Treowen (or Tre-owen) is an early 17th-century house in

Monmouthshire Monmouthshire ( ; ) is a Principal areas of Wales, county in the South East Wales, south east of Wales. It borders Powys to the north; the English counties of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to the north and east; the Severn Estuary to the s ...

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

, regarded as "the most important gentry house (of its date) in the county". It is located in open countryside within the

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

of Wonastow, about ½ mile (1 km) north-east of the village of Dingestow, and south-west of

Monmouth Monmouth ( or ; ) is a market town and community (Wales), community in Monmouthshire, Wales, situated on where the River Monnow joins the River Wye, from the Wales–England border. The population in the 2011 census was 10,508, rising from 8 ...

. After being used as a farmhouse for three centuries, Treowen now operates as a conference and functions venue and holds the annual Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival. It is a

Grade I listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

, and its gardens are designated Grade II on the

Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales The Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales is a heritage register of significant historic parks and gardens in Wales. It is maintained by Cadw, the historic environment service of the Welsh Government and ...

History

The house was built in about 1623–27 for William Jones, on the site of a 15th-century building. Tre-Owen at British Listed Buildings
Accessed 2 February 2012 Jones was briefly Member of Parliament for

in 1614, and was High Sheriff of Monmouthshire in 1615. He later inherited a fortune from his uncle, a trader in London. History, at Treowen website
. Accessed 2 February 2012 The Jones family moved out of the house in the 1670s, and let it out as a farmhouse. The building itself remained largely unchanged except for the removal of the top storey of the front half of the building in the 18th century. The house was sold to the sitting tenants in 1945, and continued to be used as a farmhouse until 1993. In 1960, the architectural historian Mark Girouard described the house in an article in '' Country Life'' (see quote box). The grounds of the house contain the remains of what is said to be a Tudor garden, including a rectangular earthwork on the north side of the house, a walkway and ornamental fishponds. The house is now used as a centre for conferences and holidays, and as a venue for weddings and other functions. It has also been used in the filming of TV programmes, including ''

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson (writer and producer), Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterre ...

''. Treowen website
Accessed 2 February 2012 Treowen is home to the annual Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival, held annually in January and July.

Architecture and description

The architectural historian John Newman considers Treowen the "most important 17th century gentry house" in Monmouthshire. It is constructed to a double-pile plan and built of

Old Red Sandstone Old Red Sandstone, abbreviated ORS, is an assemblage of rocks in the North Atlantic region largely of Devonian age. It extends in the east across Great Britain, Ireland and Norway, and in the west along the eastern seaboard of North America. It ...

, with caramel-coloured

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

blocks and green

Bridgend Bridgend (; or just , meaning "the end of the bridge on the Ogmore") is a town in the Bridgend County Borough of Wales, west of Cardiff and east of Swansea. The town is named after the Old Bridge, Bridgend, medieval bridge over the River Og ...

sandstone dressings. The house was very large by local standards of the time, and commanded extensive views. Newman wrote that "as originally built, the height of the house must have been as daunting as the sheer repetitiveness of its design". The originally austere façade was altered early in its history by the addition of a porch, with a "classical frontispiece of distressing crudity", and the Jones shield. Inside the house, the ground floor rooms rise to a height of . There is an oak panelled room with plaster ceiling and Jacobean fireplace, and a great staircase of 72 stairs, the earliest datable open-well staircase in

. This great, or banqueting, hall originally held "a handsomely-carved screen" but the Monmouthshire antiquarian Joseph Bradney, in his multi-volume '' A History of Monmouthshire from the Coming of the Normans into Wales down to the Present Time'', records that the screen was moved to Llanarth Court, another Herbert property, in 1898. Newman, writing in 2000, stated that the screen "is likely to be returned", a view which echoed that of Fred Hando who, writing 30 years earlier, stated; "the oak screen dated 1627 was transferred from Treowen where, in my opinion, it would be more happily housed". In his study, ''Houses of the Welsh Countryside'', (published 1975, second edition 1988), Peter Smith concludes Treowen "is indeed a very magnificent building". Tyerman and Warner, in Arthur Mee's multi-volume study '' The King's England'', describe it as "one of the finest houses in all Monmouthshire". Treowen is a

. The gardens, which contain remnants of the original Tudor terracing, are designated Grade II on the

References

Sources

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External links

{{Commons category, Treowen
Treowen House at Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of WalesTreowen Garden at Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales
Grade I listed buildings in Monmouthshire Registered historic parks and gardens in Monmouthshire Houses in Monmouthshire Country houses in Wales