Troy House is the only ducal mansion (just) in Wales, yet it is relatively unknown, despite its scale and remarkable historical associations. Ann Benson’s new book will raise awareness of the multi-stranded interest of this largely forgotten great house and its historic landscape.
Benson’s book clearly sets out the historic ownership, architecture and landscape setting of Troy House. The intriguing name, which apparently amused Charles i, is not a classicising fancy, but derives from the Afon Trothi, the ‘rushing river’, which runs through the parish of Mitchel Troy, where Troy House was the principal dwelling.
Troy ‘Parva’ was an ancient manor, but the chain of ownership is rather obscure until it was acquired by Sir William ap Thomas of Raglan, father and grandfather of earls of Pembroke, whose estates eventually passed to the Somersets, earls of Worcester and latterly dukes of Beaufort. Troy was the centre of the considerable Beaufort interest in Wales until house and lands were sold in the early twentieth century with the break-up of the great estates. Troy was purchased by an order of French nuns, becoming a convent school and Magdalene laundry with twenty-three laundry workers (one of the many appealing photographs in this book shows the Troy Convent Laundry van). Troy House subsequently (1984–91) became a ‘special school’ for boys. Since 1992 it has been unoccupied, becoming increasingly dilapidated, to the great concern of building conservationists.
The accessible building history of Troy House reaches back to the late medieval period. Troy was a substantial late-medieval mansion that probably dated from the mid-fifteenth century. It was occupied by members of the powerful Herbert family, notably by Sir Thomas Herbert, brother of the first earl of Pembroke, who was probably responsible for building the house. Such was the prestige of house and family that in 1502 Henry vii was entertained at Troy before the king and queen went on to Raglan.
Benson plausibly identifies the remains of the great gateway to a late-medieval outer courtyard. We should imagine an arrangement of inner and outer courtyards such as survives at Tretower Court, the mid-fifteenth-century mansion of another of the earl of Pembroke’s (half-)brothers. The buildings flanking the present farmyard may still preserve ranges of late-medieval origin, but, rather tantalisingly, they have yet to be investigated.
Troy House was rebuilt c 1610 as a three-storeyed, multi-gabled mansion, probably of double-pile plan-type. The builder, Sir Charles Somerset, has left his initials on the great garden gateway. It is a measure of the Beaufort’s court connections that this house was painted c 1672 by Hendrik Danckerts, the Dutch landscape painter favoured by Charles ii. Danckerts’ prospect painting shows a substantial yet compact house with wisps of smoke beguilingly emerging from the chimneys, a jumble of service buildings, with a panorama of Monmouth beyond. The tunic-clad figures in the foreground hint at Ilium, and there is, indeed, a topless tower (lacking a pitched roof) that probably served as a viewing platform overlooking the deer park.
Troy was rebuilt between 1681–84 to provide a residence for Charles, Marquess of Worcester, the heir to the Badminton estate. The first duke of Beaufort paid for the building work, but expected his son to finish the house ‘to his mind’. This is the rather severe house that survives: a long, hipped range of thirteen bays and three storeys, with a projecting and pedimented central section. Benson has discovered from the Badminton archives that the new house cost nearly £2,500. She has also established the identity of the architect who supplied plans in 1679: Robert Warren will be new to architectural historians (he escaped Colvin’s notice), but he was evidently a highly competent Restoration architect and undertook other Beaufort commissions.
The rebuilt Troy House incorporated several rooms with splendid Jacobean plaster ceilings from the old house, and possibly other earlier features, but it was essentially a new house. Roll-moulded beams and a dressed-stone doorway survive in the present service ranges, but the argument that these features help to locate the old hall range is unconvincing.
More could have been said about the planning and furnishing of the house, especially as several inventories survive. Troy House usefully attracted the attention of topographers. Archdeacon Coxe’s Historical Tour in Monmouthshire (Reference Coxe1801) described the furnishings and pictures in the saloon and elsewhere and noted fireplaces that may have come from Raglan. Benson includes a late Victorian photograph of the Oak Room, evidently a shrine to the Raglan inheritance and a statement of the Welsh legitimacy of the Beauforts. The alleged cradle of Henry v, born at Monmouth Castle, seems to have been one of the principal artefacts. We are not told if these intriguing artefacts survive, but the lozenge-patterned wainscoting was certainly removed to Badminton.
Benson presses on to consider Troy’s lost gardens and landscape, which included a deer park, walled gardens and orchards, and possible water features. The rusticated Palladian gateway to the walled garden is particularly impressive.
In a final chapter, Benson interrogates the official and professional records for Troy and finds them wanting, noting omissions and occasional howlers: a phantom date of 1611, allegedly on the garden gateway, is cited by several authorities; and Benson corrects the unfortunate misidentification of a cistern-house as a game larder. In mitigation, it has to be said that Troy House has been inaccessible for many years, the walled garden divided, and the parkland now farmed. Benson obliquely refers to her own difficulties of access. It is apparent that one photograph is worth a thousand words, and the value of RCAHMW’s visual record made in the 1950s is evident throughout the book.
Benson is to be congratulated on a new book that finally does justice to the history, architecture and landscape of Troy House. When this book was written, Troy was deemed a listed building at risk. An afterword is now necessary. In February 2018, planning permission was granted for the development of the house and gardens, subject to approval by the Welsh government. Troy House is now entering a new phase, and it is to be hoped that this admirable book will inform the sympathetic redevelopment of this decaying yet remarkable house.
