Nantgwyllt House

Nantgwyllt House was demolished and now lies under Caban Coch Reservoir.

The original house of the Powell family was of grey stone, long and low and with a semi-circular window in its pediment. The walls were of immense thickness and inside was a broad staircase of massive oak. During the winter the house was bitterly cold and damp due to the wooded slope to its south shutting out the sunshine.

Nantgwyllt House is believed to have been built after the land was purchased by the Howell family in 1579. Howell Powell acquired Nantgwyllt in 1624. Thomas Lewis married Howell’s daughter Elizabeth.

A new mansion was built at some stage and the original house may have been incorporated into the mansion. The house was once owned by the late Thomas Lewis Lloyd Esquire.

The famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Harriet stayed here in 1812 and fell in love with the place. He tried hard to lease the house but failed to do so.

Herbert Vaughan wrote that Shelley left a memento to himself at Nantgwyllt, using a diamond ring to inscribe his name and the date into a glass window pane. The glass pane was removed by Miss Gertrude Lewis Lloyd, who kept it in her room at Llwyn Madog. I wonder if the pane of glass still survives today.

Emmeline Lewis Lloyd, second daughter of Thomas Lloyd Lewis, was born on 18/11/1827. She was one of the first women to climb in the Alps.

Nantgwyllt House served as accommodation for some of the senior engineers during the construction of the dams and was still standing in 1903. Sadly, the mansion was demolished sometime before the completion of the dams.

When the water level of Caban Coch Reservoir drops low enough during prolonged dry spells, the garden walls are exposed along with a couple of stone bridges and the footprint of Nantgwyllt House and other buildings.

Map Ref SN915 627