ISWE and Women’s History

Women played a critical part in the social and cultural life of Wales’s landed estates; from gentlewomen to female landholders to domestic servants, women were central to the functioning of estates and country houses. Women also played a key role in the development of estates, for example during widowhood many gentlewomen managed landed estates and endeavoured to make them as profitable as possible in anticipation of the coming-of-age of the male heir, when they were handed over. Incidentally, this may be why many gentlewomen are not acknowledged for their contribution. Sara mentions Cecil de Cardonnel (1735-1793), whose husband George Rice (1724-1779) is credited with making significant agricultural improvements on the Dinefwr Estate in Carmarthenshire and increasing the profitability of the land; however, archival material shows that after her husband’s death Cecil became extremely involved in the day-to-day management of the estate, and her personal interest in agricultural improvement is evidenced by her annual subscription to the Agricultural Society. Sara also points out that gentlewomen’s charitable contributions often went unnoticed, despite the fact that their benevolence played a significant role in shaping the interactions between the country house, local communities and wider aspects of society.

To bring these stories to the fore, ISWE is encouraging new scholarship on the lives and experiences of women in the history of Wales. In November 2018 we partnered with Women’s Archive Wales and the Carmarthenshire Antiquary Society to host a one-day conference at the National Botanical Garden of Wales on the theme of ‘Patriarchal Paradigms? The roles and experiences of women on the landed estates of Wales’. The conference included sessions on the themes of ‘Gender, Literature and Identity’, ‘Gardens, Landscapes and Collections’, ‘Gentlewomen in Early Modern Wales’, and ‘Reinterpreting Country Houses and their Collections’, and inspired several new research projects. One outcome was the Augusta Mostyn Letters Project, a project to catalogue and research two chests full of correspondence, accounts and papers relating to Augusta Mostyn (1830-1912) which was transferred to the Bangor University Archives by Lord Mostyn. Augusta Mostyn was one of the most influential women in the history of north Wales and made an immense contribution to the development of Llandudno, however an academic biography is yet to be published. Dr Dinah Evans, former Lecturer in History at Bangor University, volunteered with the Archives and ISWE to catalogue and research the collection, sharing some of the insights provided by the papers in a celebratory public event in December 2023.

Women’s history is also a common theme across several ISWE doctoral research projects. It was during her undergraduate degree in Welsh History with Archaeology and her master’s degree in Welsh History at Bangor University that Lizzy Walker being to realise that there was little written on the history of women in Wales. Now she is contributing to the field with her doctoral project entitled ‘The landowning and landholding women of north-east Wales from ca.1600 to 1800’, which is challenging the stereotypical view that historically women did not own nor hold land in Wales. Lizzy believes that because it was so commonplace for women to hold land and undertake agricultural work that it has been written out of history. But as the daughter of a farmer who grew up in a small farming community near Llangollen, she always took the fact that women worked in agriculture for granted, and finds it strange that this is not common knowledge – for example, very few Welsh women joined the Women’s Land Army during the Second World War because they were already working the land.

Her research project draws on archival material such as estate papers, probate documents, and Great Session and Quarter Session records to emphasise the extent of women’s involvement in land ownership, land management, and land improvement across north-east Wales and the period under discussion, circa 1600-1800. ‘Women were massively present’ she says, discussing one of her case studies where three successive generations of women owned and worked a smallholding. Interestingly, this implies that daughters inherited land and were actively trained to manage it even when there were male heirs, which makes for an interesting contrast with the gentry class who were always thinking about their sons; we discuss how this appears to be the lasting effect of Welsh Law and cyfran (partible inheritance). We also discuss the realities and the daily toil of these women, and Lizzy mentions one of her women who was managing twelve acres at eighty-six years old in the early-seventeenth century. Lizzy recently presented a paper on the women of the Croes Howell estate in Denbighshire in the eighteenth century at the Welsh History Postgraduate Conference at Cardiff University.

Sara Fox’s doctoral project, entitled ’Aloof Among its Beeches’: Welsh Writing in English - representations of the Gentry House from the Late Eighteenth century onwards', represents the first study of fictional representations of the gentry house in Wales. Sara describes how her project has evolved to look exclusively at female authors, and she credits the work that independent co-operative press Honno have done to publish books by neglected Welsh female authors. As well as their literary depictions of gentry houses, Sara is looking at the lives of the authors, which were often more dramatic than the lives of their characters! Recently she has been researching Englishwoman Ann Hatton (1764-1838), who was disowned by her family on account of her first marriage being bigamous and paid to stay away from London. She and her second husband eventually settled in Swansea and opened a bathing house, but after that business failed and her husband died, Ann began writing novels. She published seventeen novels in total, all under the moniker ‘Ann of Swansea’; Sara is fascinated by her relationship with Swansea, suggesting that she was attracted to the ‘radicalness in the air’. Her novels are full of inversions, where women kidnap men rather than the other way round, and women dress as men and fight duels with the men they are being forced to marry.

