Plas Dinam Story

In 1872-73 Plas Dinam was built for Captain Offley Crewe-Read, the deputy lieutenant of the county and JP, and a descendant of the ancient Crewe family of Flintshire and Cheshire. The family did not ever actually live at Plas Dinam, and sold it in 1884 when they ran into financial difficulty.

In 1884 Plas Dinam was bought by David Davies of Llandinam. Despite having been born into a humble family who were tenant farmers for the Crewe-Reads, David Davies went on to make a considerable fortune in the industrial revolution in Wales. He built several railway lines and then turned to coal in the Rhondda Valley, going on the build Barry docks which became the busiest port in the world at that time.

David Davies had built his own mansion Broneirion in 1884, which still stands on the opposite side of the valley to Plas Dinam. He later bought Plas Dinam for his only son Edward, who lived in the house along with his wife and three children, David, Gwendoline and Margaret. Edward died in 1898 at the age of 48, suffering from insomnia and perhaps the stresses of inheriting such large businesses and wealth.

David Davies grandson, also David Davies, followed the lead set by his grandfather politically. From 1906 to 1929, he was the Liberal Member of Parliament for Montgomeryshire. He fought in the First World War and later was an active supporter of the League of Nations. In 1932 he established the New Commonwealth Society for ‘the promotion of international law and order’, writing several books on the right use of force, notably The Problem of the Twentieth Century(1930). David Davies also set up Tuberculosis hostels and helped eradicate the disease, built the Temple of Peace in Cardiff and did many other good works.  In 1932 he was made Lord Davies in recognition of his contribution to society .

David’s sisters, Gwendoline and Margaret, are widely known for their large early collection of French 19th century Realist, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting which they bequeathed to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff in 1952 and 1963. They lived at nearby Gregynog Hall (another member of Historic Houses).  Their collection includes paintings by Renoir, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh and Cézanne, and sculptures by Rodin Degas and others.  The Davies Collection is a remarkable testament to the sisters’ incredibly avant-garde appreciation of art, both as female collectors and as supporters of, at that time, a largely disregarded style.

In 1910, David married his first wife Amy Penman and had two children David Michael Davies (known as Mike) and Marguerite Elizabeth. Mike married Ruth Eldrydd Dugdale and had two sons. Mike became the second Lord Davies upon the death of his father.

For a short period during the second world war Gordonstoun School was relocated from Scotland to Plas Dinam to ensure the safety of the schoolboys. The house also housed an Agricultural College for a period after the war.

Lady (Eldrydd) Davies, wife of the second Lord Davies, effectively inherited the house when her husband Mike was killed in action in Holland in 1944. Her father in law had died earlier in the same year. Raising two sons by herself at Llwynderw in the village, she took the momentous decision to move back into Plas Dinam in 1956 with her two sons David and Jonathan.

David had succeeded as the third Lord Davies just days prior to his fourth birthday and following his mother’s death in 1966 he took up residence at Plas Dinam. He married Bea in 1972 and they bought up their 4 children at Plas Dinam – Eldrydd, Daniel, Lucy and Ben.

In 2001 a fire devastated the top floor of the house, and over a period of 2 years parts of the roof and house were rebuilt and much of the house was redecorated.

In 2011 the current Lord and Lady Davies decided to “downsize” and moved out. Eldrydd and her family decided to move back to the area from Australia to run Plas Dinam as a business. They arrived a few days before their first holiday booking in June 2012.

Initially living in part of the house, Eldrydd and Tyson ran Plas Dinam as a holiday let. The first improvement to be made was to renovate the “flat” which was on the first floor in one wing of the house. This was converted back to bedrooms and bathrooms. Following planning permission by CADW, other bedrooms were changed to bathrooms increasing Plas Dinam’s bathroom count from 5 to 10.

More upgrades followed including decorating, new furniture and adding a small museum. Replacing the oil boiler with a biomass boiler fed by wood chip from the local estate was a key improvement in 2013. Tyson discovered the old bread oven in an undercover area outside the back door. His clever idea of using it as a pizza oven was, and still is, a huge success, with many guests creating and cooking amazingly tasty wood fired pizzas!

A wedding license was granted in 2013 and a few weddings a year were welcome additions to bookings. These generally hired marquees or tipis on the big lawn for the reception. Eldrydd and Tyson saw opportunity in using the glass roofed stable area as an alternative to a marquee and in 2014-15 undertook repairs and renovations in order to make it suitable. The first Stables wedding was in August 2015, and it proved to be a big success! After this the number of weddings grew quickly. Other facilities such as loos and a catering kitchen were added in 2017, with a shoot using the Stables for shoot lunches during the shoot season.

In 2017 Tyson started work renovating the Lodge in order to provide further accommodation for wedding guests. The next project was the Chauffeurs loft above the Stables which housed all the estate files, accounts and letters from 1900 to 1956. Eldrydd and Tyson realised that archiving all the files was a task too big so these were donated to the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth (coincidentally built by Edward Davies) for archiving, where they joined the rest of the archives of both David Davies’. The low ceilings and beams were raised and the space seemingly expanded! Tyson converted it to a kitchen, 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and work was completed in early 2020.

2020 saw a large increase in the number of wedding bookings so a dedicated wedding manager joined the team and the glass roof of the stables was replaced with non-leaky, see through glass. However, the pandemic hit and all weddings that year were postponed or cancelled. Holiday bookings in the Lodge and the Loft became about the only source of income!

2021 started on a similar note, but finally, from June 2021, weddings and larger gatherings were able to take place. The purchase of a large stretch marquee allowed for outdoor ceremonies and the outdoor nature of the Stables meant that we were back to business, though going from nothing for 20 months to flat out was a huge challenge. 

Numbers of bookings have grown each year since, allowing continuing improvements to the house and grounds and a growing team.