PLAS TAN YR ALLT COUNTRY HOUSE B&B
Romantic Stay with Percy Shelley at Porthmadog
The Regency country life of the Romantic Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley has been brought back to the present by new owners of the Plas Tan Yr Allt Country House in North Wales near Porthmadog, allowing a stay in the idyllic landscape that inspired some of the poet’s romantic political and incendiary epic early work “Queen Mab” The original house was built by philanthropist, industrial visionary industrialist and politician William Alexander Madocks. Perched high on a hillside on forty acres of ancient woodlands with spectacular vista views over the Glaslyn Estuary to the Edward I “Iron Ring” castle of Harlech (see Harlech Castle), the renovated luxurious Regency era Plas Tan-Yr-Allt, affectionately and more easily referred to as “Tanny” by its new owners, is the epitome of country living and an idyllic location of exploring the beautiful North Wales coast.
Porthmadog, (actually Madocks Port in Welsh dialect) is the gateway to the stunning Glaslyn Valley at the southern edge of the Vale of Ffestiniog which stretches to the peaks of the Snowdonia National Park, and the UKs highest point, Mt. Snowdon. This scenic and historic region is home to the steam heritage Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railway’s (see Ffestiniog Steam Railway), which carry tourists from the north Wales coast through the incredible landscapes of the green and rocky escarpment countryside. The Italianate village of Portmeirion designed by architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, famous now as the filming location of the “The Prisoner” television show of the 1960s is also just a short distance away (see Portmeiron Village).
William Madocks was intended for the law, but on his father death he devoted part of his inheritance to the purchase of Dolmelynllyn, Merioneth, which he turned into “ferme ornée” an inventive form of estate that was a farm ornamented by designed gardens, popular in the 18th Century, even copied and taken to extremes by Marie Antionette at Versailles and the palaces of Europe.
With the rest of his inheritance, Madocks purchased the neighboring lands of the Penmorfa estate in Caernarvonshire, which he made the basis for an extraordinary experiment in regional planning. Blocking the sea with an embankment he reclaimed a thousand acres of marsh land for scientific agriculture, built the village of Tremadog (Madocks Town) and the port to trade with the packet ships from Ireland, the wool from Ireland and slate from Wales. He established a clothing factory in partnership with Gwillym Lloyd Wardle, who had gained lands in Caernarvonshire through marriage. Madocks’ projects came to be called ‘the wonder of Wales’, but his efforts nearly brought him to ruin, until he, too, found a widowed heiress.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, just recently expelled from Oxford College for the publishing of his treatise “On The Necessity of Atheism” took up a residence for a time in 1812 and 1813, along with his first wife, as a tenant at the Madocks House. Shelley was fascinated by Madocks’ plan for what he envisioned as a utopian society where man’s toil would be taken over by the new machines of the industrial age, and all might live and contemplate life in garden settings. The landscape and concepts formed part of the inspiration the poet’s battle of fairies poem “Queen Mab” which he finished while lodging on the property, taking a note from Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”, the earlier romantic poetical ode to Elizabethan politics also inspired while sitting in garden (see Lismore Castle Gardens).
But the young romantic aristocrat idealist came up against the hard scrabble neighbors of North Wales, who didn’t care for his anti-religious views and perhaps grating intellectual manner, one of whom reportedly took a shot at him through the drawing room window of the house. The assassination attempt failed and Shelley left Wales, never to return, and went on to his literary fame and his tragic love story and second marriage to Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, where Madocks ideas also found an influence on the genesis of that vision of scientific advancement turned to horror.
Other noted residents of the house included Elizabeth Billington, a popular opera singer of the era, and Mary Hilda Greaves, the aunt of “visionary” architect Sir Clough Willams-Ellis, who was also inspired by Madocks’ ideas, and designed the unitary utopian concept village of Portmerion.
The Bed & Breakfast accommodation just opened as of February 2017, making stays in the bedrooms named for Shelley, Madocks, and Miss Hilly, an opportunity to be surrounded by history in cush and comfort, but keep an eye out for Shelley’s Ghost. © Bargain Travel Europe
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