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Full Project Title: 'St Fagans Castle: its Architectural and Landscape History'

Doctoral Researcher: Bethan Scorey

Supervised by: Dr Shaun Evans and Dr Lowri Ann Rees

Research supported by: James Pantyfedwen Foundation and Welsh Historic Gardens Trust.

Bethan’s research project is a study of St Fagans Castle, the Grade I listed Elizabethan mansion in the village of St Fagans on the outskirts of Cardiff, now home to the National Museum of History. Her research looks primarily at the architectural history of the Castle, as well as the garden and landscape history of the 100-acre site, drawing on the history of its ownership, occupation, and family histories to explore developments from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

The opening chapter of Bethan’s thesis focuses on the construction of St Fagans Castle by Dr John Gibbon, a self-made gentleman-lawyer from Pentrebane near St Fagans village, who acquired the manor and lordship in the 1560s. Bethan will explore the medieval history of the village and attempt to establish what was on the site when Gibbon purchased it, his motivations for building a mansion house, and the significance of the design, which would have been considered very modern house in a Glamorgan context. Following sections discuss the ownership and activity of the Lewis family of Y Fan, who purchased the mansion in 1616.

In the eighteenth century the mansion was acquired by the Windsor, later Windsor Clive, family. Bethan’s second chapter explores the mid-Victorian period at St Fagans, when the family took the mansion and grounds back in hand from their tenants, made significant improvements, and began visiting annually. Her final chapter focuses on the the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods when the fashionable Robert George Windsor Clive and his wife ‘Gay’ occupied the Castle each summer.

Bethan will also explore the relationship between St Fagans Castle and other country houses in the respective families’ estates, from Y Fan in Caerphilly to Hewell Grange in Worcestershire, in the context of changing architectural fashions and family demands.

Recent activity: Paper entitled ‘Investigating St Fagans, an Elizabethan Mansion in Cardiff’ at the New Insights into C16 and C17 British Architecture Conference, January 2024, Society of Antiquaries; paper entitled ‘Three Generation of Windsor Clive Women at St Fagans Castle’ at Women’s Archive Wales Annual Conference, October 2023, St Fagans National Museum of History.