Stories Of Survival

Dedicated owners have kept the glories of two houses alive–a Nash masterpiece in Pembrokeshire and a Queen Anne hunting lodge in North Yorkshire

- Penny Churchill

ONLY three of Nash’s Welsh country houses still stand, of which Grade I- listed Ffynone, set on high ground near Boncath, Pembrokeshire, is the most westerly—and the most spectacular. However, it’s not for nothing that the original Welsh name of the estate was Ffynnonau, meaning ‘wells’, which abound in the area. Over the years, Welsh water and Welsh weather have been Ffynone’s greatest enemy.

According to the architectural historian Richard Haslam (Country Life, November 12, 1992), ‘that [Ffynone] is still there is due to the persistence of Lord and Lady Lloyd George, who recently had to tackle a legacy of dry rot to save it from the fate of the great majority of country houses in that far peninsula’. Since the Lloyd Georges’ day, a further handful of dedicated owners have expended time and money to ensure the survival of this remarkable house.

They include its present owner, who bought the house, set in 34 acres of landscaped gardens and parkland, in 2017 and embarked on a further programme of restoration and refurbishment. Unfortunately, his business is now taking him abroad, hence the re-sale at short notice of Nash’s Welsh masterpiece at a guide price of £1.95 million; the contents of the house are included in the sale. ‘The owner has done much of the boring, unseen work that needed to be done, such as installing damp courses and so on. However, there is still more to do and what the house needs now is an enthusiastic owner who will live there full-time,’ says Lindsay Cuthill of Savills (020–7016 3820).

In the late 1700s, a vogue for small, sporting Welsh landowners to build grand country houses in picturesque settings—‘elegant, perhaps, although often beyond their means,’ Mr Haslam observes—led to a series of commissions for Nash in the three south-western counties of Wales and in old Monmouthshire, between 1785 and 1795.