There are also interesting parallels between Sara and Lizzy’s projects, namely women in managerial roles. Sara recounts the story of Amy Dillwyn (1845-1935), who managed her father’s farm at Hendrefoilan from her sickbed for a decade. On her father’s death she inherited his spelter works at Llansamlet which was in serious debt, but she was able to rescue it and saved three-hundred jobs in the process. Sara describes how Amy took on ‘this male idea of the honour of the family’, adopting a male personal, dressing in masculine clothes, and smoking cigars. Her six novels explore the theme of how trapped and controlled women were in a patriarchal society.

Dr Sadie Jarrett’s doctoral thesis, which was published with University of Wales Press this year, made a significant contribution to the study of women in early modern Wales. Her chapter ‘‘‘By reason of her sex and widowhood’’: An early modern Welsh gentlewoman in the Court of Star Chamber’ examines the case of Dame Margaret Lloyd (1565-1650) of the Salesbury family. Margaret’s younger brother, head of the Salesbury family, accused her of abducting her son from his rightful guardian and coordinated an attack on her home. In response, Margaret sued her brother in the Court of Star Chamber. Sadie’s chapter considers the relationship between women and their male relations in the late medieval period, a time when Wales was adapting to new laws which sometimes conflicted with Welsh gentry society’s established views on women. One of her collusions is that Margaret presented as a ‘confident agent within the constraints of a patriarchal society’.

Dr Mary Oldham, who recently completed her PhD on Gregynog, has also published a journal article in the Montgomeryshire Collections which traces the centrality of women to the succession – and history – of the Gregynog estate.

As women’s history is such a central theme in ISWE’s research, naturally we have developed a strong and fruitful partnership with Women’s Archive Wales. Their annual conference provides an excellent platform for our colleagues to share their research, and I had the opportunity to present a paper last year. My main research interest is the architectural and garden history of the Welsh country house, and my doctoral project is a study of St Fagans Castle in Cardiff. One aspect of my research is demonstrating how the owners of St Fagans Castle influenced the design of the house and gardens, and over the course of this research I noticed a pattern of three successive generations of Windsor-Clive women making significant contributions to the gardens in the period ca.1850-1920.

Harriet Windsor-Clive (1797-1869) inherited the estate on the death of her elder brother, the 6^th Earl of Plymouth, without issue. Although she had married into the Clive family, she was solely responsible for carrying the Windsor line, name and titles forward, as she obtained a royal license to use the surname ‘Windsor-Clive’ and had the Barony of Windsor revived in her favour in 1855, with the Earldom eventually revived for her grandson. After the unexpected death of her son, she managed the estate on behalf of her infant grandson. Harriet was responsible for instigating two significant building projects at St Fagans Castle, namely the addition of a new servants’ block to the rear of the house and the creation of formal terraces in the gardens. My paper explored how these additions were made in the Gothic style, incorporating a Watch Tower and crenelations, and how it may have been Harriet’s intention to draw on medieval and feudal connotations in an attempt to assert her authority over her tenants. Harriet’s daughter-in-law Mary Windsor Clive (1829-1889) took over the management of the estate in 1869, and her garden additions reflect her personal interest in archaeology, for example a stone circle formed of pieces of fossilised trees from an estate colliery. Mary’s daughter-in-law Alberta ‘Gay’ Windsor-Clive (1863-1944) was part of a fashionable social set called the ‘Souls’ and was a popular hostess. She developed a special relationship with St Fagans Castle, as she and her young family visited each summer to recuperate from the London Season and spend quality time together. Gay was the daughter of a British Ambassador, and her upbringing in Rome and Florence was reflected in her garden additions at St Fagans, including the very authentic, enclosed ‘Italian Garden’. Archival material reveals that she worked closely with the Head Gardener and was involved in the practical decision making in the gardens, requesting certain plants and advising on the width of paths.

My paper challenged the current understanding that it was the male members of the Windsor-Clive family who were responsible for laying out the gardens, for example one of the only works in the current literature on the gardens is entitled ‘The Gardens of the Earls of Plymouth at St Fagans Castle’. Specifically, it challenged the unfair description of Gay Windsor-Clive as a ‘garden ornament’ who wandered around ‘generally beautifying the already beautiful setting’ in a 2002 publication about the restoration of the Italian Gardens. As the conference took place at St Fagans National Museum of History, I was able to combine my paper with a walking tour of the gardens.

ISWE is delighted that Women’s Archive Wales’s Annual Conference is being held at Bangor University this year. Three ISWE colleagues will be presenting papers, including Director Dr Shaun Evans, whose paper will be entitled ‘Gentlewomen, Antiquarian Activity and Welsh Historical Consciousness in the 19^th Century’. Lizzy will be giving a paper entitled ‘Women as landholders in north-east Wales: Evidence from 17^th and 18^th century leases’, and Dr Meinir Moncrieffe, who recently completed her project on Sir John Wynn of Gwydir, will be giving a paper entitled ‘’A good natured and honest woman ys gods gift and no treasure comparable unto her’: the silent abuse of Welsh Gentry Wives’. We look forward to the conference and to continuing our relationship with Women’s Archive Wales.

(Authored by Bethan Scorey)