Plas Dulas, Llanddulas - A rare video from the 1990s скачать в хорошем качестве

Plas Dulas, Llanddulas - A rare video from the 1990s

Even in 2021, there are still forgotten houses and gardens, hidden amongst the Welsh countryside. Many are located along the North Wales coast, made famous during the nineteenth-century for sea bathing and the allure of resort towns such as Llandudno, Colwyn Bay and Rhyl. The beauty and appeal of the region attracted one particular woman, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Easthope M.P. Easthope was one of the wealthiest men in Victorian Britain, owning the influential Morning Chronicle, employing Charles Dickens in his first journalistic job. Elizabeth moved to the area during the late 1840s, with her married sister and family. A farm of late eighteenth-century origins was purchased, located to the south-west of the historic core of Llanddulas, on the steep slopes of Pen-y-Gopa, on lands historically owned by two great estates, Wynnstay and Garthewin. The views must have been breathtaking, taking in a similar aspect as nearby Gwrych Castle. Work began almost immediately on erecting a large early Victorian villa at the north-end of the farm, nearly doubling it in size. Elizabeth must have caught the fever of property development as she went on to extend and enlarge two further large houses in Llanddulas. Elizabeth and her descendents continued to develop Plas Dulas, and there can be seen at least three distinct phases of garden activity. Firstly, Elizabeth appears to have laid out the essence of the garden with the planting of trees, excavation of terraces, and enclosing the kitchen garden with a high, crenellated park wall, identical to the estate walling at nearby Gwrych Castle. This was supplemented by her brother-in-law, Andrew Doyle and his son, John Andrew Doyle up to the mid-1870s. The eighteenth-century barn at Plas Dulas was converted for use as stabling and a series of greenhouses were erected on a terrace south of the house. In 1907, the estate passed to a first cousin, Professor Richard MacGillivray Dawkins, internationally famous archaeologist and author, who through his extensive travels and excavations in the Mediterranean experimented with plant importation during the early twentieth century at Plas Dulas. He excavated widely, at Palaikastro, the Kamares Cave, and the Lasithi plateau in Crete, and at Artemis Orthia near Sparta. These archaeological investigations were interspersed with essentially linguistic and ‘ethnological’ studies on contemporary Greek language and folklore (especially on Karpathos). Dawkins escaped to Plas Dulas from his academic activities, experimenting with plant importation and cultivation, as well as displaying archaeological antiquities within the garden. It was au courant within academic circles, especially those which included the wealthy, to develop fragments of their excavated sites on their own lands. Arthur Evans, for example, famous for unearthing the Minoan palace of Knossos, built an archaeologically influenced garden at his Oxfordshire home, Boars Hill. Allusions to the gardens at Plas Dulas being a theoretical attempt to recreate a classical Greek garden in North Wales are provided by Dawkins himself through his extensive letters that survive in Oxford. Also, stylistically, comparisons can be made with the gardens at British School at Athens, of which Dawkins was director. Evelyn Waugh, a contemporary of Dawkins, is said to have written part of Decline and Fall at Plas Dulas. After Dawkins died in the 1950s, the house was bought by an Hungarian lady, Miss Fekete. She was a Christian missionary and used Plas Dulas as a Christian retreat. When she died in the late-1990s the house had fallen into a poor state because she was quite elderly and couldn't look after it properly. She died intestate, so there was a big hunt to find her heirs. In the meantime, a young couple from Rhyl moved in and tried to exert squatters' rights. They planned to restore the house as a community centre. It would have been ideal for the community to use. It's really what's needed in Llanddulas; a central attraction for people to meet, especially since the A55 split the village in two. They began to fix the roof and the windows, but were evicted when some distant relatives were found. The house was sold and it's now in the hands of a developer who chose to destroy as much of the site as possible. Plas Dulas’s rare plant collection has been decimated and a huge number of trees, collected over a hundred-year period have been dwindled down despite Tree Preservation Orders. A planning application to demolish the entire site to make way for a housing estate was turned down by the local authority late November. Pleas were made to Cadw to list both the house and garden but it was turned down, and in February 2010 bulldozers took down the eighteenth-century barn and chapel, as well as the orchid house and park wall. Fortunately, the lesser horseshoe bat saved the main house but it still stands ruined to this day.