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Hidden Histories: episode five
Episode Five looks at a seventeenth-century mansion that has disappeared at Llandeilo, investigates how Wales was defended against a potential Nazi invasion and searches for a lost castle of the Welsh princes.
A good sample with complete sapwood from the oak roof-trusses gave a felling date of the summer of 1664.
Victorian Newton House
Newton House was thoroughly rebuilt in Victorian baronial style in 1856, but it contains surviving features from the seventeenth century. The double-pile plan, with a spine wall between entrance hall and great stair is characteristic of the Restoration and some spectacular plaster ceilings survive. The National Trust and the Royal Commission decided that the only certain way to establish the date of the house was through tree-ring dating. A good sample with complete sapwood from the oak roof-trusses gave a felling date of the summer of 1664. This shows that, even if Newton House was started by Edward Rice, who has traditionally been though to have built it, it can only have been completed by his brother Walter, who inherited the estate in 1664 and lived for another ten years. Recently discovered documents reveal that Walter Rice died in debt owing at least £3,500; his fortune had presumably been squandered on building Newton House.
Discover more about Newton House on the .
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From the archive
The Story of Welsh
The 1536 Act of Union signalled problems for the Welsh language.
