Margam Castle,

Margam Margam is a suburb and community of Port Talbot in the Welsh county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales, close to junction 39 of the M4 motorway. The community had a population of 3,017 in 2011; the built up area being larger and extending into ...

Port Talbot Port Talbot (, ) is a town and community in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales, situated on the east side of Swansea Bay, approximately from Swansea. The Port Talbot Steelworks covers a large area of land which dominates the south ...

, Wales, is a late Georgian country house built for

Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot FRS (10 May 1803 – 17 January 1890) was a Welsh landowner, industrialist and Liberal politician. He developed his estate at Margam near Swansea as an extensive ironworks, served by railways and a port, which was ...

. Designed by Thomas Hopper, the castle was constructed in a

Tudor Revival Tudor Revival architecture (also known as mock Tudor in the UK) first manifested itself in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture ...

style over a five-year period, from 1830 to 1835. The site had been occupied for some 4,000 years. A

Grade I listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

, the castle is now in the care of

Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council is the local authority for the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, one of the 22 principal areas of Wales. The council was controlled by the Labour Party from its creation in 1996 until 2022, when Plaid ...

History

The Margam estate was occupied in the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...

, and the remains of a

hill fort A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...

from that period, Mynydd-y-Castell, stand north of the castle. After the

Norman Invasion of Wales The Norman invasion of Wales began shortly after the Norman conquest of England under William the Conqueror, who believed England to be his birthright. Initially (1067–1081), the invasion of Wales was not undertaken with the fervour and purpose ...

Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester Robert FitzRoy, 1st Earl of Gloucester (c. 1090 – 31 October 1147David Crouch, 'Robert, first earl of Gloucester (b. c. 1090, d. 1147)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 200Retrieved ...

, and Lord of Glamorgan, granted the lands at Margam to

Clairvaux Abbey Clairvaux Abbey (, ; la, Clara Vallis) was a Cistercian monastery in Ville-sous-la-Ferté, from Bar-sur-Aube. The original building, founded in 1115 by St. Bernard, is now in ruins; the present structure dates from 1708. Clairvaux Abbey was ...

, for the establishment of a new Cistercian monastery which became

Margam Abbey Margam Abbey ( cy, Abaty Margam) was a Cistercian monastery, located in the village of Margam, a suburb of modern Port Talbot in Wales. History The abbey was founded in 1147 as a daughter house of Clairvaux by Robert, Earl of Gloucester ...

. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries from 1536, the Margam estate was bought by Sir Rice (Rhys) Mansel. His descendants built a substantial Tudor mansion in the park. In the 18th century, this mansion was demolished, and the family returned to one of their earlier ancestral homes, Penrice Castle, Thomas Mansel Talbot (1747–1813), commissioning

Anthony Keck Anthony Keck (1726–1797) was an 18th-century English architect with an extensive practice in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and South Wales. Life Keck was born at Randwick, Gloucestershire in 1726 He designed in the "austere ...

to build a new mansion next to the castle ruins. Keck was also employed at Margan, which Talbot turned into a

pleasure garden A pleasure garden is a park or garden that is open to the public for recreation and entertainment. Pleasure gardens differ from other public gardens by serving as venues for entertainment, variously featuring such attractions as concert halls ...

, using Keck to design an enormous

orangery An orangery or orangerie was a room or a dedicated building on the grounds of fashionable residences of Northern Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries where orange and other fruit trees were protected during the winter, as a very lar ...

succeeded his father in 1813 at the age of ten. Enriched by the development of

in the early 19th century, and after making a

Grand Tour The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tut ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

as a young man, Talbot returned to south Wales and from 1830 re-established Margam as his main seat. A new house, Margam Castle was designed in a Tudor Gothic style by the

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Thomas Hopper (1776–1856), with

Edward Haycock Snr Edward Haycock Sr. (29 July 1790 – 20 December 1870) was an English architect working in the West Midlands and in central and southern Wales in the late Georgian and early Victorian periods. Biography Haycock was the grandson of William Hay ...

(1790–1870) as supervisory architect, and designer of parts of the interior and exterior of the house, the stables, terraces and lodges. Talbot also took a keen interest in the project, encouraging his architects to borrow elements from

Lacock Abbey Lacock Abbey in the village of Lacock, Wiltshire, England, was founded in the early 13th century by Ela, Countess of Salisbury, as a nunnery of the Augustinian order. The abbey remained a nunnery until the suppression of Roman Catholic inst ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

(ancestral home of the Talbots and home to his cousin

William Henry Fox Talbot William Henry Fox Talbot FRS FRSE Royal Astronomical Society, FRAS (; 11 February 180017 September 1877) was an English scientist, inventor, and photography pioneer who invented the Salt print, salted paper and calotype processes, precursors t ...

) and

Melbury House Melbury House is an English country house in the parish of Melbury Sampford near Evershot, Dorset, This Grade I listed mansion is the home of the Honorable Mrs Charlotte Townshend, a major landowner in east Dorset, through her mother, Theresa ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of , ...

(home of his mother's family, the Fox-Strangways,

Earls of Ilchester Earl of Ilchester is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1756 for Stephen Fox, 1st Baron Ilchester, who had previously represented Shaftesbury in Parliament. He had already been created Baron Ilchester, of Ilchester in ...

). William Henry Fox Talbot was a frequent visitor to Margam, and the castle featured as an image in some of his early

photographic Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

experiments. Margam's links with photography also include being the location of the earliest known Welsh photograph, a daguerreotype of the castle taken on 9 March 1841 by the Reverend Calvert Richard Jones. After the death of

Emily Charlotte Talbot Emily Charlotte Talbot (1 August 1840 – 21 September 1918) was an heiress and industrialist of South Wales, the daughter of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot. She was born in Belgrave Square, the centrepiece of Belgravia in London. Following the ...

, the daughter of its first owner, the castle passed to her nephew and continued to be used by the Talbot family until 1941, when it was sold.

David Evans-Bevan Sir David Martyn Evans-Bevan (4 March 1902 – 9 September 1973) was a wealthy industrialist from south Wales. He was the owner of the Vale of Neath Brewery, and purchased Margam Castle from the Talbot family. David Evans-Bevan was the son of Evan ...

, who bought it, found it too large to live in, but could not find any public organisation interested in taking it on, and it fell into disrepair. For many years it belonged to the local authority, but was not open to the public. In 1977, a fire caused substantial damage, and it was only after this that a restoration project began in earnest. Today Margam Castle is in the care of

Reputed hauntings

The castle is reputedly haunted. In 2019,

paranormal Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Not ...

investigators from American television series ''

Paranormal Lockdown ''Paranormal Lockdown'' is a paranormal reality television series that was executively produced by Nick Groff, formerly of ''Ghost Adventures''. The series follows Nick Groff and fellow paranormal researcher Katrina Weidman (formerly of ''Parano ...

'' visited the castle; the resulting investigations became an episode of the show's third season.

Architecture

Margam Castle is a

. Its service courtyard is listed Grade II*, as are the terrace walls and screen, while the steps in the terraced garden are listed Grade II.

References

Sources

External links

* {{Commons category inline Houses completed in 1840 Grade I listed buildings in Neath Port Talbot Grade I listed houses Mock castles in Wales Castles in Neath Port Talbot Tourist attractions in Neath Port Talbot Country houses in Wales