of course, the estate included much of the farmland round about.
Pigeon House Wood is an airy enclosure of deciduous trees, probably a plantation dating from the early 1800s, when improving landowners replenished the timber stocks of the estate. It is named after Pigeon House Cottage up the hill. No one seems to know where the actual pigeon house or dovecote stood, but (as estate records attest) it must once have been quite an eyecatcher, topped by an ornamental cupola.
The Lower Walled Garden
Vegetables in the Lower Walled Garden
Two once-functional rectangles of garden (south of the Pool and Cloister Gardens) have been given new incarnations, emerging renewed from seas of weeds and decades of disuse. Both areas were once geared to produce the crops of fruit and vegetables that a thriving family and its household required before railways and refrigerators made self-sufficiency redundant in a rural estate. Here more than in any other part of the garden you would find the epitome of good order - straight rows of vegetables that the gardener could manage efficiently, fruit trees and bushes pruned and trained to maximize productivity (their woody forms incidentally providing a handsome framework of growing garden architecture), an abundance of flowers to cut for the house. The straight gravel paths and cross-walks were outlined in neatly clipped box edgings.
During Aberglasney's late twentieth-century decline, these patterns were blurred and lost - partly through neglect, and partly when the plots were ploughed up to grow potatoes. The result for the Trust was that once the weeds had been cleared the areas presented an exciting blank canvas for replanting.
The eminent garden designer and historian Penelope Hobhouse conceived a thrilling new layout loosely based on an old plan of concentric ovals contained in an oblong. The structural planting consists of classic evergreens known at the time of Bishop Rudd, including clipped box for the outlines. However, homage to historical precedent stops there, and the plants within the formal framework constitute a glorious symphony of the top-class ornamentals from every corner of the globe that thrive in our British climate - old and modern varieties of perennials, climbers and shrubs chosen both to delight the eye of every visitor and to appeal particularly to discriminating plantspeople.
The walkway running along the top boundary of the Upper Walled Garden forms a continuation of the Cloister Garden parapet and offers a chance to look down from a height on to the garden layout and appreciate its formal quality.
The lower walled garden was laid out in traditional quartered divisions and has a functional role growing a range of vegetables and herbs. This area is also used as a 'cutting garden' and a wide selection of annual and perennial plants which can be used for 'cutting' are grown. This was once a familiar sight on large estates.
Colourful Borders
One of the outer borders in the Upper Walled Garden demonstrating the beautiful combination of plants, which include Camassia, Alchemilla, Nepeta, Geranium and Iris.
Cut Flower Border During Late Summer
The two beds which are cultivated for cut flowers are always much admired during the summer months. They contain old favourites such as Sweet peas and Asters, but they also contain plants that have only recently been released on the market.
Church View and Bishop Rudd`s Walk
Llangathen Parish Church
Uphill to the south and west lies an L-shaped wooded area sandwiched between the gardens, house and car park field on one hand and the doglegging hedgebank that marks the southern property boundary on the other. This 'neck of the woods' has its handful of fragments of history and mystery.
It used to be called the American Wood, after the garden fashion for planting an area with woody exotics, often evergreens, introduced after the mid 1700s from North America. By the 1990s untended trees and overgrown laurels made it gloomy and forbidding, but an enticing network of paths and bridges amid new shrub plantings will turn it back into an inviting place to see a wide range of rare and unusual plants.
Ninfarium
In 2005 a unique garden was created within the ruinous central rooms and courtyard of the mansion. The remaining walls of the rooms were stabilized and the entire area was covered with a huge glass atrium. This area now contains a wonderful collection of warm temperate and sub-tropical plants including Orchids, Palms, Magnolias and Cycads.
The name Ninfarium was derived from the amazing gardens at Ninfa, which are situated south of Rome. The garden at Ninfa has been imaginatively planted within the ruins of a medieval village.
In a ceremony at the Hurlingham Club, London on 3 Oct 06, Aberglasney Gardens won the award for the Best Garden Design/Construction Project for the Ninfarium. The awards ceremony was hosted by TV and radio presenter Jeremy Vine with the voice overs by Alan Dedicoat of National Lottery fame. The Judges commented that "The attention to detail in this unique project is impressive" The Horticulture Week Awards is the leading annual event that recognises the very best in achievement, ability and performance across the entire ornamental horticultural industry. Now in their second year, the awards are organised by the industry's leading trade and professional magazine, Horticulture Week, and the Horticultural Trades Association.
Cafe
The Gardener’s Café at Aberglasney Gardens is open every day and is a place where you can eat delectable locally produced food in the most wonderful surroundings imaginable. Just think of sunny afternoons with the sound of birds singing, water flowing gently into a tranquil pool and the scents and sounds of a beautiful garden, this is the terrace of the cafe, where you can enjoy the superb menus prepared by Chris Flack and her staff.
Everything is obtained locally, from the Sewin (Sea Trout when in season) Salmon, Fresh Lobster, locally dressed crab, home cooked Carmarthenshire ham, Welsh beef, delicious vegetables and salads to wonderful cakes and puddings, that may not do a lot for your waistline, but certainly do a great deal for your taste buds
Events and Fairs
Aberglasney regularly holds events in and around the house and Gardens. During the summer season (Apr to Sep) local artist hold exhibtions in the partly restored Mansion. On the first weekend in December there is the Annual Traditional Winter Fair. On the second weekend in May there is the Annual Spring Fair. During the summer months there are performances of Opera, Shakespeare, Jazz and musical concerts in the Gardens. A Ball is held bi-annually, and a high profile concert is also held bi-annually; last year the concert featured Kathering Jenkins.
Other Facilities
Two Self-Catering Cottages are available on site.
A Gift shop and Plant Sales Area.
Suitable access for people with disabilities.
Meeting and Conference facitilies available for hire in the newly restored Jill Walters Suite, in the lower floor of the Mansion.
Website : www.aberglasney.org Email: info@aberglasney.org
Address: Aberglasney Restoration Trust, Aberglasney Mansion & Gardens, Llangathen, Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire. South Wales. SA32 8QH
Tel / Fax: UK (01558) 668 998
Registered Charity No. 1044279
