Tredegar House
| Tredegar House | |
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Main entrance to Tredegar House
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| General information | |
| Architectural style | Carolean |
| Location | 51°33′41.66″N 3°1′45″W / 51.5615722°N 3.02917°WCoordinates: 51°33′41.66″N 3°1′45″W / 51.5615722°N 3.02917°W |
| Country |
 United Kingdom
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| Construction started | 1664 |
| Completed | 1672 |
| Client | William Morgan (of Machen and Tredegar) |
| Management | National Trust |
| Website | |
| National Trust: Tredegar House | |
Tredegar House (Welsh: Tŷ Tredegar) is a 17th-century Charles II-era country house mansion in Coedkernew, at the western edge of the city of Newport, Wales. For over five hundred years it was home to the Morgan family, later Lords Tredegar; one of the most powerful and influential families in the area. Described as "The grandest and most exuberant country house" in Monmouthshire and one of the "outstanding houses of the Restoration period in the whole of Britain", the mansion stands in a reduced landscaped garden of 90 acres (0.36 km2) (0.14 of a square mile) forming the non-residential part of Tredegar Park. The property became a Grade I listed building on 3 March 1952 and has been under the care of the National Trust since March 2012.
The Welsh name of the house is nowadays "Tŷ Tredegar", but this is somewhat unauthentic and is obviously a translation of "Tredegar House". The name is merely "Tredegar" historically, or to cite an earlier form (1550) "Tredegyr" (the form Tredegar shows the influence of the local Gwentian dialect of Welsh). A form more in keeping with Welsh naming practice, instead of tŷ, would be would be Plas Tredegar or Plas Tredegyr but it does not seem that this was ever in use either.
Tredegyr is "farmstead of Tegyr" (tre, a form of tref = farmstead) + soft mutation (t > d) + Tegyr. A Brythonic form *Tecorix (fair king) might be supposed, as such a form would have resulted in Welsh "Tegyr" following normal processes in the development of Welsh from Brythonic. There is a similar name in Denbighshire – Botegyr, meaning "Tegyr’s dwelling", < Bod Degyr < (bod = dwelling) + (soft mutation t > d) + (Tegyr).
The earliest surviving part of the building dates back to the late 15th century. The house was originally built of stone and was very grand indeed, grand enough for Charles I to visit. Between 1664 and 1672, however, William Morgan decided to rebuild the house on a larger scale from red brick, at that time a rare building material in Wales. The name of Inigo Jones has been linked with the building – but this is not confirmed by sources, and it seems we will never know who the architect was. In his 1882 publication, local historian Octavius Morgan provides a plan of an intricate garden maze which was in place prior to the 1660s improvements and which probably dated from the time of Queen Elizabeth I.
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Wikipedia