NEWTON HOUSE, SOMETIMES DYNEVOR CASTLE OR PLAS DINEFWR
Site Details
- NPRN
- 17603
- Map Reference
- SN62SW
- Grid Reference
- SN6143222531
- Unitary (Local) Authority
- Carmarthenshire
- Old County
- Carmarthenshire
- Community
- Llandeilo
- Type of Site
- MANSION
- Broad Class
- Domestic
- Period
- Post Medieval
Site Description
A grand mansion set amidst extensive parland, grounds and gardens (NPRN 266170).
Newton house is a grotesque Victorian Venetian Gothick pile with steeply roofed skewed turrets at the corners. It masks a grand restoration mansion built in 1660-70 and illustrated in contemporary oil paintings. This replaced a late sixteenth century mansion, itself a replacement of or an addition to, the first Newton House, mentioned in 1445. Newton was a borough associated with Dinefwr Castle (NPRN 425). It is first mentioned in 1297 and maintained some form of corporate life up to 1651. The early Newton House is described in a survey of 1532 which mentions a large hall, chapel and tower. The seventeenth century paintings show the new mansion set amid grand formal gardens and a newly established park. It seems likely that its construction involved the removal of the borough that was the setting for the earlier house(s).
The seventeenth century house is a three storey building set above vaulted cellars. It originally showed a symmetrical seven bay rendered facade with a central doorway. It was refitted in the earlier eighteenth century and many of the internal features date to this period, although the staircase is seventeenth century. An engraving of 1773 shows embryonic corner turrets and modest battlements. The house now has an open parkland setting. In 1856-7 the house was remodelled to its present form, being entirely encased in grey snecked stone and suffering the addition of a massive porch. Formal gardens were laid out around the house (see NPRN 23037-8).
To the south of the house various offices and outbuildings are laid out around two courts, the nearest replacing outbuildings depicted in the seventeenth century (NPRN 404064).
Sources: NMR Site File
Moore in Archaeologia Cambrensis 143 for 1994 (1996), 204-235
CADW Register of Parks & Gardens in Wales: Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion & Pembrokeshire (2002), 68-73
CADW Listed Buildings Database (11098)
John Wiles 09.11.07
