Craig-y-Nos Castle

Craig-y-Nos Castle
Craig-y-Nos Castle in 2011
Location within Wales
General information
Location	Swansea Valley, Powys, Wales
Coordinates	51°49′30″N 3°41′03″W / 51.82500°N 3.68417°W / 51.82500; -3.68417
Website
http://www.craigynoscastle.com

Craig-y-Nos Castle (English: Rock of the Night), is a Victorian-Gothic country house in Powys, Wales. Built on parkland beside the River Tawe in the upper Swansea Valley, it is located on the southern edge of Fforest Fawr. The former estate of opera singer Adelina Patti, part of the complex is now used as a boutique hotel, catering, conferencing and entertainment venue. The castle grounds are surrounded by a designated country park, which is now part of the Brecon Beacons National Park.

The industrial development of the village of Penwyllt, came as a result of the need for quicklime in the industrial processes in the lower Swansea Valley. Quarrying clay from the surrounding hills, in total there were fifteen lime kilns turning it into quicklime within the parish of Penwyllt:

The main building was built in 1841–43 by Captain Rice Davies Powell, who became a county magistrate and a High Sheriff of Brecknock. It was said that his family were cursed thanks to their bloodline relationship with the Dutch Overbeek family of Calcutta and Cape Town, who Captain Powell had diddled out of an inheritance (see Dundee Evening Telegraph – Saturday 25 May 1901, page 3, column 5), with cholera taking his younger son in 1851, and the deaths of his wife and younger daughter before he died in 1862. In 1864 his eldest son was killed in a hunting accident on the Isle of Wight. This resulted in eldest daughter Sarah's inheriting the estate, and she moved in with her husband Captain Allaway. After Allaway died in 1875, Sarah moved to Tenby, before the property was sold in 1876.