Anwyl of Parc and Llugwy Hall

Overview

“Anwyl of Parc and Llugwy Hall” is not one building. It is the standard designation for a Welsh gentry family traced through two separate historic seats: Parc, a multi-building gentry complex at Llanfrothen in Gwynedd, and Llugwy Hall, a country house at Pennal, near Machynlleth on the River Dovey. The Parc line is documented from the mid-sixteenth century; the Llugwy connection begins in 1695, when Maurice Anwyl came into his wife Joan’s inheritance there. The family remained at Parc until the estates were mortgaged in 1748 and alienated after 1761, and held Llugwy into the early twentieth century. Today both survive as listed buildings: Parc is Grade II* as an unusual multi-unit complex, and Llugwy Hall is Grade II as a substantial county seat. The profile preserves the inherited title while treating the two sites, and the two family branches that held them, as distinct.

The family: origins, office and literature

The documented progenitor of the Parc branch was Robert ap Morris of Park, who died in 1576, the fourth son of Morris ap John ap Meredydd of Rhiwaedog. His younger descendants split by surname: the children of his son John of Vanner, near Bala, took the name Roberts — among them David, rector of Llanbedrog and chaplain to the Earl of Warwick — while the descendants of Lewis Anwyl, who died in 1605, retained Anwyl. A manuscript pedigree of “Anwyll [of Park, parish of Llanfrothen, co. Merioneth]” survives among the D. E. Jenkins Manuscripts at the National Library of Wales (NLW MS 12731E), the same volume that preserves verse by Huw Machno, the poet who later praised William Lewis Anwyl’s new house at Parc.

William Lewis Anwyl, who died in 1642, was the builder of the family’s fortunes. He served as High Sheriff of Merioneth in 1610 and 1623 and of Caernarfonshire in 1636, rebuilt Park, bought the lordship of Llwyn at Dolgelley, and — through his marriage to Elizabeth Herbert, a Montgomeryshire heiress — is said to have increased the estates fourfold. His children were married or betrothed into the neighbouring landed families of Brogyntyn, Peniarth and Moeliwrch. His eldest son Lewis, who died in 1641 during his own shrievalty, left a daughter Catherine who married William Owen of Brogyntyn; his second son Robert conducted the pamphleteer William Prynne from Caernarvon Roads to imprisonment in Jersey in 1637, was fined £1,200 for advancing £300 to the king during the Civil War, and served as High Sheriff in 1650; his youngest son Richard was twice High Sheriff in 1658 and 1659, was nominated a Knight of the Royal Oak, and died without issue at Llwyn in 1685.

The family also had a literary life. Robert Anwyl’s widow Katherine — ‘Madam Katherine’, daughter of Sir John Owen, who retired to Marl — was a notable patroness of Welsh literature and died in 1700. She is a different woman from the Katherine who married Lewis Anwyl in 1668 and whose initials, with his, appear on the 1671 datestone at Parc; earlier accounts sometimes blur the two. The Dictionary of Welsh Biography gives the family arms as “Vert, three eagles displayed in fess Or”, attributed to Owain Gwynedd — a legend, not a proof of descent — and the same eagle symbolism reappears in the Anwyl motto carved at Llugwy, “Eryr eryrod Eryri” (eagle of the eagles of Snowdonia).

The male line failed with William Lewis Anwyl of Cemmes Bychan, High Sheriff of Merioneth in 1698, who died without issue in February 1700/01 at 25. His will revoked the settlement on the Montgomery estate and left a £100 annuity in perpetuity to Edward Anwyl of Bodtalog, Towyn — the heir-at-law — and the estate became entangled in litigation. Park and Llwyn were mortgaged in 1748 and fully alienated after 1761. A cadet branch, Owen Anwyl’s line, had by then settled at Plas Newydd, which the listing notes was built in the same parallel “unit plan” as Parc.

Parc, Llanfrothen: a multi-building complex

Parc’s importance lies in what survives as a group. By the late seventeenth century it comprised four domestic blocks, a gatehouse, stables and agricultural ranges. The primary house (Parc 1), probably founded by Robert ap Morris, was demolished; only its platform is legible. What is now the main house (Parc 4), dated 1671 by a stone bearing Lewis and Katherine Anwyl’s initials, appears originally to have been independently accessed lodgings or guest accommodation that was later converted into a single T-plan house — rubble-walled with mullioned windows, a slate-flagged hall and a masonry stair. The listing grades it II* precisely for this unusual building type and its role in the sub-medieval unit-planned complex.

Middle Parc, about 50 metres northeast, preserves the Parc 2 and 3 ranges with possible late-sixteenth or seventeenth-century cylindrical chimneys, and carries its own Grade II* listing from 1966. After the Second World War it was altered for modern use by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, the architect of Portmeirion, and its adjoining square fountain basin likely served spring, conduit and washing functions. The wider Parc landscape is on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens as Grade II. The Mostyn Estate map recorded the Park demesne in 1802, and sale catalogues of 1832, 1875 and 1892 trace its nineteenth-century ownership changes. In January 2014 a desk-based assessment was prepared for a planning application to remodel Ty Hen Parc — the Middle Parc property — and divide it into two dwelling units, with the archaeologists recommending a full historic building record before works began.

Llugwy Hall, Pennal

The Llugwy story begins with a marriage: from at least 1695, Maurice Anwyl came into his wife Joan’s inheritance at Llugwy, and the house became the centre of the Anwyl estate. The family held it into the early twentieth century — a later owner being Robert Charles Anwyl, JP and High Sheriff, who died in 1900 — before it passed to the Ruck estate and was sold with 209 acres to Fraser Carson in April 1948.

Architecturally it is a layered house. The early northern block dates to 1611, a dating the listing says is supported by the architecture; it was enlarged perhaps in 1746 (a detached datestone survives) and again around 1890 in a matching Jacobean Gothic style, when the house grew south toward the river with three principal gables. Around 1963 the northern matching wing was demolished and replaced by modern buildings, and the house was later extended north again to provide hotel accommodation — a steel fire escape on the west front is a leftover of that era. The entrance forebuilding, with its four-centred arch, studded oak doors and shaped Flemish-style gable with ball finials, survives from the earlier house, and the family motto “Eryr eryrod Eryri” is said to survive plastered over within the porch. The house was listed Grade II in May 2000 as “a substantial county seat in which the Jacobean origins retained in the entrance block have been taken as a basis for its further development”. A company named Llugwy Hall Limited was registered at “Llugwy Hall Country House Hotel” in 1995 and dissolved in 1997, which corroborates the reported 1990s end of the hotel era; the house’s current use could not be independently confirmed.

A note on “Anwyl of Tywyn”

Some later accounts style the family “Anwyl of Tywyn”. That designation reflects junior connections — notably Edward Anwyl of Bodtalog, Towyn, the heir-at-law named in the 1700 will — rather than a replacement seat. The historic estates that anchor the family’s documentary record are Parc and Llugwy Hall, and the profile keeps that framing.

What this profile does not claim

It does not claim that the Anwyls descend from Owain Gwynedd; the arms attributed to him are heraldic tradition, not genealogy. It does not treat Parc and Llugwy Hall as one property, nor “Madam Katherine” Anwyl and Katherine the wife of Lewis Anwyl as one woman. It does not name a living head of the family or a current owner of either house, and it does not confirm the present use of Llugwy Hall. The William Prynne escort, the £1,200 Civil War fine and the shrievalties are documented in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, but the everyday domestic life inside these houses is not. The 1641/1642 death-date discrepancy for William Lewis Anwyl is left unresolved.