Tregynon

Tregynon is a small village north of Newtown, and the reason to know about it is the estate next door.

Gregynog

The house looks like a great black-and-white timber-framed hall and is not. The Tudor core was encased in the nineteenth century in a concrete render scored and painted to imitate timber framing — an early and very unusual use of concrete, which makes the building of real interest to architectural historians for reasons that have nothing to do with what it appears to be.

The sisters

In 1920 Gwendoline and Margaret Davies bought Gregynog. They were granddaughters of David Davies of Llandinam, the sawyer's son who built Barry Docks, and they had inherited a great deal of coal money and a firm view about what to do with it.

They had already assembled one of the finest private art collections in Britain — Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Renoir, Manet, and a major holding of Rodin — much of it bought before 1914 when French Impressionism was still a matter of argument. It hung at Gregynog. It is now in the National Museum of Wales, which is why Cardiff has an Impressionist collection of that quality.

They also worked as Red Cross volunteers in France during the First World War, which is not incidental; what they did afterwards was shaped by it.

The Press

The Gregynog Press was founded here in 1922 with the intention of producing books of the highest possible quality in Wales, in both Welsh and English.

It printed on hand presses, with type set by hand, wood engravings by artists including Blair Hughes-Stanton and Agnes Miller Parker, and bindings by George Fisher of a standard that put it among the leading private presses in the world. Forty-two books were produced before 1940.

The press was revived in 1978 as Gwasg Gregynog and continues.

The music

From 1933 to 1938 the sisters ran an annual music festival at Gregynog, with Adrian Boult and Gustav Holst among those involved, and Ralph Vaughan Williams conducting.

That an internationally significant chamber music festival was running in a Montgomeryshire village in the 1930s says something about what private money and a firm intention could do in rural Wales.

The festival was revived in 1988 and runs each summer.

Now

The hall passed to the University of Wales in 1960 and operated as a residential conference and study centre. Since 2019 it has been run by an independent charitable trust, with the future of the estate a live local concern.

The grounds are open, with waymarked trails, and are notable for their trees, rhododendrons and a substantial wildlife interest.

The village

Tregynon itself is small, with a church, and sits on the road between Newtown and Llanfair Caereinion. Newtown is five miles south.