Newton House

The Williams Family Connection

 

^[10]John Williams; clerk (the second son of the first Daniel who died in 1643) was an ancestor of the ^[11]Penpont family, which was in his time called Abercamlais Isaf and inhabited by a farmer of the name Awbrey, being the freehold of Games of Newton.  Daniel Williams, the eldest son and heir of this John, married one of the daughters and heiresses·of Hoo Games of Newton, with whom he had this and a considerable property besides;  by her he had an only son who died single a short time before he had attained to the age of twenty-one.  Had he lived to that period the whole of the Newton property would gone to this family.  Mr. Williams married a second time an heiress.  However, the other descendants of Sir John Games in the third generation were females; one of them marrying Mr Walker of Oxfordshire and who left an only daughter who married into the Hensol family and brought Newton and other possessions in Breconshire to the late Earl Talbot, by whom they were sold to different persons.  Newton was purchased by the late Thomas Williams, clerk, vicar of Brecon,  devised by him to his nephew Richard Davies, clerk, deceased, and became the property of the Archdeacon of Brecon, the son of the last mentioned Richard Davies.

^[12]The Archdeacon and his wife had an only daughter, Elizabeth, who married Thomas Williams who became Dean of Llandaff.  (Thomas was of the Aberbran branch of the Williams family of Abercamlais.)  Thomas and Elizabeth’s eldest son, the Rev Prebendary Garnons Williams, inherited Abercamlais and the estate from a young bachelor cousin at about the same time that his grandfather, the Archdeacon of Brecon died.  From then onwards Newton and the farm have been let.  From about 1880 until the autumn of the year 2000 four successive generations of the Evans family lived in the house and farmed the land.  During the whole of the 20th Century the Golf Course has encircled the house and buildings.

Over the centuries the families at Newton gradually moved into the eastern part of the house, leaving what is now termed the old part unoccupied.  In 1935 the grandson of the Prebendary, Captain Nevill Garnons Williams inherited the estate and after the War, in 1955, was given a Grant by CADW to do extensive works to the old part, which was in

danger of falling into disrepair.  Mervyn Jenkins and his builders moved in.  The loose plaster was removed, the internal stonework pointed and the old stairway made safe.  Immense strong beams were exposed, revealing that damp had penetrated several ends of the oak, and in these places stone supports were built in.  In the roof area a whole chimney had to be re-built internally.  In the Great Hall, the ceiling and the corbels were replaced, the corbels being concrete at CADW’s insistence, because of the tremendous weight above.  There was much excitement in the large upstairs drawing room when the mouldings beside the windows came into view.  Because the tenants had no wish to live in what would have been a much larger house, the walls and beams have been left in a sound state, (and obviously of great interest to archaeologists), but inside the house no further major work has yet been done.  Until 2000 the Great Hall was used as a billiard room.

Over the last 20 years the Estate has completed extensive repairs to the outside of the building, again with the help of CADW.