St Fagans

 St Fagans, Cardiff



St Fagans National Museum of History, commonly referred to as St Fagans, after the village in which it is located, is an award-winning open-air museum in Cardiff, Wales and the most popular heritage attraction in Wales. It chronicles the historical lifestyle, culture, and architecture of the Welsh people.



The Museum stands on the grounds of St Fagans Castle and gardens, a late 16th-century manor house donated along with 100 acres of beautiful parks and grounds, to the people of Wales by the Earl of Plymouth in 1948.


Scattered around the castle grounds are over 50 historic buildings including farmhouses, a row of ironworkers’ cottages, a medieval church, a Victorian school, a chapel and a splendid Workmen’s Institute, brought here from their original sites across Wales and reassembled. 



Abernodwydd farmhouse

Farmhouse window

Abernodwydd Farmhouse: This picturesque timber-framed farmhouse dates to 1678 and comes from Llangadfan, Powys (Montgomeryshire). It is typical of farmhouses throughout mid-Wales and the Marches, with a thatched roof, a floor of hard-packed earth, and walls made of hazel rods woven together and daubed with clay.


The gardens at St Fagans are among the best in Wales. We enjoyed strolling through the grounds on a pleasant Saturday morning.


The garden outside the manor house


St Fagans Castle is actually an Elizabethan manor house, probably begun by a wealthy lawyer named Dr John Gibbon around 1580. Dr Gibbon probably never lived in the house and the building as we see it today is the work of Edward Lewis of Y Fan, Caerphilly, and his wife Blanche, whose monogram EBL appear on interior fittings. The castle later passed to the Earls of Plymouth by marriage. It served for a time as a school before it was refurbished by Lord Robert Windsor as a family home once more in the 1880s.



There are few better ways to spend a perfectly agreeable morning - this rose captures the solitary beauty of St Fagans.


References

1. Museum Wales. 2022. Highlights - St Fagans National Museum of History. [online] Available at: <https://museum.wales/stfagans/about/> [Accessed 25 September 2022].
2. St Fagans National Museum of History. (2022, September 12). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Fagans_National_Museum_of_History


Location: St Fagans, Cardiff CF5 6XB, UK

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