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Original Text (Annotation: WAW023854 / 1328675)
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Penrice Castle Estate
The Estate came into the family’s ownership after the Norman conquest of the Gower peninsular in the twelfth century. One of the Norman knights was given the land around what is now Penrice village for his part in the conquest and took the name of de Penrice. Although the Estate has passed by marriage several times and suffered a partial break up in the 1950s, the core of the land around Penrice Castle and the village has remained in the family ever since - for twenty nine generations.
In the mid eighteenth century, however, the male line failed and the Penrice Estate passed by marriage to the Talbot family of Laycock Abbey in Wiltshire. By the 1770s the Estates belonged to the young Thomas Mansel Talbot, newly returned from the Grand Tour. He decided to build himself a neo-classical villa
at Penrice and this was completed in the mid 1770s to the design of the architect Anthony Keck.
The pleasure gardens and orangery, as well as the folly gatehouse known as the Towers, were added in the 1790s. The terrace around the house was built by Thomas Talbot’s granddaughter, Emily Charlotte Talbot, in the 1890s.
The late Georgian and Victorian sections of the house were demolished in the 1960s to be replaced by a paved rose garden.
The Mansion is Grade 1 listed: Cadw Building ID: 11531
source: Thomas Methuen-Campbell at http://penricecastle.co.uk/penrice-estate-history
2002 image of mansion by Robert Edwards shows how much was demolished by comparing to the BFA images. Copyright Robert Edwards, licenced by Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licence.
Source: [[File:Penrice Castle, Gower, Sth. Wales - geograph.org.uk - 119951.jpg]] '