Great Estates: a castle moved 400 yards, brick-by-brick, for a better view
When you climb the spiral staircase to the turret at the top of the tower at Stradey Castle the views are breathtaking, stretching across 1,700 acres of rural Wales and out to sea. It’s no wonder David Lewis moved his stately home brick by brick to a higher elevation in 1855. The family now calls its former location, 400 yards further south, the “wilderness lowland”.
Grade II*-listed Stradey Castle, on the western edge of Llanelli in Carmarthenshire, is one of the last privately held grand homes in South Wales. It was originally owned by businessman Sir Edward Vaughan Mansel, who went to Fleet Prison in London in the 1770s for failing to pay his debts. His solicitor, Thomas Lewis, managed to get him out and Sir Edward’s daughter was so grateful that when she died childless in 1808 she bequeathed the entire 3,000-acre estate to him.
It was Thomas’s son David, the family iconoclast, who rebuilt the castle on higher ground. He was a director of South Wales Railway and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, its chief engineer, was a frequent visitor to the estate.
The property was extended by David’s son, Charles, who added the tower, billiard room and artist’s studio, renaming it Stradey Castle. “My great-grandfather was a very serious artist and collector,” says Patrick Mansel Lewis, 63, the current custodian. “He was a visionary. Even though he brought the estate to the brink of financial ruin, he made it more attractive.”
When Patrick, who grew up at Stradey with his two sisters, inherited the estate after his father’s death in 2009, these financial problems became his own. An architect told him he would have to replace all the lead in the roof above the hall and the asphalt on the 1874 extension.
Even though he brought the estate to the brink of financial ruin, he made it more attractive
It wasn’t really a surprise. “One of my enduring childhood memories is the sight of buckets and bowls distributed strategically around the staircase in the hall after a heavy rainfall.” But he had also learnt that the whole house had to be rewired. “It was the double whammy,” he says – not least because Patrick, a priest at the nearby St Peter’s Church, and his wife, Claire, a relationship counsellor, didn’t have the income to pay for it.
“For the last 20 years of my father’s life, maintenance and commitment to repairs at Stradey ground to a halt,” says Patrick. “I was fortunate in that I have been able to sell some assets, such as artwork bought by my great-grandfather and some non-profitable properties on the estate.” He’s lucky to have a home at all, after a fire broke out in one of the bedrooms when the sun’s rays reflected in a magnifying mirror on the dressing table. “Half an hour later and the house would have been destroyed,” says Patrick. But the flames were extinguished in time and this architectural gem was saved.
Constructed from Pennant stone quarried from the Rhondda Valley, Stradey is a hotchpotch of styles, built in the Gothic Revival movement with Scottish baronial castellations and Elizabethan-style panelling. The 11-bedroom castle packs a punch with its massive oak staircase and huge vaulted ceiling.
The 18th-century Rococo-style double sitting room and connecting third room are all in a row, giving a Versailles-inspired distorted perspective as the door casements to each decrease in size, creating the illusion of endless space. There are grand fireplaces, flagstone floors, paintings, a library of leather-bound books, an art studio, three pianos, a zither and a harp.
It was an idyllic childhood. I learnt to drive a tractor in the fields when I was 12
Stradey’s grand façade and handsome stone terrace hide the house’s battle scars. The Royal Corps of Signals were billeted there during the Second World War and one of the paintings from the family collection still has a hole from a bayonet stab by a drunken soldier.
Patrick enjoyed a Swallows and Amazons upbringing at Stradey. He and his sisters roamed free in the vast grounds, rowed their boat on the lake, helped with the harvest and played on the beach at the end of the garden. “It was an idyllic childhood,” says Patrick. “I learnt to drive a tractor in the fields when I was 12 and was given cider as a reward for throwing bales of straw on the trailer.”
His father’s natural methods and aversion to pesticides made him a “pioneer of organic farming”, Patrick says. This gave Sir David Mansel Lewis much to talk about with the Prince of Wales, and the two met frequently. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh came to Stradey during the Queen’s Jubilee year in 1977, lunching with the Mansel Lewis family in the panelled dining room.
It is these memories and the castle’s unusual history that Patrick and Claire hope to pass on to the eldest of their three sons, Edward. “Happily we are in a much stronger position now financially than nine years ago and I hope that when our son takes over we will have enough to retire,” says Claire.
In the meantime, Patrick and Claire conduct heritage tours around Stradey and hire out the house as a venue for wedding receptions, as a film location and for religious retreats. “They bring a bit of money and blessing,” Patrick says of these spiritual visitors. “When they come here and pray, money comes in. Theologically, for me, the issue about money is the E word – E standing for enough to pay the bills.”
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